Research is an important domain for discussing Cultural Safety because of its role in knowledge generation, defining reality and privileging particular ways of knowing (Smith, 1999). While research has been a site of struggle for Indigenous communities, it can also contribute to Indigenous empowerment. The 1990s marked a period when a ‘global Indigenous reform agenda developed, which aimed to decolonise and dismantle Western research practices’ (Thomas et al. 2014, S2). This movement for reform was driven by Indigenous resistance and activism to create change. For example, in 1991 the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) released the ‘Interim Guidelines on Ethical Matters in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research,’ whose origins can be traced to an Aboriginal health conference that was held in 1986 in Alice Springs (Bond et al, 2021).

Much like the other systems discussed in this book, the dominant Western research system has shown similar biases, inequities, and abuses. Long-standing histories of exploitation, misuse, abuse, and discrimination have led to widespread distrust of research and researchers for many communities. In an Australian context, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have been subjected to extensive research projects, including having biological samples taken without being informed of the research purpose or its outcomes. This history was founded on an assumption that research will serve the interests and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples, which has not been realised (Bond et al., 2021). Therefore, research is frequently experienced by First Nations people as an extension of colonial practices and a tool of further oppression. For many communities, trust has eroded and there is little belief that there will be research benefit for community, despite any individual researcher’s intentions.

In addition to overt acts of harm such as unethical treatment practices in the name of scientific discovery (Paul & Brookes, 2015), the research system has frequently failed to acknowledge or value Indigenous or other culturally diverse ways of knowing and conducting research. While assertions of objectivity are common, dominant research methods and systems have developed within their own cultural contexts, which is reflected in the standards of practice and common methodologies used. For example, the intelligence tests developed and administered in most English-speaking Western contexts are widely accepted as strong predictors of intelligence and aptitude, guiding educational and employment pathways in those settings. There has been a lengthy and deliberate process to develop the questions, methods of assessment, and long-term evaluations of intelligence tests to predict specific outcomes (e.g., university study outcomes). These tests are frequently administered to other cultural groups and in international contexts are compared to Western populations, despite clear evidence that culture and intelligence cannot be separated (Sternberg, 2004). Another example comes from epidemiological data, which is frequently used to guide health policy and programme decision-making. Population age structures typically vary across Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, which means that comparisons across populations can differ depending on which age standards are applied (Robson et al., 2007). When we extrapolate and compare disparate groups based on a single way of knowing and measuring, we risk encountering significant issues.

Within multicultural societies such as Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand), there are clear biases in who participates in research studies, which are perpetuated by a variety of factors including who is conducting research and how it is done (Murray et al., 2019).  Cultural norms for recruitment, engagement, and follow-up within research can reify patterns of exclusion and cultural mismatch for non-dominant groups. For example, biases may emerge by using social media platforms predominantly accessed by specific subgroups of a population or having research staff from particular backgrounds who may be seen as more or less trustworthy to people within or outside of their subgroup. Engagement strategies that require in-person versus anonymous online surveying may vary in appeal depending on the topic and a person’s preferences for social engagement. Tailoring research methods can in turn challenge research standards (also culturally derived) regarding the need to collect data in a standardised way. A Cultural Safety orientation emphasises the need to collect best quality data in ways that are regardful of difference rather than regardless of difference (Ramsden, 2002). Recent advances in Cultural Safety provide the impetus for rethinking research methodologies as a necessary step towards ensuring research systems are equitable, safe, and inclusive of all communities.

It is important to note there is substantial variation in the application of culturally safe and Indigenous research methods, and therefore this introductory chapter on research risks falling into the trap of oversimplifying the topic (Foley, 2018). While providing a general summary of the topic, we are in no way suggesting this is a simple or straightforward process. Careful critique of research practice is an important element of ongoing reflective practice and efforts to create more culturally safe practices require rethinking of both individual practices as well as the broader institutional research infrastructure in nuanced ways. In this chapter, we provide a cursory overview of research frameworks prioritising Cultural Safety and practices to be applied at varying levels of the research system (i.e., for individual researchers, research projects, institutions, and nationally). To illustrate good practice, examples of research methods, infrastructure, and reading materials from across Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand) are provided. As an introductory chapter, it aims to inspire further reflection, critical analysis, and discussion of culturally safe research practices for all readers, with recommended readings to foster ongoing development and systemic change (See Box 1).

