新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Abstract

While the practice of indigenous research ethics in Taiwan is bound by the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law to consult and obtain community collective consent, most current discussions have focused on the latter. The challenges of collective consent are not only because the article defines ‘consent by indigenous community’ as majority vote of the tribal council, of which meetings are difficult to call, but also that not every indigenous community has a tribal council. Furthermore, indigenous communities traditionally have their own decision-making structure/organization, which varies from community to community, nation to nation. Against this background, we propose to shift the emphasis to the process of consultation and that a consultation platform should be in place, where indigenous community members, indigenous knowledge professionals and academics work together to facilitate cross-cultural understanding and dialogue. Our belief is that consultation platforms will better prepare communities and researchers for collaborative activities, with collective consent based on informed decisions. In this paper we reflect on current indigenous research ethics and practices through our experiences working with the Makota’ay community and scrutinize examples from New Zealand andthe US in order to locate pragmatic tools for building consultation platforms that uphold indigenous sovereignty, worldviews, and values.