Foundations for Collaborative Research: Tribal Engagement and Collaboration

Ken Lokensgard: Well, first of all, I just say thank you for being here. And thank you to ORAP and the Office of Research for sponsoring this talk. As Emily said, this is this is part one of two talks. So we hope you can talk to come to the next one. In this particular talk, we’re going to be addressing some things you should really think about before you engage in research collaborations with tribes.

Ken Lokensgard: Things that they require you to, you know, think about your values and think about what is important about the work you’re doing to the tribe and so on. But then our second part will be a little bit more policy oriented. So this training is a little different than some we’ve done in the past. I should say, too, that this work is really important to our vice provost for native programs and tribal relations.

Ken Lokensgard: That’s Zoe Higheagle Strong, member of the Nez Perce tribe. She’s also faculty in Educational Psychology. Zoe had a lot of input on this presentation and will be present for the next presentation. Unfortunately, she cannot be here today because of a family emergency or even a couple of family emergencies. So, you know, we we send our good wishes to her.

Ken Lokensgard: And just to all of you, please know how important this this discussion is to her.

Ken Lokensgard: Let’s see. I’m looking for my colleague Sequoia to join us. Sequoia are you here yet?

Sequoia Dance Leighton: I’m here.

Ken Lokensgard: OK, excellent. We had a little Zoom challenges today. But after mentioning Zoe can’t make it. I should mention to those of you I haven’t met that my name is Ken Lokensgard and I’m the co-director for the Center for Native American Research and Collaboration.

Ken Lokensgard: I co-direct that with Zoe Higheagle Strong, and we are part of the Tribal Relations and Native American Programs office. I also have with me today Sequoia Dance. And I’ll let her introduce herself. Sequoia Dance Leighton, I should say.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: [speaking Native American language].

Sequoia Dance Leighton: Hello, everybody. My name is Sequoia Dance Leighton. I am a, I am, all but dissertation for my PhD program here at WSU in Education and I’m also the traditional ecological knowledge scholar and BioRise program coordinator in Native American Programs.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So I help with developing research capacities for post-bac students and working specifically with Tribal partners. So I’m happy to be here with you today.

Ken Lokensgard: I’m very happy to have Sequoia and have her input she has some… a lot of experience with things we’re going to talk about today. And I have some other colleagues here today. For instance, Cary Rosenbaum. Cary, do you want to take a moment to introduce yourself? So long as you’re here?

Cary Rosenbaum: Hey, yeah, Cary Rosenbaum, I’m a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, also a WSU doctoral student. Working with the Office of Tribal Relations as a tribal community specialist in environmental justice and stewardship. So, yeah. Thank you.

Ken Lokensgard: And I know we have 73 people here today, and I can’t see everybody, but I know I also saw some colleagues like Cheryl Ellenwood and Sharon Kanichy, both who’ve worked really carefully with our office. I think I also saw Karly Gomez from office our and others. So a shout out to all of them. And maybe they can turn on their cameras and give a wave.

Ken Lokensgard: And I certainly invite all of them to, to share their thoughts and comments today.

Ken Lokensgard: Well, again, you can see our names and contact information on the website there or on the page there. Down at the bottom, you see our website address: native.wsu.edu. And there’s literally a whole universe of information there. And, which might be kind of overwhelming, but I think mostly it’s pretty good useful information, particularly for researchers.

Ken Lokensgard: There is a research section on your sidebar, and you can go there and find some literature we’ll talk about later, as well as a lot of recommendations for research, design and preparation and, even even dealing with the Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects research. You’ll also see two addresses there: tribal.relations@wsu.edu and cnrc.native@wsu.edu.

Ken Lokensgard: If you are looking for help in a project, whether it’s research or otherwise, that requires communication with the tribes and, you know, explicit collaboration with the tribes urge you to use the tribal dot relations email. If you are engaged in research, design and looking for some more general advice or maybe data management, that kind of thing, then I urge you to use the cnrc.native@wsu.edu email address.

Ken Lokensgard: And if for some reason you don’t get a fairly quick response, you know, following day, you can always shoot me a message. We’re a busy crew, but we do our best. But because we’re busy, we we absolutely welcome reminders and second emails and phone calls and so on. So first, I want to say a few words about tribal nations and tribal sovereignty.