Individual researchers

At the individual researcher level, Cultural Safety efforts typically include updating research trainings to cover concepts of Cultural Safety for new and emerging researchers and as professional development opportunities for established researchers. Such trainings often align with the strategies identified in Chapters 2 and 3 to support improved reflective capacity, to build awareness, knowledge and skills, and to modify the behaviours of researchers to foster culturally safe research. Additionally, there are evolving industry standards and requirements, such as revisions to ethics processes and the development of guidelines for research practices with diverse populations, such as those put forward by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and the NHMRC Guidelines in Australia, and the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) guidelines for research in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The guidelines reaffirm the importance of self-determination for Indigenous communities and participants more broadly and are guided by core values that build strong relationships based on respect, equity, and reciprocity. Importantly, there is a greater emphasis that researchers consider and ensure the benefit of research outcomes for communities. The NHMRC guidelines provide further detail on issues related to consent, research agreements, cultural and intellectual property, and cultural competency to guide research practices.

There is widespread recognition of the need to increase representation of minority groups within the research system. Therefore, building a diverse and inclusive research workforce means supporting individual minority group researchers to enter, remain, and thrive in the research sector. The need for representation is clearly articulated within the HRC guidelines through the value placed on Māori expertise and knowledge to ensure that research can deliver its intended objectives, including building of the Māori research workforce. By increasing representation of diverse voices within the research literature, funding systems, and review processes, lived experience can be better recognised, supported, and valued. There are numerous benefits to a diverse workforce, including improved problem-solving and innovation when addressing complex problems, and it is critical for addressing disparities (Swartz et al., 2019). Systemically, common strategies to improve the research pipeline focus on providing supports for under-represented groups (e.g., scholarships, early career research grants), targeted funding for areas where there are known researcher gaps, and mentoring programmes that can provide support for new and emerging researchers. Research systems and institutions must be culturally safe, and recognise, value and fund research that includes diverse knowledge systems and priorities to create lasting and meaningful changes in the research workforce. For individual researchers and teams, ensuring that research teams are representative is an important consideration for research design and development (Akbar et al., 2023)

Research projects

All research is guided by ethical frameworks and guidelines that mandate humane, just, and equitable human research practices. In Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand), there are clear guiding frameworks for research. The NHMRC research guidelines and the HRC guidelines provide obligatory instruction to be applied in research practices. Within those guidelines there is a clear mandate for ensuring inclusive research that benefits all of society, yet there are challenges for how that vision is operationalised given that research disparities persist (Murray et al., 2019). For example, ethics review processes commonly require research with minority populations, such as with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities or people from a refugee background, to be reviewed as a high-risk ethics application. While this approach intends to protect participants, it can create added barriers to research and reinforce paternalism and exclusion from research studies for researchers desiring a more expeditious ethics review process. It can create obstructive processes that limit participant rights and overburden Indigenous researchers. Therefore, the ways in which research is organised and regulated can have unintended consequences that reinforce exclusionary practices. In turn, research advances may not benefit all groups within society equally.

Over the past several decades, there has been growing support and recognition of the need to modify research methods to be more culturally safe and inclusive. Cultural adaptation frameworks, as well as co-design, participatory and Indigenous research methods (see Box 1 for additional resources) are examples of approaches taken to create more collaborative and inclusive research. Such strategies modify the processes of recruitment, data collection, analysis, and dissemination, and aim to address power imbalances within typical researcher-researched relationships and support the autonomy and influence of research participants throughout the research process. This can include during the process of developing research questions and priorities through to guiding the outputs and desired benefits of the research. Common across participatory research methods are the use of collaborative approaches to generate action and change that has a direct and positive impact (Vaughan & Jacquez, 2020).

Within the research team it is important to consider community representation, including Indigenous representation on research that affects Indigenous peoples (Akbar et al., 2023). This includes consideration across all levels of the research team and by ensuring community engagement throughout the research process. For this, Jezewski’s Culture-Brokering Model (Jezewski & Sotnik, 2005) can be useful to ensure engagement and collaboration is meaningful and effective. In this model, research includes cultural brokers who have the awareness, knowledge, skills, and abilities to navigate both the community and research systems and their respective values and norms. They are people who can recognise and problem solve around differences across the two systems and support an effective navigation across those differences. In research, engaging cultural brokers can play an essential role for navigating cultural divides. More broadly, research has moved towards expecting greater inclusion of lived experience and ensuring the engagement of end users and diverse perspectives in guiding the process. Careful consideration and critical reflection on how this is done in a genuinely collaborative and mutually beneficial manner is required. See Box 2 for a description of how Cultural Safety and Jezewski’s Culture-Brokering Model has been considered and applied in a specific research project.

