ABSTRACT
This article focuses on research done in the field of adult education by and with First Nations, chiefly in a North American context. We will see how aboriginal peoples, through their resilience in the preservation of their cultural identity, have contributed throughout their history to the edification of ethnology, and how andragogy, an inherently open-ended and open-minded science, is epistemologically essential to the co- construction of scholarly knowledge, mainly because it happens to reflect the aboriginal modes of knowledge transmission. Aboriginal research recognizes the contribution of elders on an ontological level and bases itself on universal values of openness to the world. In many countries these values have come to guide research ethics, drawing between the scientific community and the aboriginal communities a bridge that helps them convey their expressed needs. Since 2007, First Nations have also been able to rely on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
