 All right, buddy, if we might reconvene, please. So we can get the group presentations underway. Suddenly, a deadly hush fell over the group. Yeah, so we all know the order of the groups from yesterday afternoon. I'm glad that wasn't a bloodbath, but anyway. I thought it was done very civilly, actually, or is that a good word? I feel civilly, anyway. But Darlene and I were just conversing, and we thought, 20 to 25 minutes per group. So that would include presentation and some discussion before moving on to the next group. And then hopefully we'll begin to see, at least as I remember from last year, certain kinds of themes that emerge and overlaps and so on, which then makes it even more interesting, I think, as we move along. So just to alert you as well, I have to step out at 25 too. So even though I'm sitting up here, I'll just sort of slip out and I'll be back again by around quarter past, I think. OK, so perhaps we should start with, I think it was my group, group number one, or they can call it their group, the group that I facilitate. OK, sounds good. So good morning, everybody. It's a great privilege to be here, and I'm pretty sure I will be echoing almost everybody's feelings to say how intense, how fantastic the past week has been. And I'm from philosophy, so I'm an outsider and almost unwelcome everywhere I go. So it's fantastic to be here, and I feel very welcome. So thank you for that. And I just want to say that we had a fantastic group. I was very lucky to be part of the group that I was. We had a fantastic discussion. So what we're going to try and present here is just a summary of what we think the coolest idea is that we came up with. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to present the scenario for you just a little bit and situate ourselves. And then I'm going to hand it over to Jennifer here. Who is the details expert? So she's going to be giving us a lot of cool stuff from there. So the title of our group and the scenario was called Learning on the Land about Relationships between People and Plants in Nunavut. So I'm just going to read out just a couple of sentences of the scenario so you know what we're talking about. The coordinator of a local elders group wants to initiate a land camp project to help local youth learn from their elders about plants in the region. The coordinator has sought help from the regional Inuit Association and the local high school. The Inuit Association has also reached out for funding and research support to longtime university collaborators with extensive Northern research experience working in the departments of geography and biology at Canadian universities. The goal is for this land camp to be held annually over the long term. And then it's also going to be associated with like a sort of high school science camp as well. So the researchers in this group were local elders group, local research coordinator, two high school teachers, two university professors, and two graduate students, two each, masters and PhD. And before I go on to sort of discussing the scenario itself, what I'd like to do is just introduce my team members. So if you could just stand up. Lisa Mills, who told us fun stories about mining in Australia. Kerry, who kept bringing us back to the scenario so it was very helpful, thank you. And Karen, who has fun stories from INAC and the government. Stefan, who was our token man, who is not here today, will be joining us later this afternoon. But he was not just a token man, he's also the physical scientist on the team. And there's Alex, who shared fun stories of research in India and Brazil. And Kayla, who was a white turtle, who would come up and give us advice and go back to writing notes, so thank you for that. And then Jennifer, who was kind of leading the team, I think, in our discussion, because she has so much experience in the field, so I really look forward to learning again from her. And Hugh, for being a fantastic facilitator. So thank you. So we're going to be speaking. But if you have any questions, please ask them. So right off the bat, what I want to say is that there was a sort of consensus in the group that we were working in what we like to call a twilight zone, where it is a research project, but one is going into it without complete information. You kind of know the realm of the unknown, in a sense, as a researcher. And there's also so much that's open to change, research aspects, research participants. And also the idea that we're all working at different intersections. So I think one way to approach this twilight gray area is to acknowledge that at this phase of developing or thinking about the research project, we've done our best to take into consideration all the aspects that could possibly be relevant. And I think that's a good starting point to make. So when you come back to the drawing board, there's an awareness that, yeah, we kind of figured this would happen at some point. So because we're working within a twilight zone, what we decided we'd do is instead of giving answers, we'd just probably discuss some of the guiding principles and some of the leading questions we'd like to present within this research scenario and within the research project. And the framework we've chosen is really that of a research partnership. So we did not want to use the terms research agreement because I think agreement somehow both contains within it a hierarchy and also does not allow for a complete overturning of that hierarchy. So there is a sense in which we think of this as a research project and a research partnership. So what does changing that terminology mean? I think it means three important things at least. And the first one is that a recognition that all parties of this partnership bring something to the table. So it's not a researcher sort of going in and saying, can you consent to this? These are the agreement, let's move on. So there is a sense in which the project is being built around that idea of a partnership. And I think that changes the sort of subjectivity or agency of the parties involved. And what this also means is that all parties or most parties, if it goes well, are involved from the beginning of the conceiving of that idea. And there's a sense in which there's a holistic idea of that research as well. And partnerships, like all relationships have to be continuously cultivated. Just that I think idea and acknowledgement that this is not something that we've established and can take for granted at any point in our interaction. So that's what we mean by a partnership rather than an agreement. And one important point that was raised was if we are gonna consider this as a partnership, then it's also good to acknowledge the conditions of a stable partnership. So all parties are welcome to come and openly express their expectations from this partnership. What do research graduate students want? What are their needs? What do the professors want out of this? What do the local groups want out of this? Just as a way to eliminate any sort of misunderstanding or conflict that can maybe arise at a later stage of that partnership. But what does it really mean to take the partnership seriously? And I think that basically goes back to the teachings that we've been learning about this past week is to really understand it as a relationship. It is relationship building at so many levels. It's so many intersections and in so many different ways. And one of the ways in which I think we took relationship seriously and we had a big discussion about this also was about consent. The idea of informed consent. And I think there were some consensus in the group about some discomfort, about the idea of informed consent. So because some of us were academics, we coined a new term called deep consent which basically recognizes and establishes consent as relational, as holistic, as a process. It's never an event in time. It is iterative. So every time that consent process happens, it is strengthened. And every time that it needs to happen, it is possible to change terms of that consent. It is possible to check in with that idea of consent that last week, last month, two years ago. So there is a sense in which I think we need to understand this more as a relationship and as a process rather than as an event. With that, I will let Jennifer take over. Thank you for that introduction. And I think just building on that, so a lot of our conversations within our group stem from this discussion of consent being relational, being iterative, and that actually overflowed into even what the objectives are. Those are also going to be relational and change over time and not be, very few things we decided are ever a point in time, specifically because of our scenario and that this was a research program or a researcher that had a relationship with the community and also a project such as the land camp that looked to go on beyond necessarily the three or four years of the students being involved or even the researcher being involved. And so we're just, I'm not gonna go through box by box. We decided that it was actually just best in terms of discussion as well as in time just to kind of bring up a few key points that we kind of lingered on a little bit longer than some of the others and talk about those. So one of the first things we talked about or we kind of got stuck on was the very first box in voluntariness and this idea of no coercion or incentive. And we actually had to talk about what that meant, like voluntary as in willing to take part in the study versus volunteerism, which is doing something for no compensation. And so we discussed that those were one of the ideas or principles that we would take into our partnership meeting. Involved over time to a partnership summit where there would just be like a project meeting or a project workshop or a project summit. And so we would, but this is one of the questions that we would bring to our partners to understand what the norm is and understanding that even if we had relationships in the community previously because this land camp exchange of ideas between elders and youth, maybe a new part of the relationship. And so we would have to work with our partners to understand what the norm is and therefore create what the compensation or understanding of relationships would be in this new context. So also not understanding that even if you have a relationship with the community, a new