A research example: Food sovereignty in Queensland, Australia

The research described here is a project engaging two Aboriginal communities in Queensland, Australia to foster food sovereignty. The research is led by an Aboriginal community health researcher with long-standing ties to community and includes an interdisciplinary research team of First Nations and settler scholars as chief investigators and serving on an international advisory board providing guidance on the research. The grant-funded research includes a PhD scholarship for an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander student, and almost all research funding goes directly to community through a range of paid positions in community, participant reimbursements, and project activities to be designed by and done in community.  The research team has developed a model of community engagement based on Jezewski’s Culture-Brokering Model (Jezewski & Sotnik, 2004) with a priority to ensure that the funded research programme returns power in the project to the community.  There are 3 tiers for community research roles, which are all paid positions.

 

1. The cultural broker is aware of both university research and community dynamics and resources and provides higher level oversight and negotiation between researchers and community. The cultural broker does not need to be part of the university system but needs to be knowledgeable of it and the interests of their people. Before any research commences, the research team has conversations with the cultural broker to discuss initial ideas. The cultural broker asks questions about the research while holding knowledge of the key concerns and challenges across both university and community processes and priorities. The cultural broker can sit above political manoeuvring and act in the best interest of community. Once the cultural  broker  has  addressed  their concerns about the proposed research and discussed these with the community, they then hand the project over to the cultural mentor who has a more active role in the specific research project. In this research, the Aboriginal research team leaders with ties to community have served in this role. To support future research there is a need to develop a larger group of people who can serve as cultural brokers, particularly Elders and respected individuals living in community who can work in the best interests of community while also knowing how to engage with and address academic research systems effectively.
2. The cultural mentor is the person more intimately involved with the specific research project and, while in the middle of the pyramid, is the most powerful person in the research. The cultural mentor vigorously defends the rights and interests of the community throughout the research project. They determine how much Traditional Knowledge can be shared and how interactions between the university and the community unfold. While the cultural broker oversees the initiation of the research, the cultural mentor takes over once the project begins. In this research project, the research manager hired from the community serves in the cultural mentor role. They decide what kinds of questions can be asked, of whom, they might sit in on interviews or focus groups, and guide participants on what can be shared (e.g., women’s or men’s knowledge). They will also authenticate what is being shared to ensure the integrity of information being shared. The cultural mentor must be locally based in the community. If there is a conflict between the cultural mentor and the research team, then the cultural broker can be engaged to support mediation.
3. Community researchers will also be engaged throughout the research project. This role is important for direct data collection and supporting community activities (e.g., outreach activities, interviewing, programme delivery). In this research project young people will be hired in community researcher roles to support the interviewing of Elders, engaging with schools, and supporting community outreach events. This role aligns with similar community health worker and researcher models that have proliferated within research more broadly. This role requires consideration of bidirectional training (training of settler researchers is required as well as training of community researchers in research methods) and ensuring that everyone’s time for the research is appropriately compensated and recognised.

The outcomes for the research include community- developed projects to support food sovereignty as defined and prioritised by the two Aboriginal Communities engaged in the project. The research uses a co-design framework and Indigenous methods, such as yarning circles and carefully considers long-term sustainability planning within project development. Throughout all years of funding there are regular and ongoing community conversations to ensure transparency, collaboration, and more immediate, direct benefits throughout the project.

Institutional design

Research institutions establish their own standards and processes and exert control over how and where resources are allocated, all contributing to the institutional research culture (McAllister et al, 2019). And, while there are active commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion stated by most research institutions, long-standing discriminatory practices persist. As McAllister and colleagues (2019) clearly articulate:

Decolonisation involves more than a cosmetic shift in managerial practice or the hiring of additional Māori scholars. It is not a call for empty institutional reform or minor tweaks to existing policy. Rather, it is a structural commitment to building educational institutions that recognise the settler-colonial foundations of the university and directly address the inequalities at the core of the institution that exclude, reject or deny Indigenous scholars’ claims for intellectual sovereignty and justice (Rigney, 2001). (p. 244)

Such an approach requires active and ongoing critique of current standards and systems through reflective practice. Discriminatory practices become institutionalized by the ways in which standards, ideals, and norms are established in ways that disadvantage certain groups. In research institutions, this occurs within systems that allocate resources (e.g., employment, scholarships, funding) and determine research merit and quality (e.g., systems for funding, reward, and promotion). While decision-making processes generally are controlled by a smaller group of people within institutional hierarchies (again, a culturally biased systemic approach), identifying areas of influence (e.g., committee engagement, feedback opportunities, personal practices) are essential for enabling system-wide change. Researchers at every level of the ecosystem can promote more equitable practices, which can contribute to collective wide-scale change.

