On shifting roles and responsibilities in Canadian indigenous Community-Based Language Research
Date
2011-10-18
Authors
Grimes, Melissa K.
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Abstract
In the last 20 years, linguists and community members engaged in fieldwork with
endangered languages have become increasingly aware of and vocal about the ethical
dilemmas that potentially can, and often do, arise in work of this nature. One result of this
can be seen in the reconceptualization of best practices and methodologies in linguistic
fieldwork. There is a strong push towards collaborative, community-driven, and
interdisciplinary forms of research, and a concomitant shift in the roles taken on by
academic and community-based researchers. The shifts in roles in turn have led
academics and community-members to rethink the responsibilities associated with these
roles.
The purpose of this thesis is threefold: firstly, to provide a description of a highly
collaborative, community-driven project involving, as one of its components, the
documentation of language associated with Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK);
secondly, to consider and illustrate how the relative roles of academics and community
participants have shifted and thirdly, to discuss responsibilities associated with the
protection of the TEK documented through this work – knowledge that would not have
been documented to the same extent if the project had not been collaborative and
community-driven. These topics evolved from the knowledge and guidance of
Kʷakʷaka'wakʷ Clan Chief Kʷaxsistalla (Adam Dick), as well as the
ethnoecological/linguistic projects that this thesis is centred on.
I propose that a) collaborative research that is community-steered can be
supported by the Community-Based Language Research model developed by
Czaykowska-Higgins (2009), b) within this emerging research framework
unconventional research roles can be assumed by all participants, c) it is important to
respect and protect the Traditional Ecological Knowledge recorded in research with
Indigenous experts, and d) existing systems of Intellectual Property fall short in
adequately protecting and respecting TEK.
I conclude this study by relating these issues to larger movements occurring
within linguistics and social science and humanities research in general. I suggest a move
away from subscribing to the Intellectual Property system, and towards approaching
language research through a human rights framework. The result of this thesis is an
analysis of collaborative community-based language research with and within an
Indigenous community in Canada. It will contribute to the ongoing discussions and
evaluations of changing roles and responsibilities in field research in linguistics.
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Keywords
Community-Based Language Research model, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, intellectual property