project or a new formulation may have different norms than you are expecting. The other thing that we kind of picked up on was the participants anonymity and confidentiality. And that within this scenario I think is really important because in some ways it's the elders group coming with traditional knowledge and wanting to understand how to share that and share that with other people. And so, but there's still, you need to work through those discussions and not assume just because they wanna share, it means they wanna share it everywhere with everyone all the time. And so one of the things we, again, in this partnership summit we would discuss is it's really important to come up with a clear list of products and outputs that may involve this type of knowledge or people's names or people's faces and you can have this kind of sliding scale. People can be okay with some forms but not others. And they can change that over time. And we thought that that was really important to discuss. One of the things that we did also discuss and I think it's worth noting in this context is it's also really important from a kind of, you know, research or graduate student perspective is that you need to discuss these things with some type of little time limit on them so that students still can move through. And so that actually may limit what the student can use in their graduate studies but I think it's important to recognize that there may be things that you can always come back to and change your confidentiality or your consent to share with. And if that's open for continued discussion then maybe it's not appropriate to be involved in that master's or PhD research which does have a very time limit on it. And so again, the sliding scale, right? Of understanding what's kind of gonna be open and what things you are consenting to and then are gonna go on to other things and it's gonna be difficult to pull back or change consent up or down, right? Depending on what it is. Recruitment methods, we were, again, this is something that we would work with partners to understand what the norms are. Are there, is there a group that will have a discussion about what the needs are? And we're going out on the land in Nunavut so we're kind of made some assumptions that you're not gonna be in town, right? There's gonna be specialized equipment both on the elder side, the community side, and the researcher side that needs to come. And so you need to have those conversations about who is appropriate and can safely go into the field and take part. And so there's roles and responsibilities at both the community level but also from the university perspective of who is appropriate to send out to often remote locations. And then we also had a question we kind of flagged that in our scenario we were given, it doesn't actually involve any high school students. And so that was something that we flagged as something to, again, discuss with partners. We had high school teachers listed in our scenario but not high school students. And there are some other models out there that involve high school students. So we wanted to bring that as a potential option to the discussion. The one thing that we did discuss a little bit of is the data collections methodology. And this is the part where in some ways the, because the group is approaching the research group for support in research, this is one of the things that the researchers can kind of bring to the table a little bit more detail but also recognizing that it's still not, it's still a discussion. And so when you, even when you're being asked to bring your expertise to the table that still means it's a dialogue. And so you're bringing options of methodologies. You're bringing options of data collection and then working with partners to find out what's the most appropriate. And again, a conversation, right? And you may actually end up doing several different methodologies because one methodology is really great to create high school programs but a different methodology may be needed to, oh, here's our token mail. Welcome. There may be a different methodology for traditional knowledge communication and documentation. And I'll wrap it up just really quickly. We, because our project did involve traditional knowledge documenting it, we did spend a little bit of time of talking about intellectual property and what that means, transparency in data collection. And I really have held the story of Claire shared with us about keeping copies of traditional knowledge for, to help preserve. And so, but again, being really clear, right? On where do those copies exist? Who has access to those copies? What are those copies for? What are they not for? And I think that we really wanted to keep in mind OCAP and UNDRIP Act Article 29. See, we actually did her homework last night. I was so excited when she told me that this morning. But, you know, regardless of, you know, not regardless, but in relation to all of the kind of Article 29 in details, it's also just, again, being driven by the ethical responsibilities in all levels of research. And so we had a very specific indication that we're both from the Geography Department and the Biology Department. I'm from a biology world where, you know, we often don't have to do ethical clearance, you know, even though we're out in the land. And so recognizing that no matter what the data is and the intellectual property is always, always, always coming to it at a place where you're, like what are your ethical responsibilities and roles in helping to safeguard as well as, yeah, I think I'll just leave it as safeguarding that information at all levels for community members to have self-determination to borrow some of the UNDRIP language. Is there anything any of my other group members would like to add? Are there any questions? It was all clear as mud. Ginette, oh, sorry. Just explained land camp. Yeah. Some may know, some may not. It might be a term that could be useful for other people. Yeah, that's a great question. I'm actually gonna ask David to, can you land camp? So we use the word land camp. I can share my experiences, but we have an expert in the room. And so I actually asked David if he could land camp. Can you, like, what the? For people who want to go out for the first time, it is a hard, very hard test. It can be good if you prepare for it. If you want to experience, like a traditional outing, it's best to talk to the hunters who are very capable of making any glue. Stay overnight, eating a glue. That sort of stuff. If you want to experience that, it has to be in very cold winter or spring. Then if you're looking at more, not too cold, spring is a good weather, days are long, and there's camps, temporary camps everywhere for hunters. Then if you're looking at summer, there's camps everywhere in 100 miles radius, let's say, Aghvet. And if you want to go experience, sort of modern traveling, stay in the cabin, summertime is the time to go, but you have to prepare for bucks and that sort of stuff until you know, all this kind of thing. Thank you, David. Anybody else have a question? Oh, I missed it at the beginning. Who were to be the participants? You said high school teachers? Well, the official list we were given was that there are community elders. There's also the Inuit Association that was actually the contact point to the researchers. There's researchers from both geography and biology. There are two master's students, two PhD students, and then high school teachers. Did I get everyone? And the local research coordinator. Sorry, and the local research coordinator. And so it's a mixed group. And it's also one of the things that it's kind of emphasizes, it's about Bonnie. So it's about SNO Bonnie. And so the aspects are, you know, Inuit knowledge, Inuit culture, indigenous methodologies, SNO ecology, Bonnie, and science education. But not youth. Well, that's where we situated ourselves is that, you know, we had a discussion about so how do we work through these different partnerships? Do we role play them? How do we, and so we decided very, it was the best fit for our group was to come at this as we were being the researchers. And the researchers are part of the camp. And so we kind of took that lens to be able to think through these relationships. So we could be there, but from my experience, sometimes the supervisor of the graduate students is there and sometimes they're not. It just reminds me of Oscar Kwagli and the Academy of the Elders in Alaska where the teachers went to the elders, to the camp and designed their science programs based on that. And then went back and brought their science programs back to the elders to see if they'd done it right. Was there something of that in this with high school teachers type of thing? Yeah, so there was high school teachers in the program. And so we read that, we read that as the curriculum development, which is, so I have to get myself away. I actually, this is like a blend of two programs that exist that I'm familiar with. And so the idea was that the high school teachers do attend and then create curriculum around those high school, there's learning moments. But the other half of that, we thought that it would also be, because it was, I think they wanted us to work through it. The program is actually about elder sharing knowledge with youth, but youth were not listed as participants. And so one of the questions we had to come back to is are youth gonna be in the camp? Because they're not actually listed. And so we thought we could, in an ideal world, one of the things that would be lovely would be to have multiple different ways. You'd have the high school students so that the curriculum is involved, but you also have high school students so that there's also direct learning and not just via the lens of a high school teacher as well. Does that answer the question? Yeah, Lisa. Yeah, Lisa, please. Yeah, I just wanted to say to reiterate that it was the elders that had reached out to the Inuit Association for assistance with this project and the Inuit Association had reached out to the researchers. So we kind of imagined ourselves as the researchers and sort of thinking, okay, if we were the researchers in department of biology and geography, how would we approach this? And we might have all sorts of ideas about what the role of high school students would be, but it wouldn't be for us to determine that solely, that that would