ABSTRACT
Observations like this forced me to reevaluate my values as a researcher and I began to engage in dialogue with community members about what kinds of studies they felt might be of value and then to work with them to actually conduct this research. In the process, the way I saw myself as a scholar also changed. Rather than seeing myself as a technician, I discovered that a wealth of some of the most important questions in all of developmental science opened up in new and intriguing ways as I was forced to articulate knowledge that might matter to native communities. And far from simply applying the lessons of the true innovators in our fields, I discovered that, in many cases, these scholars were silent on very crucial questions about how their basic discoveries might be translated into interventions that had a demonstrable impact.