Ken Lokensgard: We should recognize that, Sequoia and I are presenting from the WSU Pullman campus, which is on the traditional lands of the Nimíipuu Tribe, the Nez Perce Tribe, and the Palus Peoples, Of course, other WSU campus locations are also on Native lands. We’ll talk a bit more about that in just a moment. But the notion of tribal sovereignty is really important.

Ken Lokensgard: There’s a statement that comes from National Congress of American Indians, and it highlights the fact that there are 574 federally recognized Indian nations, variously called tribes, nation bands, pueblos, communities, and native villages. All those terms are important, but they’re all… they all represent sovereign entities. 229 located in Alaska and others across 35 states, plus additional state-recognized tribes or tribes that have some less formal degree of state recognition.

Ken Lokensgard: That’s the case in Washington. We don’t actually have state-recognized tribes, but there are others that are acknowledged as communities by the by the government. It gets a little complicated. The most important point there, these tribes, culturally and ethnically diverse, are sovereign nations with a unique political status recognized since their earliest interactions with European settlers. And if you don’t know, that sovereignty is enshrined in the US Constitution.

Ken Lokensgard: So, the Constitution tells us that treaties, comprise, along with the Constitution itself and legislation, the, quote, law of the land, end quote. There’s link there to the NCAI discussion of this, which you can follow. How does WSU uphold tribal sovereignty? We hope we do that in many, many ways. One of those ways, though, is through our Memoranda of Understanding, which we signed last Friday with the 14th tribe, the Chehalis Tribe.

Ken Lokensgard: There’s a picture there in the presentation of that, of that signing with the tribal chairman of the, of the Chehalis nation next to our president, Schulz, here at WSU. Again, there’s a link to the MOU you can look up. That, MOU, essentially dictates that we support Native students, that we support Native research.

Ken Lokensgard: That’s especially important, of course, because we’re land-grant mission and also because, excuse me, we’re a land-grant university, and we note too that land-grant universities were created through the dispossession of Native lands. That’s something that Dr. Zoe Higheagle Strong has presented on before and something she’ll address in, in our next presentation as well.

Ken Lokensgard: We also have at WSU, we have Executive Policy 41 for Tribal Engagement, Consultation and Consent. We’re going to be talking a little bit about that engagement piece today. And again, that is a policy which Zoe Higheagle Strong and guests such as Sheryl Ellenwood will discuss at greater length next presentation. That next presentation is on the 19th

Ken Lokensgard: Office of Research, in their submission procedures, just created an option, or rather requirement, I should say, for people engaging in research to check a box that they’re working with tribes. That helps…. helps us greatly because it allows us to have a greater sense of what work is happening with tribes. And not only to ensure that that work is being done in a good way, but to make sure the tribes are aware of a lot of the good stuff happening.

Ken Lokensgard: Of course, at WSU we have an institutional review board for human subjects research. We work very closely with the IRB. I sit on it and and several Native faculty sit on that board as well. And we’re always happy to help with IRB applications that involve work with tribes. We have other agreements with the tribes. Some of those agreements are enacted through the Plateau Peoples Web Portal.

Ken Lokensgard: They work with numerous tribes to respectfully share a lot of information. I say respectfully share because some of that information is protected and accessed only by tribal members. Some other information is available to everybody and it’s really an amazing resource for those people looking for history and and basic cultural knowledge and so forth. There’s a lot of research that takes place in the field of Indigenous health.

Ken Lokensgard: And so there’s a lot of clinical health agreements, various agreements related to data use and data management and various agreements that emphasize tribal sovereignty. And we do want to emphasize to you that tribes as sovereign nations also have their own research approval processes. Sometimes those take the form of something very much like an IRB or another review board and sometimes they take other forms.

Ken Lokensgard: Again, we’ll talk a little bit more about that during the next policy meeting. Here’s a map of the various tribal nations in our region. I should say, our MOU tribes are not only Washington state, but also Idaho, Oregon, and Montana. So it covers quite a large, a large, a large expanse of land. And, of course, those are those are all very diverse peoples.

