Designing Community Participatory Action Research: A Proposal for Using Photovoice Method to Center Indigenous Knowledge

Abstract

The history of academic research of Indigenous populations, and other marginalized groups, is fraught with perpetuating power relations where majority populations determine what is important to know and speak for those who seek to be understood and heard. Indigenous collaborators and Hormel have designed photovoice method as part of a community participatory action project. Photovoice, though, is not the only means for trying to overcome the power relations inherent to academic research. Instead, the researcher must practice reflexivity - a self-examination of one's statuses and the ways of thinking that come with those statuses that may obscure the knowledge people from the margins possess.