be something that we would discuss in our summit, in our partnership summit. And these would be issues that could be raised and we would want to see what the elders actually what they envisioned. Just before you go, I think you guys have raised some really good points. And we are constantly working on these scenarios. So yes, you're quite right. Some of it is fabricated and some of it comes from a researcher's real life experience. A couple of things came to my mind as you guys were talking and one of the comments that you made was the responsibility of the universities and to David's point about university researchers and their students being prepared to go into the field. So that is true in the universities, at least I can speak on Carlton's behalf. We do have through our environmental health and safety department as well as, yeah, I'll stop there, I think it's through EHS. They do hold courses on field work safety and that's not exactly the term, but it's when you go into the field safety issues and talking to researchers that I know that do go into the field, they do hire local people to actually protect them. They carry guns because bears come along and that kind of thing. So that's another level of a relationship with people in the community is it also provides some employment for people as researchers are going up, right? Yeah, and we actually had that. We stumbled on the voluntarism, the wording in this scenario because in my relationship with the community members that I work in, that's actually the primary, we're working with them as a safety perspective, we're working at them as a research assistant. So there's actually no, like in the traditional sense that there's no voluntary work. Yeah, you know that's not what it intends to mention. But we actually had a discussion about that. What does that mean in this context? And we did come as a group to, it's the willingness to be involved, but not actual traditional voluntarism. No, no, no, it's not voluntarism. And yes, and so we even talk about that in terms of remuneration for participants, remuneration for people that you hire to work alongside of you. No, it's not meant to be that everybody is involved in your research project for cheap, as in zero. It is around lack of coercion in any way, shape, or form. And that could be because you're going, you offer to pay somebody $400 an hour or because you have some kind of political pressure. Those are kinds of coercions that we guard against in the REB. And the other thing that came to my mind is, so I'm gonna stand up in support of research ethics boards and the fact that they too are evolving and it is because of the diverse methodologies that come forward and dealing with issues around informed consent. So I can tell you that 17 years ago, there were things like you could only offer one situation and that would be with anonymity. So if you offered it to one, you had to offer it to them all, right? And that you didn't change your informed consent relationship throughout the course of your project, right? I think your point is very well taken because that really is the heart of what informed consent means is that as your research is progressing, things can change and therefore, it's not that you're going to significantly digress from what you had originally agreed upon, but that there should be room in your relationship which in very large part is reflected in the informed consent process that there's room for change to adapt to the newness that comes out of the work that's happening. So that's a really super point. Won't be easy with the REBs, but I can tell you that we're all learning and we're all adapting. Just striving for it. That's right, that's right, yes. I just have a question around compensation and whether or not there's any guidelines for appropriate levels of compensation and I can expect that you're gonna say, negotiate it with the community, but then what if you've got different communities and very different levels of expectation and then you've got a consistency issue of offering different things to different people? Absolutely, and it's about gathering that kind of information from your colleagues who have experience in a particular research project scenario. So if you are going to Toronto to speak to an immigrant group like Syrian refugees a year after they've been to Canada, they are living with a particular reality and so your compensation for them for giving up an hour or two or a half day of their time and may require childcare. So you would put all that into what you would see to be a reasonable compensation package, explain that to your REB, how it is that you've come to that amount and with justification, but so perhaps if you're going up north and you're going to be taking two days worth of the elder's time, I don't know what the daily rate might be but their knowledge is very valuable, their time is very valuable and I'm sure that somebody can help you to provide to you what that logical, reasonable, respectful compensation amount would be. I know that we struggle when we talk and we'll get that I think to some of the urban situation so I'll just put it out there, but I won't explain. But just as REBs, we've struggled around do we give people on the street cash or do we give them food stamps or, you know and sometimes we have to not police ourselves and make assumptions about what they're gonna do with the cash, so these are really super questions and we struggle with them too and the researcher also works through them as well, so. And I would just add to that, so I work in Nunavut and I work in about five different communities and so even within Nunavut our daily rate for a guide or a translator is different and so we work with our partners who have experience and sometimes we just pay different rates. That isn't coercive versus one that is, you know, like so. Yeah and it also depends like we in my professional experience we pay guides at a daily rate, we play translators kind of like an hourly rate and we pay honorarium to elders and then honorarium to hunter and trapper organization boards. Those are all different, right? And so, but we, I know it's a hard answer but like we work with the community to figure that out like that, yeah, there's a couple of questions or comments, sorry. Thanks. Finding out what the cultural norms are. I mean again, I think of, you know, when I was in India or Brazil, you know, it would have been really gauche. Yes, I'm left handed, but not that gauche, you know. To basically, you know, offer some, oh, thanks and you know, here's some money, you know, for your time. Whereas alternatively in other communities it would be gauche not to, you know, so it speaks to, you know, talking to colleagues who've been to the area and what have you, so yeah. So advice that was offered to me around the idea of like differences in compensation before I started my research was that give people a choice. So I kind of have a standard amount but I let people decide if they want me to offer kind of my labor or my resources for their organization or if they want me to buy paraphernalia for something or if they want it in cash or if they want it in gift certificates. So I have kind of the amount. And again, it's, I shouldn't say it's standard because if I talk to someone for 60 minutes and then someone else for four hours I'm gonna obviously increase or maybe give extra labor but having that right in my consent form that these are all the options that are available to you and letting people choose I found has worked better especially when I'm working with such a diverse group of folks. So, and that was offered to me by a colleague who was doing activist research as well, so yeah. Sorry, Joe, just a second, sorry. I was somewhat startled about some of the remarks just here and to me it was certainly a vestige of colonialism. How much should we pay them? Do we worry about what they're going to do with that money? It seems to me that in this day and age, I mean that was done historically if you paid them at all. But I think that if you want to know how much the community is willing to, or members are willing to accept to do the job that you've outlined, I either ask them individually, but their organization can tell you what the going rate is in their particular community and let go of that money. Don't presuppose, oh, they're gonna go and drink it down. Or they're going to waste it on pop and potato chips. That's not your business. You've bought a service, you pay for it, and you shut your mind down in terms of the old colonial way of dealing with Aboriginal people. Thank you. Yes, that is true. May I make a clarification? No, I didn't mean the the RAB struggled about whether or not, and researchers struggle about whether or not to give cash. What I was talking about is a particular kind of research when you're dealing with addicts and this was in an urban, I'm thinking of a particular protocol that came to our RAB, and it was to pay cash to street people with addictions that the researcher wanted to interview them, and struggled with a moral and ethical question about if I give them cash, and I'm happy to compensate them, I don't expect that people living on the street with addictions will speak to me for free, but worried about if I give this person cash, will they go and buy drugs with it? And at some point we had to say as an RAB, that's right. We had to not worry about that because the researcher also posited the question, should I maybe give them food stamps or some kind, food certificates or something so they could go into a restaurant and buy food. And the reality is that they will do with those certificates what they will in order to meet their own needs, and maybe they will go eat or maybe they will sell them on the street to get the money to get the drugs, but that, you're quite right, that's not our business, and we came to that point, but I wasn't putting that out there as a concern that anybody had about working with indigenous peoples, it was about, that particular protocol in my mind was around working with addicts in the street, and the researcher really struggled to do it right, and we finally had to say just do what's right as in compensate somebody for the time that they're spending with you, and then after that you don't have control over that, and it's not something that we should be worried about. Yes, of course, so I'm sorry if there was a