Reciprocal Research: A Guidebook to Centering Community in Partnerships with Indigenous Nations should be used as part of a larger effort to support planning for and reflecting on research partnerships. It can be used individually, in a community of scholars or within a graduate level course.
Considerations for Guide Use
The Reciprocal Research Guidebook provides a narrow cross section of potential scenarios and thought-provoking activities to support researchers in developing and maintaining robust partnerships. It is important not to assume that all tribes have the same experiences with, and interest in, research partnerships. It is damaging to view this guide as providing all-encompassing knowledge for working with Native American tribal governments and communities.
Tribes are not monolithic and represent a broad spectrum of diversity — in values, languages, histories, cultures, relations, politics and economies. The voices of the community and tribal leadership should be at the forefront of establishing research partnerships. We strongly believe that researchers should rely on the community to articulate their own needs and goals, and developed this guide to support this very approach.
Creative Commons License
Reciprocal Research: A Guidebook to Centering Community in Partnerships with Indigenous Nations is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
You must give appropriate credit, and indicate if changes were made. You may make and share changes as indicated, but not in a way that suggests the MSU Native American Institute endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
Suggested Attribution
Poitra, C., Kolonich, A., Mitchell, A. E., Proctor, E., Shirley, A., Baier, A.& LaPensée, E. (2021). Reciprocal Research: A Guidebook to Centering Community in Partnerships with Indigenous Nations. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Native American Institute.
Gratitude
The year 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of Michigan State University Native American Institute (NAI). As one of only a handful of university institutes across the country with a Native community-driven mission, we want to recognize the decades of Native, community and ally leadership that have worked tirelessly to further NAI.
The Reciprocal Research Guide was made possible by grant support from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (2020-07133 and 2018-47002-28637), and the National Science Foundation (BCS1934346).
We are thankful for the use of Dr. Elizabeth LaPensée’s artwork throughout this guide.