Complex Accountabilities: Deconstructing “the Community” and Engaging Indigenous Feminist Research Methods

Scholars have focused significant attention on the need for relational conceptions of “accountability” as alternatives to Western modes of knowledge production. This article suggests that conceptualizing accountability through the normative frame of the “community” can narrow the breadth of possible ways of realizing ethical and accountable research relationships and that critical analytical strategies to help ensure researcher accountability to diverse perspectives and experiences within Indigenous communities also demand our attention. The need for research to be driven by and for Indigenous communities has been emphasized, yet within colonial heteropatriarchy, deference to collective units has historically functioned to homogenize and/or erase the knowledge and experience of Indigenous women, girls, and GLBTQ2 peoples. Researchers and academics have the potential to either challenge or reproduce these tendencies in our own works; thus, a decolonial research and activist agenda must be informed by a commitment to address patriarchal and heteronormative structures both internal and external to Indigenous communities. To this end, I propose a turn to Indigenous feminist methodologies as a means of informing broader notions of responsibility and accountability