misunderstanding there. Thank you very much, but the other thing too, you have to realize that in a lot of small communities, there are no banks, and so cash is, and sometimes they can get a check cashed at the store, but many times they don't have the ability to do that, and the store doesn't have enough money in the community to do that, so bring your cash. Yes, absolutely. And I actually think that's a really good point from a logistics perspective, and I actually would comment, I did my PhD with Carlton, is that Carlton actually has mechanisms that you can take advances for that reason, and I think that's important for institutions and universities to consider, is that you need to enable researchers to do what's appropriate for that situation and not get so caught up on the details. Right, thanks very much. I was just gonna add my two cents to this whole idea, and I've done, in previous work, prior to coming to Carlton, work with street-involved indigenous youth, many of whom had addictions issues, and I can tell you that child and youth mental health agencies who are engaging these young people across the province, particularly in Northern context, they struggled with that too, and they would come because I was kind of an indigenous liaison for them as well, and they would come and ask me about that, and I would tell them how disempowering it is for a young person to be given a gift card that they may not even be able to utilize because somebody's making a judgment call as to how they're living their life. I mean, you have to remember that when you make a call like that, you're not just, you know, your protection is disempowering, right? So I, anyway, that's, I'm glad that Joe brought that up, and I'm glad that we were able to kind of tease that out a little bit because I get a little concerned when I hear things, but what I wanted to touch on was this idea of the honorariums and things, and I was thinking, I've been at Carlton now, and it's certainly not an issue that I've only had to work through at Carlton, but we have students here who are involved in events all over campus in a variety of different ways, and I'm part of a team made up of three indigenous people. I'm a Métis person. My two colleagues are First Nation people. We come from different communities, and every time we engage a student to be a part of something, we have to sit down and really talk about what that compensation will look like. So there's no, I mean, I think it's sometimes easy. It's a little more convenient if you have some kind of a flat policy that everybody gets scooped up into in terms of what you pay them, but I think it's much more important to be less convenient, and it takes all three of us putting our heads together and determining exactly how, what is that student, and what capacity are they participating? Are they reading something that's been pre-prepared? Are they giving an opening? Are they sharing traditional knowledge? Are we asking something of them that other students couldn't provide? So it's never like from point A to point B. It's always a conversation, and as three insiders, we still sit down and struggle with that, so conversations like that are important because everybody's bringing something different to the table, and it's not all. Ms. Chimarasi. I can just add, like Benny was saying, that struggle too around money or gift cards, that also happens within Indigenous organizations as well. You know, we're to the NWAC, and they actually would not let me. I really, really wanted to give cash, and they wouldn't let me, and we're doing work on the downtown East Side, and with various women and youth, and yeah, I had to give shoppers cards, which was just, I don't know, and bus tickets and things, and but I was thinking also the idea of a compensation, just it happens within a larger circle of gratitude and appreciation, and sort of at the heart of that, I mean, it's really, it can just be so practical, money, you know, because people need gas in their truck or whatever, like it's just really important and practical, and especially, you know, thinking a lot of the elders and seniors as well, you know, it might be retired, you know, and so it's really helpful. But I think that if it's just money, like without the heart and the spirit and the gratitude, it really, then it feels kind of like insulting, or like it sort of has to be within the whole context, and so then that can't be it either, right? So I notice here, Laura, you know, who gave a gift to someone, and it was a painting, right, made by a family member and Indigenous artist, and those kind of things are so nice, too, you know, to give gifts and to give thanks and appreciation, and the words we use are, you know, how we speak to each other and how we appreciate, and I just think it's all of that, right, and it's the whole circle, so, and of course, depending on the culture, not with the individual, but others like the tobacco can be, you know, very important as well, right? Traditionally, if this is a person who is traditional and who works with tobacco. And I think I'll just throw in one, is while Darlene walks around to give the mic to Stefan, is that it's also, I think that's a very good point, and so one of the hunters that I've worked with for eight years loves raspberries, and so I always go north with raspberries, and like, right, it's about those personal touches, and so, you know, it may be less convenient and it's more work, but that's what this job takes, right, and that's what we have to keep in mind, is that there's no right or wrong, it's just, if you're gonna do this work, do it better, right? Suck less, in the words of Julie. The point I want to raise kind of digs, digs beyond saying, well really, we do not want to patronize, right? If I want to reimburse someone, say thank you to someone with something, I shouldn't attach strings to that and say, well, but you can only do this because I really know better what you should do than you do yourself. I've had an experience, probably 20 years ago in my undergrad, I've worked in the Solomon Islands for a longer time for a gold mining company, and the particular setting with the people living there was such that over 20 years, an endless string of American or Canadian gold mining companies came in, behaved like absolute asses and then just paid compensation. And it appeared that there was a system of chiefs of chiefs and paramount chiefs, all men who kind of claimed positions of power there and negotiated with that company. And the company that I worked for, when they came in, they brought an anthropologist and said, well, we want to understand who these people are, how do we work with them? And the first thing the anthropologist said is, well, what I see when I talk to the communities here is that some people have made it a business to profit from this, but women and children never see anything of that other than that some of the guys in the village have a big shiny truck and lots of cash. I'm saying this not to raise suspicion that people are always like that. I'm saying that to illustrate a much more subtle question that is, and I'm only imagining that question because I haven't been there, if I'm saying thank you to some people in a community who engage with me, then I'm partially saying thank you for their time, but the thing if you take traditional knowledge or the plants from our tundra camp, part of what I'm reimbursing them for is that they take the time to provide me access to something that is not just theirs, but is like their communities. And there are access points, maybe because they speak my language better. So this puts me into a little bit of a dilemma now if I think about this. Again, hypothetically, I haven't been in a situation. If I engage with Darlene as the person I know from the hundreds and trappers organization, and I reimburse you with the current rate, am I leaving out the community? And it's just an open question and I hope you see that I'm not attaching any judgment to this as presupposing that people act badly, but this is just a very clear example from the Solomon Islands to show that it's not just the individuals that I have access to, but maybe the more important people are forgotten behind that. Thank you very much. Would anybody else like to make a comment or shall we invite group number two to come forward? Okay. Thank you very much. Group number one. Thank you. So representatives from our second group, do you know who you are? Cause I did not write you down. She'll be back in just a second. Who's up? Sorry? Oh, Omega, okay. Okay. Is group number three willing to turn into group number two? I think so. Okay, we'll do that if you don't mind. We'll just keep things moving. This is all about research, right? Impromptuism. Change the original plan a little bit. Thank you. Please go ahead. All right. Hi. Okay, so I'm doing a bit different. Our group is smaller, so it may work. So I did not write all of the notes down yesterday. Someone who I thought would be talking had to leave. So, I mean, I'm doing this. So we're hoping to do it in kind of a discussion that I will hopefully bring up the key points, but then my group members will give their input, if you remind me of something that we chatted about. This was a long conversation. And there's definitely things that we missed, especially with that last talk about the remuneration. I feel like we could have a much longer chat about that. So our scenario that was given to us was something that we have changed. So we took an imperfect scenario and made it imperfect, but that's something that we'll have to live with because we can't have a perfect research project. And it's just something that we need to discuss and kind of find the best way forward. So what we were, our scenario was exploring how street-involved individuals, including those with drug addictions, mental health conditions, and those involved in sex work, utilized community services for the purposes of establishing a sense of community. So, and this is in Winnipeg. So we kind of revamped it because we wanted more focus. We were told by some of our group members that are no longer with us right now that we needed more focus. And so what we decided to do in our new title, which will kind of give you an idea, is culturally appropriate social services access among street-involved indigenous youth in Winnipeg. So we decided to narrow to street-involved