Read on Twitter
This issue of the AMA @journalofethics focuses on human health, of course, but researchers who care for the health of Indigenous ecosystems and cultures will also find many points to ponder here regarding how to consult, collaborate, and avoid doing harm. https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/issue/caring-native-americans
Ecologists, fire scientists, and historians from federal agencies like @forestservice & @USGS would do well to follow these guidelines to consult & collaborate when researching past and present Indigenous practices, as would private institutions like @HarvardForest & @HUSC_ICW.
It may seem a strange idea to many ecologists and foresters to submit a proposal for approval to an Indigenous research review board but a participatory approach is not only the right thing to do, it vastly improves the thoroughness and accuracy -- the rigor -- of the work.
That was the basis of our criticism of Oswald et al.'s paper in @naturesustainab earlier this year -- their exclusion of Indigenous researchers resulted in a harmful, superficial, inaccurate indictment of past and present Indigenous stewardship. https://ecoevorxiv.org/jmvqy/
In their original paper, Oswald et al.'s erasure of Indigenous people extended as far as representing the current Indigenous population in the Northeast U.S. as zero. They didn't correct those figures until we pointed out the egregious error (but they didn't credit us).
Unfortunately, @naturesustainab has twice refused to print our critical response, saying that we submitted it too late in the game and misinterpreting it as a call for mere "inclusivity" in research.
Meanwhile, Oswald et al. have taken multiple victory laps in the popular press, crowing about how what they characterize as a lack of past environmental "impacts" should preclude Indigenous stewardship of ancestral homelands today.
The @HarvardForest team and the @naturesustainab editors have taken a classically settler-colonial stance: through their exclusions, inaccuracies, and willfully ignorant misrepresentations of data, they have erased the presence and agency of Indigenous people.
At first I wondered how a study as unethical and shoddy as Oswald et al.'s could get through peer review but after the experience with @naturesustainab's editors, I understand that the authors & editors just don't know how to conduct a robust research program on Indigenous land.
As a settler myself, I vow to do better with The West on Fire program @HUSC_ICW. I'll listen when Indigenous people say, "nothing about us without us." I'll build reciprocal relationships and conduct mutually beneficial research and mutually beneficial burns.