Ken Lokensgard: I want to mention that some of these tribes are executive order tribes that are created through an executive order and many of the tribes are treaty tribes. And it’s really important to recognize that when treaties were signed, particularly in this region, the tribes were not given, but rather reserved rights that they maintain since time immemorial to engage in cultural practices upon their historical territories.

Ken Lokensgard: So, of course, as we know, a lot of tribal lands were reduced through the years through legal and often very coercive means to the present-day reservations. And those reservations are much smaller than historical territories. Here on this map, you can see how much larger the historical territories in our region were. And again, treaty tribes maintain rights to those larger territories.

Ken Lokensgard: Rights that pertain to anything that impacts their cultural practices, particularly whereas hunting and fishing is concerned. So tribal collaboration is something that’s required and work that takes place not only on the reservations, but takes place on historical lands as well.

Ken Lokensgard: I’m going to turn it over to Sequoia now to talk about some some basic research principles.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: We’re double, double hearing here today. Sorry. So, these are some of the kind of mainstay texts and articles that might be helpful to review before engaging in research with tribal communities. And, one of one of, our guiding principles in Indigenous research is the four Rs of Indigenous research. And so, that’s a great place to start.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And then the six Rs is an extension of those four Rs. Really thinking about a deeper understanding of relationality and responsibility and relevance to our communities from a Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge standpoint. And one of these… And one of the ways that all of this comes together is through centering relationship.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And that’s something that we’ve focused on in this presentation, but also is really just important to understand the connections between, between all of these concepts and the Rs that we’ll go over today is that relationships really are at the center of of all the work that is done in Indigenous communities. And those relationships are extended beyond the human into our more than human relatives as well.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: If we go to the next slide, Ken.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So, this model comes from… I created this model, based off the, last article, “Centering Relationships”, on the last slide. And, the four Rs are Respect, Reciprocity, Responsibility, and Relevance with Relationship in the center. I want to just mention that each of these pictures were, were gathered from Nimíipuu homelands, with different… kind of, ideals on how they relate to the word that they’re kind of depicting.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And so, just keeping in mind that like, our more-than-human relatives teach us a lot about these, these concepts in these words and that they go much deeper than a definition that we could ever provide today. And it’s important to, to recognize that our more-than-human relatives teach us about these things as well.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So the first R that we want to dive into is Respect and one of the first things that I think about in, in respect with, with tribal communities is that entering community partnerships is really complex and important to make sure that, us as Western researchers entering these spaces have done the groundwork before we ask anything of our partners to do for us.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And so entering with respect means taking time to learn the cultural and historical and political contexts of the communities that we want to work with. As well as getting a base understanding of what has been done in that community based on what we’re trying to do. So if our research is around education, making sure that we do our own homework before, going into community and asking, “How can I help?”

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And along those lines, thinking about preserving energy and burdens and making sure that we are not putting the burden on our tribal partners and communities to educate us on where they’re at with easily accessible information. And then alternatively, being humble and recognizing that anything that we might learn prior to entering in with community could be maybe not necessarily completely accurate.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So respecting the knowledge of the people who we’re creating relationships with. And then lastly, entering with respect is also entering with respect to boundaries and recognizing that tribal people are balancing relationships and relationality between government systems, institutional systems, as well as community. And then on top of that, they have their own familial and cultural responsibilities as well.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And so, we have to be respectful of the time that that is available, for our tribal partners to even engage in projects with, with us. And then listening, in, in relation to respect is really important when coming from academic spaces. I think a lot of us learn to listen to respond and to listen to find solution.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: Whereas, listening with our tribal partners, it’s really, really, really important to sit back and sit with what is what is said in the room without necessarily inserting ourselves and our positionality right away. So building relationship through respect of listening can, can look a little bit different in a room with our tribal elders and tribal community than it might look in an academic space where curiosity is welcomed.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: It’s curiosity is welcomed in both spaces. But curiosity in academia is welcomed very differently than in our tribal communities. So making sure that we have time to listen and to sit back and think about what we’ve heard before, we, ask questions or insert our own opinions. And then Indigenous knowledge systems. respecting Indigenous knowledge systems is really important in terms of thinking about us not becoming the expert of the knowledge system, but respecting the experts of the knowledge system.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So our job is not to integrate Indigenous knowledge by us becoming the expert in in that knowledge. It’s respecting those who hold the knowledges and know that how to implement them in the best way for their communities and leveraging the resources that we have to help facilitate those, implementations, bringing our knowledge in to help only when it’s needed and not when, when we want to to know more for personal gain.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So some practical steps in in entering with respect and listening. Do your research before. Write your questions down before you ask them. I find this really helpful in listening with tribes is: write your thoughts and your questions down. And if they still are percolating later on, then it might be a relevant question to ask. And then make space, make space for Indigenous knowledge, and be humble in that space that you’re in.