indigenous youth, and instead of talking about a sense of community because we were a social worker, so we were all one social worker, or his or her colleagues. We are more interested in what would be useful for the community. And so we thought about social services, because that was kind of part of the longer description. So in order to do this, so it started talking about how we were gonna have a focus group and short survey intended to understand what brought them to being street-involved and what does community mean to them. And so we thought we needed more of a focus, but we couldn't come up with that focus. So we decided to partner with the Friendship Center or another indigenous organization in the area. This is all hypothetical because we don't know the area. And that we will have a pre-consultation process and that's what we were applying for. We're applying to the Research Ethics Board for our pre-consultation. We weren't sure if we needed ethics for it because when you're just talking and not actually gathering data, do you need ethics clearance? But we decided we're going to apply anyways because that's why we're here. So we had long conversations. So basically our research project to give you an outline was that we were going to meet with the community group and hopefully they would give us insight into maybe a youth program, a drop-in center, something like that, where we could have, and the organization would hopefully partner with us and be equal collaborators on the project. And hopefully they could provide access to a youth drop-in center where we could maybe have a youth work or something like that. And they would, and then in order to understand a focus or a question or gaps in the community services or what's missing as kind of an idea of what the youth maybe want to know or want to, oh, I don't know if they do, but this is why we're bringing them in. So overall we'd have hopefully a focus group or something like that where we were able to consult with the youth, with the people who actually use these services and see where the gaps, what's not working for them, what would they like to know. Yeah, so that's what the bone of the project may possibly be, but yes. So in doing that, so I guess going through this, we talked about voluntariness in terms of, and informed consent, all kind of all muddled together. We kind of wrote this last, we had a long discussion, we wrote this format in the last 50 minutes pretty fast. So what is the point of withdrawal? So is that in terms of having a focus group, is the withdrawal, can they withdraw like a month later? Can they withdraw only after like an hour after? How did they do that? And we came to the conclusion that sometimes you can't have a point of withdrawal if we're hoping to use this information to move forward, right? We can't have halfway through a project and someone say, oh, I'm sorry, but I really don't want you to use that information, I told you, but then we're halfway through a research project. How do we go back? So we'd hopefully have a clear informed consent that we decided, but would hopefully talk with the community organization that the point of withdrawal would be. Do you wanna come? Oh, here, okay. You guys can pass that, that's good. I think part of our discussion around the point of withdrawal was that it was potentially complicated by the fact that we were planning to run a focus group. So even if someone were to choose to leave midway through and ask for us not to use their information, everyone who is a part of that focus group was privy to that information and we can't guarantee what others in the focus group may do with that information. So I think the focus group did pose some additional considerations and potential limitations to confidentiality that we just sort of had to chat about and do best we could for, I mean, we like the idea of a discussion for the focus group as opposed to speaking to people individually. We like the idea of building on each other's points and ideas. And hopefully maybe someone, if they didn't feel comfortable, maybe they could bring their friend as support or be like, hey, there's this thing tonight. There'd also be food at the focus group. And yeah, funding for the organization. The one we looked at was the, there was a friendship center and it said, like any donation is welcome. Like any, I don't know. I read that, you guys guessed it. I didn't read that part too. Anyways, so yeah, it can actually be confidential, which is another issue. But we hopefully would remove identifying information as much as possible. We would have informed consent from the beginning in terms of even advertising for the event. So in a poster, we'd have as much information as possible to be as open as possible so that those who are coming know exactly what it is and aren't surprised when they get there. We were talking about how hard is it for someone to come and came all this way and then they really don't feel comfortable, but do they leave or do they stay just because they're there already? Like, I don't know, had a discussion about that. I have lots of discussions. So a big issue that we had was the duty to report. So there'll probably be incidental findings that we weren't expecting and all we really wanted to talk about was maybe service gaps, but how do those service gaps come about? Is it personal story? Is it, I saw something, I did something, something happened to me and these might be minors and so how do we create a safe space for discussions when we might have a duty to report something that was brought up? So we're not sure about that. Joy? We've run into that situation, duty to report child abuse or child at risk. And part of it is to advise people that's part of the consent that when you come forward, be aware that I may have to report if I'm aware of a child that may be at risk, et cetera. So it doesn't necessarily preclude, but at least it lets people know before they disclose that this is the situation, so. And then recruitment methods, so it said in here that we'd have a snowball recruitment, but we weren't sure if that was for the final project. So hopefully I think we'd do posters, kind of maybe if there's a drop in center, the youth workers can be like, hey, there's a thing happening tonight, take a look at this poster and there'd also be support services beside it because we were talking about what is triggering possibly when our services needed, when our like a distress center line maybe, things like that, kind of blabbing on about a lot of things at once, but sorry. So then we talked about who, so in here we are also supposed to discuss who we would hire as research assistants because that criteria was not yet discussed. And so we were really aiming towards having peer collaborators, whether that's the youth that come in and share their ideas and want to be further involved in the project, we could hire them as research assistants, or is that the youth workers at the drop in center, or is that the friendship center? So we would discuss that and kind of move forward with that as well. Because when we're talking about the OCAP principles and whose information is this and co-ownership, we definitely want to follow those, but if it's a research question and we're building more onto this later on, well, that's a huge, I mean like hopefully maybe someone gives you a really great idea and they're like, well, I want to follow through with this too, so how can that happen? And maybe that's a peer collaboration. So we also talked about age of consent and which, what is the youth and whether or not how we would define indigenous in terms, so we thought it would just be self-identification, so, and then age, maybe 12 to 29, we weren't really sure about that, it would kind of be self-identified as well, but then we were thinking like, what would a review board say about someone who's 12, coming in and talking, or like another discussion point? We never really came to a conclusion about, and we would definitely have elders involved, especially as maybe a support to be there, definitely have their input, it's very important, and dissemination. Yeah, I just wanted to like, we had a sort of interesting, so we got very preoccupied for like a day, right, in terms of how do we frame this so that it's a benefit to the people, because our question was not framed that way, it was more sort of, it didn't look like there was naturally a benefit to the people who we were going to be doing research with or for, so that was why we backed up into this whole, so that's why our process is focused heavily on the pre-research, and we never got past that stage, and it basically turned into designing the process for the pre-research, and the other thing that was interesting in our group, because we have a lot of expertise in our group, I forget your name, but in the REB, you've been, Chris, that has been heavily involved in the REB, so in my mind I was sort of, I understand that chapter nine has been developed to sort of reconcile indigenous research ethics with REBs, but I found that there was a bit of a discussion going back and forth of, well the REB would not allow this, and then we were trying to reconcile, well except we were trying to develop a relational collaborative and reciprocal process, so even though there is that creativity, it was interesting to hear what the REB would perhaps say to a lot of issues, they had a very, you know, you had a very immediate answer to a lot of it, and so I found that there was, there's still a tension there, and it was not always easy to reconcile the tension between trying to sort of intuitively follow a reciprocal process, well at the same time ensuring that it goes through the REB process, so that's just a little bit of background context. Thanks for, thank you for doing the talking today, by the way. I should start by saying that I wasn't here on Wednesday, so I came late to the group. It was really refreshing to have a discussion about ethics without a lot of reference to the TCPS, so yeah, I'm an REB administrator, so that's, I'm a policy wonk, and well, it's, a benefit for me was to step away from that and to think about things without reference to the policy, because sometimes I think we get too caught up in it. But that's where my head goes, and I don't seem to be able to help myself. The really interesting thing about this project, which makes it challenging, is