Löf, Annette
- Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Book chapter2016Peer reviewed
Löf, Annette; Stinnerbom, Marita
Sápmi is under immense pressure. Global change processes are manifesting at
the local level through for instance experienced impacts of climate change and increasing
competition over land and resources. The accumulating pressure demonstrates
particularly severe and adverse effects on reindeer herding, leaving a number
of critical issues to be explored, addressed and resolved. Whereas the interest
in conducting research related to Indigenous and Sami issues in Sweden has virtually
exploded in the last years, there is currently a lack of established routines for
community collaboration, practical guidelines and ethical assessments. The risk is
therefore imminent that research projects and proposals are not based on principles
of practical usefulness, respect and collaboration and there are already signs of
an emergent research exhaustion and weariness among herding community members.
Drawing on our gathered experiences of conducting a collaborative research
project on adaptation to climate change in Vilhelmina North reindeer herding community
in Västerbotten county, this paper aims at sharing our reflections on how to
make collaboration work. Situated against the literature on Indigenous and Sami
research we identify some key challenges, discuss our own approach and deliver
some take-home messages both for researchers and herding communities. Altogether,
our experiences point to the need of equal involvement throughout the research
process – from identifying the research problem to conducting, analysing
and disseminating research results. We further argue, in view of the growing research
interest, that reindeer herding communities must seize the opportunity and
place demands on future research collaborations and knowledge sharing processes.
With this paper we present some thoughts of how this could be achieved in practice.
Samiska studier
2016, number: 7, pages: 137-155
Title: Ethics in Indigenous Research : past experiences - future challenges
ISBN: 978-91-7601-457-8
Publisher: Vaartoe - Centre for Sami Research
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Ethics
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/84428