Consent, Collaboration, Treaty: Toward Anti-Colonial Praxis in Indigenous–Settler Research Relations

Abstract

The contributors to this thematic section issue ex plore the contours of research praxes for anthropologists, and other engaged scholars, committed to strengthening anti-colonial and decolonial engagement in settler-Indigenous encounters.1 Animating these articles are three quite charged, and increasingly explicit features of research engagement in such encounters: first, seeking the consent of Indigenous peoples we engage as peoples·, second, advancing respectful collaborative research relations as persons·, and, third, taking seriously the over-arching idea and practice of treaty as a guide to acting honourably together as researchers, persons and peoples. These explorations are offered in response to our shared, empirical understandings that settler-Indigenous relations are still dogged by the unrelenting double problem of colonial dispossession/colonial imposition, and in response to the rising currents of decolonial action through mutual engagement and alliance-building between Indigenous and settler peoples—Idle No More being but one prominent example of such engagement.