that it is appropriately a phased approach, where we need to do this pre-research engagement, but the difficulty comes up around when does pre-engagement become research? And what is, when do you start recruiting and when do you start collecting data? And what happens when you are doing this pre-research and you start uncovering really rich data, and you haven't gone through, you haven't established a good process for consent and identified risks and managed them. What do you do? What do you do when you're doing this pre-research phase and you have a youth tell you about their drug problems, right, so again, as an REB person, I would encourage researchers doing this kind of work to apply, even though they technically don't have to, as long as they're not collecting data or recruiting people. I still encourage people to apply because it's a really good idea to be thinking about these things and to have a contingency plan. So I think there'd be a couple of options here. One would be to go and have that exploratory phase, as focus groups are problematic in this context, in my opinion, but have the exploratory phase and just basically not use any of the rich data that you get, is you're just not gonna be able to collect data, or to develop a protocol where you're actually covering off the possibilities and to take it to your REB and see what they say, because we have seen situations where the REB would rather have all that in place. Yeah, you don't know what your research questions are, but you can still have a protocol for doing interviews. You still can cover off, so if we go this way, then we'll use this protocol. If we do this, then we'll use another protocol. So to me, that was the most interesting thing about our discussion, was the implications from the phase approach. Yeah, thanks. So we are also talking about dissemination exactly, how are we gonna give back to the community? So maybe what we would find out is that there is a program that works really well, and how is that able to be scaled to other programs, or maybe there's a gap and we need to explore that. So hopefully, maybe that's one way. Having, I was thinking, if we were to publish something, make sure it's open access, make sure that the community, it's widely available, town posters, presentations, things like this. And skills exchange. So we have, if there are some street-involved youth who would like to learn research skills, they get engaged in the process, who would be transfer of knowledge as well. Yeah, yeah. And then, so in this conversation that just happened about renumeration, so after this, so what we, the participation, each participant apparently, was going to receive a $25 gift card to purchase groceries at a local grocery store. So we never really had a discussion whether or not that was appropriate, but now I'm definitely seeing that we should have and we would have, maybe if we had more time. But probably it would not be that anymore. And what point do they get the gift card? Do they get it if they show up? Do they get it or gift card or whatever else? Do they get it when they show up? Do they get it after they leave and have given their input? Do they get it no matter what? So we've decided that they get it no matter what. They show up and if they feel uncomfortable, then that's fine, they can leave and they can take it with them. And is there anything, did I miss anything? Yeah, we talked about a lot. So it really took us a lot to get to even starting anything. So yeah, thanks for listening. It's just really a comment reflecting what you said about pre or exploratory research and the dilemma of doing research before you're really doing research. And I wanna throw in just a small complication. I think it's absolutely impossible to get funding for anything unless you've already started doing the research, unless you know what you're talking about. So that is a dilemma. I didn't know how we work that out. But if you're applying for funding for a project, you have to know what that project is already so you have to be talking to people and thinking about things. And you don't have an agreement in place yet. I don't know if people, sorry. Oh, okay, that's good. But seriously, if anyone has advice on how we handle that. There's planning grants that you could possibly turn into. Right, yeah. They should. Yeah. It's sign of petition. Does anybody wanna comment on that? Here at Carlton and it is an envelope of money. They are difficult to get. It's just as competitive because everybody wants to do what we are talking about. So what your point is well taken all of you is that how does somebody launch into that? How far back do we go in thinking about the compendium of research from idea to dissemination and beyond? And how do we actually enable that? So, and money certainly is an element in the enabling that is that. One the lottery, that's what we did. Perhaps we need to buy a university lottery. Yes, why not? Are development grants available to grad students? Are they just faculty, research or that kind of stuff? What's the? So, they are, the applicants are faculty members. But if the faculty member has a student that they're working with where their research is really aligned, then yes, we would like to see actually the student on that project and be compensated for the work that they're doing as research assistant. That way, you have that complementary. I saw you, you're still holding it because I told you I'd leave that there in case anybody wanted to answer, but were you wanting to say something? Most people probably already know that if you need ethics approval in order to get your funds released, you can, and you don't necessarily have to have, you can get an interim approval, just a release of funds approval. And we do, I think, often apply for funding for work that's already been started. That's kind of a reality of what we do. So, to your point, I believe in communication. We've talked about, use the mic. So, I truly do believe in communication between the various, a stakeholder, shall we call everybody, in research and going to your REB with pre-research ideas as you have described your project. So, we talked about ethics creep. You've heard that, right? So, it's a very, very fine balance. And I'm just playing the devil's advocate here. And also too, there's a matter of resourcing. I mean, even the REBs. I think Carlton's REB is Alicia here. I think you're probably, I remember our REB was looking at between new protocols, renewals, and updates, almost, I think, around 700 a year. That's a lot. So, to then start having the pre-research, but I agree with you wholeheartedly that there is a place for a conversation. Perhaps not a protocol review, but a conversation to help guide. You had some interesting elements in your protocol and one of them was around age, which you had raised, so 12 to 24 year olds. And there are laws around that and so it's balancing the ethics with the legal. And so, in a situation where you're going as a researcher, going into, say, a high school, where you have 13 to 18 year olds, let's say, that's a controlled situation and typically most of your students in the high school are going to be living at home with mom and dad. And so, the situation around that is that mom and dad are actually the ones doing the consenting and the children are doing the assenting, okay? So, mom and dad may consent for their child to be party to a research project because researchers are coming into the school, but if the child who is of an age where they can make some independent decisions, if they don't assent, then the researcher and the teacher and the principal can't force them to take part in that research. But when you're talking about the demographic that you're working with, right, it is a possibility that they're not living with mom and dad and may not even be living with foster parents. They might be living in a group home. So, then what you have is a situation where underage are actually consenting for themselves. So, depending upon the work that you're doing, you may actually be working with an age-specific group that will be consenting for themselves. It doesn't exactly align with the provincial laws. But that was in your protocol for a reason, absolutely. The focus group was in your protocol for a reason. Oh, sorry, Chris, here. Go on, just when you're done. Okay, the focus group idea, I think, was in there for a reason because, yes, it does raise questions from recruitment through to dissemination, including the informed consent. And you're quite right in terms of withdrawal from the research. So, the issue around voluntariness, yes, somebody who has agreed to come in to a focus group can get up and leave at any time. Nobody's blocking the door. That's the part about the voluntariness of them being part of that focus group. But it's true. You can't promise anonymity or confidentiality because they're in a room full of people. And although a researcher can start out the process saying, thank you very much for being here. And we would ask you to be respectful of the information that you're going to receive and the people who are in the room with you. But I, as a researcher, cannot guarantee confidentiality and anonymity because you're all gonna leave this room and I can't control what you do. So, people will give their information mindful of that, as well as, again, the type of research and the duty to report. So, yes, if we, as researchers, learn about, and it can come by quite, somebody's not gonna blur it out, I abuse my child, or I'm going to commit suicide, I've been thinking of suicidal thoughts, but as soon as that comes to light, yes, there is a duty to report. So, people need to know that and they may or may not end up saying things that they want to. And, yeah, compensation is always one of those issues. And you're quite right. It should be just because they show up, not because they actually complete the process with you. I think that is all I wanted to say. So, Chris, I'll be quiet. There's a question. Oh, question? Sorry, Jeanette. I've worked on surveys and focus groups at the private sector. And one of our bugaboos was under the influence. Like, you recruit people, they show up, they've signed a consent form, and then they're under the influence. What are the parameters in terms of ethical research at an academic level? I know what we had to do. They were given payment because they did show up. And then we would just say that the quota was full and it was done politely. And then they were asked to please leave. So that was simple. But I don't know in an academic world, what do you do? Where people show up to participate, then you were prepared to receive? No, they're under the influence. Oh, under the influence of their employer or, no? Oh, oh, I'm sorry, under the influence. