Institutional logics and indigenous research sovereignty in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

The institutional logics of Western academic research often conflict with the epistemologies and goals of Indigenous peoples. Research sovereignty is a right but still an aspiration for many Indigenous peoples. National funding agencies and Western universities have sought to resolve these conflicts through various institutional and organizational settlements. We combined a systematic literature search with critical content analysis and synthesis to compare the prospect for Indigenous research sovereignty in Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand. Our comparison of the strategies used to resolve conflicts between competing institutional logics highlights the limitations of segmentation and segregation as well as other barriers to truly blended, or reconciled, institutional logics in colonial government and Western university research institutions and organizations.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous research
• ethics
• institutions
• Australia
• Canada
• New Zealand
• United States
• indigenous sovereignty
• research funding

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Knowledge Synthesis Grant (872-2016-0013) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We thank Chelsea Gabel for helpful discussions of these issues.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Claudia Díaz Ríos http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0149-7971

Michelle L. Dion http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0899-4009

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Knowledge Synthesis Grant [872-2016-0013] from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.