This chapter considers a key challenge for postgraduate researchers in the process of data collection, analysis, and interpretation, particularly when conducting research in the Indigenous community. The focus is on the issue of researcher neutrality, which the Western method considers fundamental and significant in making the result of research valid and reliable. The chapter argues that postgraduate researchers should go beyond the traditional Western approach when conducting research with Indigenous participants, without limiting the data to the researchers' research questions, protocols, and guidelines. The power imbalance between the postgraduate researcher and participants should be eliminated, while participants' voices and opinions should be heard and appropriately reported to reflect a decolonized Indigenous research methodology. The chapter noted that there are interjections between the Western methods and the indigenous methods. There is a need to combine the two perspectives where appropriate.
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A key challenge for the researcher in postgraduate training in the process of data collection and interpretation is the question of the researcher's neutrality. The Western researcher considers neutrality as fundamental and significant in researching so that the research is valid and reliable. Indigenous researchers have argued that many Western researchers lack the culturally competent training necessary to conduct research with indigenous communities when conducting surveys and ethnographic studies among Indigenous peoples (Battiste, 2017; Datta, 2018; Smith, 1999). Due to this perceived insensitivity, Indigenous researchers have called for decolonized research methods in practice particularly, when researching the indigenous populace (Chilisa, 2012; Smith, 1999). Datta (2017) argues that Western scholars require further training to adapt to fit into the indigenous context because,
“The Western research training can be challenging to the indigenous people, if research is not culturally appropriate, respectful, honouring, and caring to the local community” (Datta, 2017, p. 4).
Therefore, indigenous scholars need to pay attention to the Western form of neutrality (Datta, 2018; Dyll &Tomaselli, 2016). While the conventional Western researcher-researched relationship empowers the researcher over the researched, the researched want their stories to be accepted regardless of the protocols of the Western methods which require the researcher to maintain neutrality. In Western training, the orthodoxy of objectivity seeks to situate the researchers as neutral observers (Dyll &Tomaselli, 2016). Most often, the literature highlights that a shared epistemological ground in qualitative traditions is that the researcher chooses to decrease the distance and separateness of the researcher-researched interaction in the data collection process (Karnieli-Miller, Strier & Pessach, 2009; Raheim et al., 2016). The central argument of this chapter is that, when attempting to decolonize research in the indigenous community, what stance should postgraduate researchers adopt regarding the question of neutrality during the gathering and processing of data? In discussing this argument, the article examines these key areas: the interjections between the Western form of neutrality and the Indigenous approaches, bridging the gap between the Western and Indigenous perspectives, decolonizing data collection and analysis process while researching in the Indigenous community, and embracing transformational practice through the decolonized methodologies.
Scholars have expressed different views on the term Western research methods. Datta (2018, p. 22) refers to it as “the worldview that is a product of the development of European culture and diffused into other nations” like North America, Australia, and Africa continent. Smith (1999, p. 42) describes it as a “representative of an archive of knowledge and systems, rules and values extracted from and characteristics of Europe and the Western Hemisphere”. Dyll & Tomaselli (2016) describe the Western research approach as that approach whereby the researcher dominates the process of data collection and analysis and perpetuates the marginalization and memorization of indigenous peoples, it’s a relationship that empowers the researcher over the researched. The idea that situates the researcher as a neutral observer is known as the orthodoxy of objectivity. According to this viewpoint, the researcher has a unique place in the process of knowledge production compared to the researched. There is an inherent power imbalance between the two parties.