ABSTRACT
Shelley Stagg Peterson proposes that the 5 R's of Indigenous research, Respect (particularly of participants’ worldviews, values, knowledge and practices), Relevance, Responsibility, Reciprocity and Relationship, provide a useful framework for all early childhood research. Drawing on experiences from a six-year collaborative action research project with teachers and early childhood educators in northern Canadian rural and Indigenous communities, Northern Oral language and Writing through Play (NOW Play), she describes ethical considerations and dilemmas related to the 5 R's of Indigenous research. With guidance from Knowledge Keeper Red Bear Robinson, she reflects on research decisions that were made in the NOW Play project, such as determining research objectives and questions; recruiting communities and participants; developing relationships, roles and practices for conducting data collection and analysis; and disseminating research results while collaborating with kindergarten teachers in Indigenous communities. While acknowledging the limitations of her settler perspective and experience, she concludes that researcher humility and a sense of accountability to research participants and their communities are at the heart of the 5 R's of Indigenous research. University researchers’ willingness to share knowledge and resources, and to position themselves as vulnerable, are essential to disrupting assumptions about Western research epistemologies and practices as the standard for research across early childhood-related disciplines.