Ken Lokensgard: Thank you. Sequoia. While I was listening to you and I really was listening, you may have heard my Warren Zevon ringtone that yelled out, “lawyers, guns, and money!” So that may tell you where my brain is. Apologies for that.

Ken Lokensgard: Trouble with my slides here… Here we go. Here’s a little excerpt from an article by Duane Champagne, who’s an Indigenous researcher himself, and he’s written really powerfully about Indigenous research, and about adopting a sort of respectful, receptive stance that Sequoia just discussed. So I just want to want to kind of read the central part of this quote.

Ken Lokensgard: And I really do urge you to look at Duane Champion’s work, particularly, this article, “Centering Indigenous Nations within Indigenous Methodologies.” He talks a lot about positionality, what it means to be a non-Native researcher coming into Native spaces and for that matter, even what it what it means to be a Native researcher in Native spaces. And he also talks very in very great depth about sovereignty and in the really powerful, essential need to respect Indigenous research approval processes.

Ken Lokensgard: But here sort of echoling what Sequoia said. He says, “Before entering a tribal community, it’s necessary to learn as much as possible about the culture and issues confronting that community, especially if they’re relevant to a research program. An Indigenous studies perspective centers the stories, worldviews, and political and cultural identities of Indigenous peoples and communities, and investigates and interprets data according to the goals, values, culture, rights, and interests of the Indigenous community.”

Ken Lokensgard: So again, the kind of rehearses a lot of what Sequoia just said. And I do want to emphasize, that’s one of our challenges in tribal relations and the center for Native American Research and Collaboration is a lot of people come in with that excitement, and the curiosity that Sequoia mentioned, but really haven’t done any legwork, so to speak, on, on their topic.

Ken Lokensgard: And it’s hard for us to support people in that situation or, if we do support them, it’s a, you know, a profound drain of time on our part. So I’m talking about another R and that is Responsibility. Of course, these are all tied, the responsibility and I think of that as implying mutually respectful reciprocal relations.

Ken Lokensgard: And they require responsibility. That’s sort of an outgrowth of these other Rs. As it says there, this requires time and something Sequoia just mentioned: vulnerability. Acknowledgment of stakes of the stakes and ongoing commitment. The vulnerability is important because when we do begin to listen and set our own assumptions aside, you know, we we open ourselves up. And if we recognize the fact that we may make mistakes in dealing with other peoples, again, that’s that’s a position of vulnerability.

Ken Lokensgard: It’s not one that we’re taught to embrace in the academy, but it’s one that is is essential when working with other communities and not just Native communities. You know, I’m a non-Native researcher, and I could certainly give you a list of very explicit mistakes I made. Happily, people were patient with me and I acknowledged them once I realized I had made them and, and that led to to good relationships. My strongest research relationships are with the, Niitsitapi, or Blackfeet peoples, of Montana and Alberta.

Ken Lokensgard: There you see a picture on the left of a, letter to the elders, specifically from the Kainai or, Blood Tribe. And he is inducting a museum curator named Jerry Conaty into what’s called the Kainai chieftain ship. So, Terry there, this is some years ago. Jerry passed. Actually, Pete passed as well. But, Jerry is going to be given a headdress, which is a massive honor, and he will enter the ranks of chiefs that include former premiers of Alberta.

Ken Lokensgard: Prince Charles. Justin Trudeau has not been welcomed. Stephen Harper, the previous prime minister, was. Which may seem a little strange because Harper was not the best friend of native nations. But the reason for them doing this is a in this case, to recognize the immense commitment that Jerry showed to the Blackfoot peoples and other peoples in southern Alberta, in Montana, and the way that he curated collections at the Glen Pan Museum in Alberta.