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, with the program, darling. I don't know, I can't answer that. Can I follow up on something you brought up? And I wanted to start by thanking the first group. I thought the whole idea of consent being a process, an ongoing process is a really important one. And it does make the process more difficult. But don't let that stop us. And in terms of, I mean, you raised the point about resourcing for REBs. It's a huge issue. And that's not gonna change until you start pushing back on administration, right? Cause RRB only has this, if there's a greater work volume and you say the REB's holding us up, administration's gonna come along and say the REB needs more resourcing. The only way that's ever gonna change is until you guys push back. So we need you to do that. And that will allow us to do a better job of getting back to you quicker and with better decisions and these kinds of things. And allow us to do this sort of, don't be afraid of ethics creep. That's part of research that we should be embracing that. You can do these staged projects where you can start out doing one thing and discover a hugely rich body of information. So what started off as a study of street-involved youth turns out to be a study of prostitution. You can change midstream. You just need to follow the ethics path. So don't let the idea that it's hard to stop you. Oh yeah, sorry, I was just gonna respond to that as well. For my perspective, if somebody is under the influence of a substance that will impact their ability to really understand what informed consent is all about and to really weigh the benefits and the potential risks associated with the study, then they're not in a space to be able to consent. And because consent isn't a point of time, they need to be able to consent at every stage of the research process, which my interpretation of that means that they can't be providing consent if they're under the influence of a substance at that point in time. It doesn't preclude them from participating later, but in that moment they can't consent so they can't participate. I would also add to that, there's a book which I haven't fully read called Research as Ceremony. And there is a notion too of coming into something when you're under the influence of a substance is not respectful to the other participants and also including the researchers. So it's not a judgment per se, it's just a matter of who you have involved in that research circle. I've faced people coming in to hearings or residential school, things like that. And I like your approach. I think that to me would be an appropriate approach. It's respectful, they're dealing with something, but they're not ready or in a state to participate. Not on that day, it's not a judgment of their whole existence as a person, but it's the behavior is not respectful of the other participants as well. I wonder though, just about the question of, just to think about a bunch of elements of this, I mean, how, there's some cases where it's very clear, but then there's some cases where, someone may have had a beer an hour ahead of time, they're not under the, you can smell it, but you don't know to what extent they're intoxicated. So I guess there's maybe some areas there to think of what, yeah, so I don't know, I was just kind of throwing that out. The other thing is, I'd heard of someone who was researching, they were in that area where they kind of, the person didn't seem intoxicated, but they could smell something. And they had transcripts sent to them afterwards to approve. I wonder what people think about that, right? That two weeks later you got transcripts, hey, just to make sure things are cool. Let's have a focus group of course, but maybe in a one-on-one interview. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I got it. On that issue, I was thinking about also the ethic of care, and so if we are asking someone to leave and come back another day, especially if it's, I mean, in the situation where I've encountered that, it has been around residential schools too, and work we were doing with survivors, and intergenerational survivors, and we always had tradition keepers and elders with us, and more than one. And in that case, the person was invited to come back another day, but elders sat with them and just made sure that they were leaving in a way that was where they weren't gonna harm themselves as well, because they were obviously in a lot of pain. We also spoke about whether or not we're gonna have a discussion with youth because they may come and they may not say anything, which is fine, so we were also thinking of different ways that they could give their opinion without actually speaking, so maybe they could submit a paper or something with their ideas after, or yeah, a map of resources, they could circle where they go, or et cetera, yeah. Or where there's a gap, maybe they could circle where gaps are, or question marks or something, yeah. I got here first. Sorry. It was interesting listening to you say that, because I, did you discuss literacy? We did. Yeah, because I worked with adults who were given tests and ideas to share, but they were very vocal, but then weren't literate, so they couldn't pass the test, this is a totally different context, it wasn't research, but it became very clear that we had several people who were super knowledgeable, but literally could not pass the test that they had to do to complete to get their certificate. And so literacy became, has always tweaks in my mind when we're asking for feedback in different ways and whether people are, I just wanted a few to discuss that. Yeah, we did literacy if we were to just hand out consent forms, things like that, so we're talking about different types of consent, verbal, written, what we would do. So we never came to a conclusion, but we discussed it, yeah, verbally. Oh yeah, exactly, explain for sure. I think that one of the things that we're talking about, so we're talking about consent is the word that comes before it, which we discussed, which was informed, and the importance of really informing people. Our topic was dealing with traditional knowledge, so we really wanted to, and we discussed inform as a terrible word, we're not telling you, but that discussion around consent and what it means and what it doesn't mean, because it does change as you learn more, but it's really good to have that discussion, and I know in other research projects I've worked with, it's like, oh, blah, blah, blah, we're gonna do this and that blah, just sign. And that was how it was done, but a recent project that I was running was dealing with seniors in a nursing home and going through consent with them. And one of the things that came up was, what if I die during the project, what will happen to my information? And it was really important, because we needed to have that informed consent, and we needed to talk to families of these people to make sure that everybody understood what was and was not gonna happen. And we had some people who said, well, if I die, I want my information used, and we had families who said, well, we don't want that. So it brought up a whole other issue, but my point is informed. So it was having the discussion, and it was just talking about it, and again with youth, having the discussion. So yes, you do need a signature on a piece of paper, because that's what we have to do, but really informing people about youth, not just, oh yeah, we might write a few articles and it'll be this and that, but really helping people to understand in a way that's important to them what is gonna happen to that knowledge, because I think often as researchers from my experience, I don't think we do that well, so yes, if you do pass on this traditional knowledge and I'm here and I observe it, I may use it in these ways, and it may get picked up and used by other people further down the track, which to me is part of that informed kind of thing. Anyway, I'll shut up. Does anybody have any other questions? Oh, Joe, sorry, oh, sorry. I think Joe had her hand up and then if we could go, yeah. I'm certainly enjoying this discussion very much, and I'm sorry to impose a suggestion, but when we're talking about elders and youth, they must meet together. A lot of elders don't even like youth. And I think you have to keep that in mind and also take care of that elder in terms of support and whatnot. I had a, I like youth, actually. But I was meeting with a group of street children, well, teenagers, and they were unruly and loud and disrespectful and everything in the meeting. And I was really uncomfortable, but I stayed with it. And finally, I was, the meeting was over, and we fed them, by the way, but the meeting was over. And my car, this was on Montreal Road. And so my car was at the end of the block. And I noticed that there was a group of, at night, Montreal Road isn't safe. In my estimation, anyway. There was a group of the people who had been at the meeting at the end of the sidewalk, and my car was just beyond them. And I thought, oh, they're waiting for me. I'll probably get punched out because they didn't like something I said or whatever, or maybe just for recreation, who knows, but I'm gonna get punched out. But I persevered and kept walking, and I got up to them, and they were blocking my path. And I asked them what was going on, and this guy said, we just wanna hug you. I thought to myself, are they crazy? But anyway. So they all lined up, and all of them hugged me all in a row, and I finally got to my car. But I was very, very startled. And the next time I met with a group of youth, I was a bit more prepared. But I think I would have been more comfortable if someone had seen me to my car, but anyway. I just wanted to bring to your attention that the elder who is meeting with youth, and probably there are youth who don't like elders either. But I'm thankful this group liked elders. The, you need to realize that the elder does need support, or moral support of nothing else. Thank