Presentation short abstract

Community-based participatory research can require the bringing together of different worldviews and ways of knowing. As a cross-cultural research team, we share reflections on how we have tackled this challenge and its benefits for making research more inclusive of diverse knowledge holders.

Presentation long abstract

There has been a growing awareness of the importance of community-based participatory research as an inclusive and thus effective approach to addressing today’s social-ecological problems. This requires the difficult task of weaving different ways of knowing and corresponding research methods from different worldviews from diverse team members to create new knowledge based on this coming together. Without this, it is limited in how the project can go gone beyond more passive forms of inclusion of community knowledge holders in the research process. Such weaving requires unique research tools, relationship-building, and deep critical self and collective reflection. As a team of non-indigenous university researchers and Indigenous community researchers, we came together to explore how we could weave our different ways of knowing to create new knowledge that would help guide the development of an Indigenous-led protected area. While each collaboration must develop their own approach to such weaving, we share some reflections and tools that may help others think about their journeys. We reflect on how we have worked as a research team and also how we have found ways to meaningfully engage the broader community. We also share how participating in this process has been empowering for the community researchers and how it has allowed us to address some of the exclusionary critiques of mainstream western science. We hope this will contribute to raising awareness of the importance of community-based participatory research while supporting other teams in similar journeys and inspiring the creation of other such collaborations in the future.