Ken Lokensgard: But when they bring people into this chieftain chip society, it’s also a way of saying, hey, we recognize you as a person. We recognize you as somebody who can engage in a relationship with us. And this recognition brings with it a responsibility. So in recognizing Gerry in this way, they continue to expect or expect rather him to continue maintaining responsibility to the Blackfoot peoples.

Ken Lokensgard: You know, there you see a picture of me as well, with my Blackfoot name and when I was given this name, that was a way of him saying, “We have expectations for you; We expect you to maintain this work.” And, and many years later, I do. And that’s precisely why I’m in the Office of Native American Programs, in a job that supports Indigenous researchers and Indigenous research.

Ken Lokensgard: So I want to make clear that relationship on the part of Indigenous peoples, is often very, very intentional. It’s thought about very deeply and when it’s entered into, there’s an expectation that the relationship will bring with it responsibility on the part of the researcher. Here’s sort of an example of that from a more Indigenous perspective, local Indigenous perspective.

Ken Lokensgard: Another way we can think about responsibility or think more deeply about it is that it leads to relational accountability. This is a term used by Cree researcher Shawn Wilson. And I think it’s one that really resonates with a lot of Indigenous researchers, people who are doing research with, by, and for Indigenous peoples. And Shawn Wilson’s point is that when people… researchers enter Indigenous communities, they need to extend their accountability beyond their academic peers to include Native students, to include the communities with whom they’re working.

Ken Lokensgard: You know, we’re used to being accountable to, to promotions committees, to grant reviewers to the provost office, etc. but we’re not very used to being accountable to our research partners. And that’s what Sean Wilson emphasizes we need to do when we enter not just Indigenous communities, but any communities, but one emphasize too, that, you know Indigenous peoples have been inhabiting certain places for thousands of years.

Ken Lokensgard: In the case of the Nez Perce, we know that, Western science will tell us they’ve been here for 16,500 years. And the Nez Perce peoples know that they’ve been here since time immemorial. And over that course of time, they’ve established relationships with with many other-than-human or more-than-human beings. That includes the salmon. So you can take a look at this movie that came out a few months ago.

Ken Lokensgard: I think around this time last year, called Covenant of the Salmon. And if you look at that picture, you’ll see the back of the Director of Cultural Resources at the Nez Perce Tribe, Nakia Williamson, as well as his son, Nakia Cloud. But I really want to emphasize that title, “covenant with the salmon.” Nez Perce are particularly concerned about the dams and their impact upon salmon, and the many other things that impact the health of salmon.

Ken Lokensgard: Because those salmons are relatives and they have a reciprocal relationship with those salmon that in this particular case they described as a covenant. So covenant implies responsibility, right? Each party has responsibilities. The covenant involving salmon and Nez Perce means that the salmon help care for the Nez Perce peoples. But it also means the Nez Perce peoples must help care for the salmon and therefore address issues that are impacting their, their vitality.

