1. Many uni researchers/ethics centre Indigenous governments (ie: Band Councils) or groups that claim to represent grassroots/traditions (but are still exclusive/opaque)& say ‘ok, we’ve consulted community’ . Nope. You consulted folks who say they have power to speak for others.

2. But what about folks who are not represented by either band council/official state acknowledged governance, or the folks who self-appoint to an alternative political grouping to speak ‘on behalf’ of community. What about folks who are policed out of all these spaces?

3. I keep thinking about a point @kylepowyswhyte made at the AAAs last year that lots of Anthros speak only to powerful families in a community and then claim to understand the whole community’s perspectives. This is so dangerous.

4. Similarly, universities tend to only engage representatives who come from positions of power in a community (whether state acknowledged or ‘traditional’ governance), and don’t trouble how colonial violence can sometimes fracture governance & silence people who dissent/question

5. Please don’t stop at politics of recognition. Consider your responsibilities to those who are not represented either in state acknowledged political bodies or self-appointed political organizing that claims to speak for others but has no transparent way for folks to consent

6. Basically, as I’m reading the stuff about Rebecca Roanhorse, if anyone says they represent a whole community or nation and have the right to denounce a Black Indigenous writer (or anyone who challenges colonial anthropological precepts) question the heck out of that assertion.

7. And no sorry Just because you’ve consulted the people with power in an Indigenous nation/community (whether state sanctioned or ‘grassroots’), do not assume your ethical responsibilities end there. Consider those policed out of those circles by internalized colonial violence

8. This is why stuff like OCAP (ownership, control, access, possession) protocols have to be approached so carefully. Say you’re studying sexual violence in a community. Do you say the band council gets to own the data? What if some of the elected officials have covered up rapes?

9. This isn’t ‘deficit research’ by the way. These are actual issues I’ve confronted in doing research. You have to consider the intersections of power in all Indigenous spaces. It is recolonizing to assume that there are no hierarchies or conflicts or power in Indigenous spaces.

10. All of this is to say: one dimensional imaginings of either the authority of the band council or the ‘pure+altruistic’ grassroots just completely erases the always existing complexity of any Indigenous space and either way you have to contend with not flattening any community

11. So please don’t romanticize community when developing protocols for ethical governance of data/research or trans-institutional representation. All spaces are complicated. We must consider what unintended violence can be enacted when ‘community’ lens used in Indigenous space.