An example of culturally unsafe institutional practice relates to issues of data sovereignty. Indigenous Data Sovereignty relates to the ways in which data are owned, controlled, and accessed, and the ways in which research is accountable to and benefits Indigenous communities (Trudgett et al., 2022). Many aspects of data sovereignty are undermined by the mechanised conventions implemented by research institutions for the purpose of managing research, such as the default ownership and control of research data by the hosting institution. In the absence of recognised principles and protocols, there are added barriers and work for Indigenous researchers or those working to enact the principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty to actualize them within the existing structures. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), Te Mana Raraunga is a network focused on Māori data sovereignty that has developed a range of resources, including a brief (2018) detailing the key principles underpinning data sovereignty: Rangatiratanga (Authority), Whakapapa (Relationships), Whanaungatanga (Obligations), Kotahitanga (Collective benefit), Manaakitanga (Reciprocity), and Kaitiakitanga (Guardianship).

Resources and infrastructure at the institutional level are also vitally important. Given the under-representation of First Nations researchers within most research institutions, there is often a mismatch between institutional visions for culturally safe practice and the available human capital to facilitate that work. This results in overburdening the small number of cultural brokers who are expected to serve as a cultural resource on top of their standard workload. Therefore, ensuring that the institution properly supports and rewards researchers who provide added services to the institution is vital.

Murdoch University is one of the first universities in Australia to recognise and acknowledge the often invisible work that First Nations staff have been required to perform in addition to their negotiated workloads. Recognising the relatedness of cultural knowledge and practices and therefore potential for perpetuating trauma, Murdoch University has established a cultural load allowance that sets a precedent for acknowledging the complexities that underpin the work associated with providing cultural awareness and education for non-Indigenous colleagues. This cultural load allowance signifies a concerted effort to acknowledge the heavy burden and unwarranted feelings of responsibility and expectation placed upon First Nations staff to accurately represent 60,000 years of culture.

Additionally, the proper resourcing of mentors, such as Elders and service units is essential. In Box 3, we provide a description of a research institution in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and the steps they have taken to institutionalise research support for Māori researchers and building capacity for non-Māori researchers in supporting Māori interests. While the example is university-specific, it could serve as a model to be tailored to other types of research institutions and settings.

Federal research infrastructure

At the federal research level, there is clear need for advocacy and systemic reform to create a more culturally safe and inclusive research ecosystem. This requires careful review and consideration of the overarching regulatory, policy, and funding landscapes and formalised approaches to ensure accountability. Therefore, at the macro-level, active steps are required to ensure that colonial systems are dismantled, and that all of society equally share the benefits of research.

In each step of the research process, there are ongoing systemic factors that contribute to broad scale inequity. Some ways in which research system inequities have been objectively measured include examination of equity and representation across review panels, funding allocation, and publishing, all of which influence current research reward mechanisms. Changes can be made through revised processes and policies, with added measures to ensure accountability and to determine progress.

For example, one recent Australian success for systems change is in the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts (a select group of researchers who play a significant role in determining what research gets funded) to ensure more equal gender representation. In 2016, women were only 29% of the members on the College of Experts but by 2021 women were 48% of members (ARC, 2023). Such change highlights that purposeful targets to redress inequities can be actioned quickly. While this data provides evidence of improving gender equity in the College of Experts, other demographic characteristics were not similarly evaluated, and therefore similar disparities are likely to persist.

It is not yet known how this change in a decision-making body will impact longer-term investment decision inequities. This will be important to track as there are known biases in what gets funded federally, such as significant underrepresentation of migrant communities within research funding, well below their representation within broader Australian society (Renzaho et al., 2016). Granting systems put in place structures that can advantage certain groups or come in conflict with diverse ways of knowing, being and doing. Such biases may include funding specific topics at a higher level because they affect population subgroups disproportionately or setting timelines and budget restrictions that may disadvantage or actively conflict with Indigenous or other culturally informed research methods (e.g., allowing for lengthy co-design processes or prohibiting catering costs within grant funding).

In turn, differential investment and valuing of research diversity are evident in downstream outcomes such as publication rates. For example, there are notable gaps in Australian health and mental health publications, with multicultural issues and samples in only 2.2% of the health literature from a sample of 3 major health journals (Garrett et al., 2010) and only 9.7% of studies in a sample of 4 major mental health journals specifically considering issues for culturally diverse populations (Minas et al., 2013). Some progress is seen in editorial boards for improved gender equity; however, other inequities in leadership persist, with high income countries and specific geographic regions over-represented (Bhaumik & Jagnoor, 2019). Publishing gaps are then reinforced through individual practices, where citation statistics follow the same patterns of lower citations of women and people of colour (Kwon, 2022). Therefore, as an individual researcher considering citational justice when you write is important. For the research ecosystem, examination and pursuit of inclusive publishing standards and review processes is essential. Such efforts are important given publication metrics continue to be a dominant determining factor for hiring and promotion processes.

Conclusion

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