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(2) to increase Native undergraduate and graduate student participation in research.
In our previous work we have actualized these goals in two ways: through a gen-
eral process of collaborative praxis that builds the research skills and administrative
infrastructure within Indian communities and through a collaborative design process
we have been developing and refining. We call this design process
community-based
design
(CBD), the foundation of which rests on the comprehensive participation
of community members, including teachers, elders, parents, community experts,
researchers, and youth in all aspects of the research, including the conceptions of
the problems, project design and implementation, and data collection and analysis.
The above description offers a snapshot of our research partnership and goals.
The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. We first describe the bene-
fits of our partnership by outlining how it addresses the barriers outlined above. In
doing so, we will need to provide more background information. Next, we provide
some examples of our CBD in practice and its effects on the communities. Then,
we briefly outline more of the history of our project, because it may be relevant to
other efforts at forging research partnerships. Finally, we summarize with lessons
we have learned from our partnership.
Research in Indigenous Communities: Background
and Organization
Since the 1970s there has been a growing effort for Indigenous people to be running
schools in Indian communities. Most of the progress made on this front, however,
has been at the administrative level, not at the classroom level. The majority of
Indian children both on and off reservations have non-Indian teachers. The design
of this research project recognized this and intentionally proposed engaging teachers
and community members in the design of a learning environment integrating levels
of classroom, content, and pedagogy. The intent was to begin to create a space where
community members engaged in reclaiming the classroom level of teaching and
learning for Indigenous children (Smith, 1999).
The design of our methods has been based on an understanding of appropriate
research methods for working with American Indian communities. There is a long
history of research in American Indian communities that has often not been in their
best interest, a legacy that has made many Native communities suspect of research.
Over the years indigenous researchers themselves have worked to develop appro-
priate methods and criteria for conducting research (Hermes, 1999; Smith, 1999;
Mihesuah, 1998; Guyette, 1983). There are some general lessons that have driven
the approach to this work. First, all of literature generally agrees that the
partici-
patory action research (PAR)
is the best framework of inquiry. PAR has generally
been defined as an integrated approach that relies on the participation of commu-
nity members to investigate the issues at hand while building local skills for the
purpose of increasing autonomy through a process of praxis (Hermes, 1999). PAR
includes the following criteria: elder input, use of traditional language, community