Ken Lokensgard: So again, remember, in research, when you’re working for Indigenous communities, you’re accountable to them. But their accountability extends even further beyond the non-human community. And I do, of course, urge you to take a look at that movie, which you can access online. I’m gonna turn it back to Sequoia now.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: Yeah. Thank you. So, Relevance is probably the most straightforward R, in terms of, application and, when… One thing that I think really, you know, intensely about is that relevance also has to… like it, it’s something that’s informed by, what Ken had just described as the, the relational accountability of, Indigenous people to, their communities, but also to our more-than-human relatives and, and wisdom holders.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So, one way when, when, when I think about relevance within communities is that all research that we do within Indigenous communities and any other community should be relevant to that community. And so, listening to the context and the needs as, as you move through, building relationship is really, really important. And this can look different. It’s not always a straightforward process.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And I think about, research that, that we’ve been able to participate in at WSU in partnership with local tribes and thinking about the relationship built, that started way before the, the projects were even, in, in progress and thinking, you know, listening to actually going back to that respectful listening, listening to actually hear what is being asked without it being asked.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So sometimes that might look like a phone call with your partners, just checking in with them about ceremony or, maybe a community event that happened and hearing what they’re saying, and thinking about ways that we can support them, through their specific context and needs. So a really good example is we have a partner that we talk with quite frequently.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And anytime she says, oh, I just miss you. I just like we, we miss seeing WSU campus or we miss seeing you guys around that. That’s an indicator that we need to make ourselves physically present for our partners in one way or another, whether it’s visiting their reservation or whether it’s bringing them to campus. It’s not a necessarily an upfront thing that they’re asking for, but it’s their context and need within the the relationship that we’ve built.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And then another way to enact, relevance is really thinking about community based values. So these don’t always align with the values that we’ve been taught. Or the values within the, the funding sources that we, we are using. And so making sure that we are staying true and listening to the community based values and, pushing goals towards community support.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So, making sure that the, the work that we are doing is actually going and benefiting the communities that we’re working for and not necessarily, remaining extractive or, taking, taking more knowledge, than we need from, from Indigenous communities. So also thinking about the goals of sovereignty and decolonizing processes, making sure that we understand what that means within ourselves before we’re working with the communities that are actually on the ground, making decisions for these, these, goals.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And some things to think about in relevance, two kind of practical application questions to ask yourself: What battles are the are the tribes fighting right now, whether it be political or government or community and structure? And, what issues in promoting sovereignty to tribes need support in?

Ken Lokensgard: Thank you. Thank you, Sequoia. And I do want to mention something I forgot to mention earlier. When we think about relevance, we should especially think about what is relevant to the tribes in our region. The tribes whose dispossessed land that we are upon as well as, you know, the 14 tribes with whom we have an MoU, the 29 tribes in Washington state, etc..

Ken Lokensgard: And of course, that goes back once again to our land-grant mission. So, as you look at projects, do think especially about the needs of regional peoples. So Reciprocity is our fourth R that emerges from this theme of relationship. Again, it’s, one that’s implied by all the other Rs. Of course, when we think of reciprocity, we think of give and take.

Ken Lokensgard: We talked about responsibility. That means that you’re responsible to do relevant work for Indigenous peoples. We could think of that as giving something. And of course, in return, researchers get, you know, maybe a publication. Publications don’t bring money, but they do get a career. And, you know, career is about money, right? They may get promotions, etc. So they get a lot.

Ken Lokensgard: But I want to emphasize to, though, that the reciprocity runs much deeper. A lot of researchers, Indigenous researchers, including some of our partners, talk about reflexivity. We need to recognize that when we enter into these relationships, we’re not just getting practical things, we’re not just giving practical things, but we’re also we’re also given a chance to learn and to grow as individuals by accessing other people’s knowledge about the world and the human place in it.

Ken Lokensgard: So you should really think deeply about how research impacts you, and you should honor that. You should be grateful for that, as you should be grateful for, for any gift. Sequoia, would you like to say something more about reciprocity?

Sequoia Dance Leighton: Yeah. Yeah. I, really challenge and urge everybody to think about reciprocity, to challenge your view of reciprocity from the definitions that we typically know and see and think about. I think this is written really well. This… I’m not going to… I might not pronounce this perfectly, but this is the Nez Perce concept: pee-neet-ipats, piʔnitʼipec, which is, reciprocal giving, ensuring everyone is taken care of.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And so I think this is a deeply ingrained Indigenous concept that, we all, when we’re in Western institutions, have to kind of really, really think about of, making sure that it’s, sometimes giving sometimes when we’re giving, we’re not [no audio] right away. And so, making sure that we are recognizing our gifts that we are given in this world and, giving within our communities and ensuring that the communities that we’re working with are really, really taken care of, reciprocity will always return in a good way with good medicine in some way, shape, or form.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And so it doesn’t always happen in the ways that we think. So yeah, just challenge that, that view of reciprocity, especially in research, because we’re in such a, transactional world that, it’s not necessarily transactional in, in, in the ways that we think of it all the time. And so, give what you can and do that openly and, fairly and, like our concept of reciprocity is that it will always come back.

Ken Lokensgard: To me, here’s a few really basic recommendations, and things to think about before you, you throw yourself into this work. First of all, attend trainings such as this. You know, thank all 69 of you for being here. And how many of you have attended other trainings, you know, more focused EP41 trainings. Many of you are members of our CRC Affiliates and Associates program and many of you are just just regular partners.

Ken Lokensgard: So we appreciate that. And and ask you to to continue that, relationship is something that should be durable and lasting, right? You know, when we have our most meaningful relationships in life, we don’t we don’t just drop them. But again, some basic recommendations, you know, attend these trainings, also spend some time with the Native community on campus.

Ken Lokensgard: Throughout the WSU system, we have, I believe, 48 amazing Native American faculty and staff. And just going to events and, and hanging with them and supporting them is important. We also have over 700 graduate and undergraduate students in the WSU system. That’s a pretty large population. There are lot of student events and and faculty and staff are welcome to almost every single event.

Ken Lokensgard: And we have events not only a Pullman, but at the Vancouver campus, the Everett campus, definitely Spokane campus and occasionally Tri-Cities campus as well. Hopefully we’ll have more events there in the future. We need a little bit more support on that campus. So so come out and be a part of the community. Really important we ask you to familiarize yourself with Indigenous research methodologies literature which we’ve been drawing from today.

Ken Lokensgard: But also look into some of the the research in your field that’s been done from Indigenous perspectives. Chances are there’s something out there that you can draw from and learn from. Somebody who’s probably considered some of the questions you need to ask before you enter into your research project. Or at the very least, they’ve probably done something similar.

Ken Lokensgard: So, so do a little digging, do your literature review, and if you need help with that, you’re welcome to contact people like me and Sequoia and others who think about this literature. And I’ll give you a link for that in just a moment. Prioritize engagement. When you look at our EP41 title, the consultation executive policy, it starts with the word “engagement.”

Ken Lokensgard: And that word engagement is intended to capture the idea of, of reciprocity. Legally, a lot of consultation paths, particularly from the federal government side, has amounted to the federal government telling a tribe what they’re doing, waiting for comment, and then proceeding and not always waiting long enough for going through enough effort to get feedback before they proceed.

Ken Lokensgard: So, some of our people on the Native American Advisory Board emphasized that they wanted to see that term “engagement” in our executive policy. So that means meeting with people and getting their input before you even proceed to a more formal process of consultation and before you seek formal approval from the tribe, from the research process, so there rely upon the care principles.

Ken Lokensgard: This is something we would talk about in the next training principles, or something that will help you evaluate your research team and your your values and your goals to ensure that, they do reflect such things as the four hours and do reflect relationality. And that can take a lot of work, right? You can start from the very beginning.

Ken Lokensgard: And thinking about who is on your team. Is it an equitable team that… in which, in both Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous academics can can contribute to the design. And of course, we embrace relational accountability. There are mechanisms for this. Of course, many of these mechanisms are legal. I already mentioned that, there’s legislation requiring consultation on both the federal and state level.

Ken Lokensgard: We also have our executive order we already mentioned. We have such things as the Indigenous… as the Institutional Review Board. I already mentioned that the tribes often have their own legal review processes, sometimes very formal, sometimes not. But the last thing I want to emphasize is there are also cultural protocols for the exchange of knowledge. And you need to be mindful of these as well.

Ken Lokensgard: So when you enter into these research projects, it’s important to think about, involving people from cultural resource programs or others who are knowledgeable about the way relationships have been maintained for those 16,500 years or since time immemorial.

Ken Lokensgard: And finally, I wanted to say a word about data management plans. This goes back to reciprocity and responsibility. Here in Washington state, by default, a data that is produced or collected by Washington state employees belongs to the state. So obviously tribes wanted to exert some control over their data and often own that data. And that requires entering a formal data management plan, not just creating a plan, but making sure it is signed by the appropriate people at WSU who have the legal… have the legal authority to endorse it.

Ken Lokensgard: And similarly to making sure it’s endorsed by the right people at the tribe. And finally, I want to emphasize that we hope you do these things before you come to us for letters of support and for the letters of collaboration, for requesting formal meetings with tribal representatives, etc..

Ken Lokensgard: I don’t mean to scare any of you off. You can reach us out any any… reach out to us at any time. But the more preparation you do beforehand, the better. And again, you know, we’re happy to help guide you through some of that preparation. But if you come to us with a grant that’s due next week and you want the letter for collaboration from us or a tribe, you know, it’s almost guaranteed not to happen.

Ken Lokensgard: Here’s a few resources. Again, mentioned. There’s a link to Indigenous research methodologies, literature. All of those are annotated for different different fields. That’s on our website. If you search around on the internet, you can find other bibliographies of Indigenous research methodologies, literature. We’ve also cited some in this presentation, which you can find in our slides that we can share with you.

Ken Lokensgard: There’s more procedural guidance at our website. There’s some really great advice from the governor’s office here in Washington state, you can follow all those links. And importantly, we have a presentation coming up on the 14th, and that involves a panel of some of our amazing Indigenous researchers here at WSU. So you can hear some examples of research that is done from Indigenous perspectives.

Ken Lokensgard: And that reflects the four Rs and which also simply results in some amazing knowledge that I know you’ll be you’ll benefit from hearing. We do have a second part of this series coming up on November 19th. And again, that will be led by Dr. Zoe Higheagle Strong, our Vice Provost for Tribal Relations and Programs.

Ken Lokensgard: And again, I know that she’s really regretful. She can’t be here today. But as I mentioned before, that next training will go much more deeply into into policy. We do ask you to to think about a few things in the last few minutes we have. And I’m going to turn these over to, to Sequoia. And I also know we have at least one question in the chat.

Ken Lokensgard: We’ll get to.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I definitely also want to just reiterate, like, the importance of understanding that these four Rs are not the only, the only… it’s not like the green pass for, I guess, Indigenous research and research with tribal communities. The relationship piece is so, so important. And, I recognize that I’m Shoshone Bannock and I’m doing research as a guest in many of the communities that I’m working with.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And it’s important to recognize that Indigenous people and Indigenous tribes are not, and tribes all hold different, histories and knowledges and understandings of this world. And so, just recognizing that, like even after years and years of relationship building, like we still have a lot to learn, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, working with tribal partners from a research perspective.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So, always creating checkpoints for ourself to make sure… ourselves to make sure that we’re moving forward in a respectful way is really, really important. So, some reflection questions and, I guess kind of a piece of piece of homework to think about as we move through, the end of this presentation, are this, this first question is really, really important to ask yourself before anything is: Are you ready to create space in your schedule, research project design, and thinking to prioritize meaningful engagement with Native American tribes and people as respected partners?

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And I think that this is one of the most difficult questions within academia to to really reflect upon, because, there’s deadlines and there’s funding and there’s wording within our funders that is really, really important. And also there’s nothing that can, I think, supersede the importance of time with our tribal partners to make projects that are meaningful.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: So, and it’s okay if that answer’s “no”, but that also means that it’s probably not a good time to start work with tribes. And, sometimes making that space is, is really humbling. And sometimes it means setting your own knowledge aside and recognizing that you have expertise and that it’s amazing and that it’s respected, and that Indigenous, Indigenous, communities and knowledge also needs that space as well.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: And then the second question is: Are you prepared to listen deeply and act upon the recommendations from tribes and Native American partners? And I think that this is, again, a very difficult, difficult reflection because sometimes you’ll be really excited about a project, be ready and go into a tribe and they’ll be like, “yeah, no, that’s not anything that we want.”

Sequoia Dance Leighton: “But we do want this.” And then there’s an expectation that you provide, and that accountability piece that Ken mentioned is really, really important to make sure that that we don’t drop off as an institution, but also as researchers within, within that institution. So, these questions shouldn’t be a one off. It shouldn’t be one time that you think about them and then you’re done.

Sequoia Dance Leighton: It should be a constant revisit and reflection as you move through this work. So, if you aim to do work with tribes, that impact tribal communities, lands, natural resources, wildlife to take time to reflect on these questions and, write down what what engaging in this work will require from you both personally and professionally, because there are times where you might have to, prioritize and make, decisions that you wouldn’t normally make or, I guess, put things on pause that you wouldn’t normally put on pause to ensure that that the work that you’re doing is meaningful and engaging for the communities that you’re working with.

Ken Lokensgard: But first of all, you know, thank you, Sequoia, for joining me today. And thanks to the Office of Research Advancement Partnerships for having us and for sponsoring our next talk as well.