you. Thank you. Perhaps the last one for this group, and then we'll move on to the next one, for sure. Okay, so your point about transcribing something and sending it to someone is basically kind of a retroactive consent, and it just started, got me thinking, about the pre-consultation scenario, and is there ever actually an argument to be made for retroactive consent? You know, like during the process of developing a relationship with someone, if you were to go back to them and say, you know you told me this story when we first had our opening session, and you hadn't, we hadn't talked about this yet, but I really think this is an important story, and would you consent for me to use it? Like is that totally verboten, or is that something that you could consider doing? Oh, okay, sorry. I've been a research subject a few times, and the best process I had was actually a researcher from Australia who did the interview, like full consent and everything, and then kept on coming back, gave me a transcript, gave me the article so I could see how it was used because it impacted on my employment. So it was just like this constant sort of back and forth until I was completely satisfied. So it wasn't retroactive so much as, because I talk, right? Like I'm like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then I say all sorts of stuff and I get emotional, and then I'm like, oh my God, what did I say? Right? Like I think I criticized my employer or something. You have to hear it, right? So, but it wasn't retroactive, it was ongoing, and it just made my comfort level, of all the people who have interviewed me, that was the highest comfort level I had. So just giving it from the other perspective, so. Sorry. Back up. That didn't happen. That wasn't embarrassing at all. That was a quick recovery. So I would distinguish between retroactive consent and ongoing consent. So both are possible or both are necessary at times. And the idea of ongoing consent, I think, should be weighed against the degree of harm or risk or vulnerability. So the higher the vulnerability, the more rigorous that process has to be. That's it. Before I fall again. Yeah, I can just, I'm with the Department of Criminology and I know that there are some professors who work with highly criminalized populations who, when they go through the consent process, they only have verbal consent, so they never actually have the participant's names written everywhere. So if you're in a situation where you're concerned about harms that could come to a research participant if they were identified, then maybe that would be a time where sending a transcript wouldn't be as appropriate only because then you have their name, their contact information, and things like that. And especially in your situation, I think there can be an authority body that would screen, mail, and that kind of thing. And yes, so it is very situational as to, yeah. I do the transcripts on all my, because I'm uncomfortable with the idea of I'm gonna surprise you with questions and then hold you to what you say to me in this moment. And so I always like the idea of here's the transcripts and then come back with, you know, if you wanna make edits or changes or you know what you thought about this and you'd rather not, you rather this portion be confidential and the rest, then I'm okay with that. Okay, oh, sorry. Okay, and then. Yeah. And the story about the researcher who actually sent you the entire paper and said, well, this is the end product reminds me of something that used to happen very regular to me. And that is that I speak with journalists about my work. And so previous my work was, you know, mountains crumbling above the tourist city of Zermatt. So I had an interest of the journalist not making an end of the world scenario just because it's nice to sell. And some actually did, despite the fact that I've prepared very well and said, look, this is I'm explaining you. And that kills my research in an area of like the locals perceive, wow, you know, you're just grabbing attention and afterwards everyone, you know, avoids us as a tourist destination. And I've had several of those instances with like high ranking national news people who afterwards said, well, you know, you're just an academic, you're too complicated, you know, we need to boil it down. And it actually felt this possibly similarly patronizing as someone saying, yeah, you're just some native, right? I can't explain it to you. And basically the journalist treated me exactly the same way, wow, you're an academic. So, you know, what I write is right and I didn't have to show you. And I preferred always working with journalists to say, of course, my freedom as a journalist entails not having everything vetoed by you, but as a good practice, I like to show my work to you just to make sure that it's correct. And I really found those two types of journalists and I never made this connection until you mentioned this now. Yeah, so it was just short, I'll be short, I'll be quick. I just wanted to share a positive experience that I've had with the ongoing consent practice. And that's that I was interviewed probably like four or five years ago for a book. And it was by somebody who was at the University of Winnipeg and they were gonna use my real name. And I had agreed to all of this and I had signed the consent forms and they had my physical consent forms. And then months and months passed by before we actually did the interview. And when we did the interview, when we set that up, I was unwell. So as somebody, like I've shared this already but I have bipolar disorder. And so when she called me to do the interview, I spent two sessions with her for three hours each session talking. And she was recording it and already had my consent. And it wasn't until six months later when she checked back in that I even remembered we had the interview. And she gave me the transcripts and I was able to go through and say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Everything that I had shared was accurate and was truthful. But there were things in there that I shared that I would never, that I likely wouldn't have shared with friends that were on that transcript. And I was able to say, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is this like, absolutely. And I was really lucky in the sense that she was a good friend and she was somebody that I was going to be checking back in with me. But I hadn't asked for her to do that. But the practice that she used saved me from all kinds of difficulty. And she had no idea. She had no idea that that's where I was at that point. And so it's a, I don't know. I was really happy that she went about things that way. And it really saved me, you know, a lot of difficulty down the line. Thanks. Thank you. It's nice to end on a high note. If you don't mind, I'm going to say thank you so very much to the group. And invite number two to come up now. If they would please. And we'll continue this conversation now. We are, yeah, if y'all wanna stand up and do the 17 stretch or something that would be fine. And I realize that lunch is imminent so I would like to get through. We've talked about a number of things and perhaps could discuss new elements in concert with the scenarios as they're coming up. I'd still like to give you 20 minutes, but we'll try and address new issues. We won't discuss maybe compensation again or, yeah. This is super, yes. We were going to be breaking for lunch in about 20 minutes. Can we do that? Maybe we'll go through this and then we'll touch base on that. I really hate to break up great discussions. Would it be okay if we do one more because we were going to, you're all right with that? Yeah, okay. And then eat perhaps. Maybe we'll shorten lunch because we do want to do the closing circle. But we are talking about, yes. Somewhere else. Yeah. I hope everyone's not too hungry. I know we kind of got trained this week to expect a huge lunch at noon. So I'm kind of feeling it too and sorry you have to listen to us if you're starving. But I guess I offered to speak on behalf of my group because I feel a little bit of heightened responsibility for our scenario because it's funny the description of the primary researcher is basically a description of me. Like an exact description. She's a non-indigenous PhD student at Carlton in anthropology. But I really wanted my group up here because well there's another anthropologist too. But we've all got different expertise and everyone's really knowledgeable. So we were able to see all of these issues from multiple angles and I can't speak to everyone's perspective. So I hope my group just kind of like jumps in if I'm not representing kind of the debate or their ideas very clearly. So I'll just start by reading off the scenario. I guess what the research question was is how do urban indigenous peoples use community programming to share traditional knowledge and in turn incorporate it into their daily lives? So in the scenario this researcher has been volunteering for several years at local indigenous organizations in Ottawa including the Wabano Center and the O'dawa Native Friendship Center. Oh my goodness. There, water ceremony, hello. Oh, good idea. Okay, maybe we need to recover for a minute. Okay, so the communities involved is stated as urban indigenous population including First Nations, MATs and right away that sparked something because we were like there's a lot of Inuit in Ottawa why aren't they included? But I won't get into that now I'll just read off the research description. But what ended up happening with our group the first day is that we spent most of our time kind of taking a critical look at the research scenario and pulling apart the research question and wondering what kind of knowledge is being produced by asking these questions and what can we do with that knowledge and where is it gonna go? So we needed a lot of time to really get through those kinds of big questions. And actually we kind of at the end of that day came to a realization that we didn't feel like we were ready, I know other groups have mentioned that too that we weren't ready to put together a research agreement because there's so much information missing and it's not a perfect research proposal and it really came down to we would debate things for a long, the biggest thing that we had to debate was the benefits which I'll read off in a minute. But we weren't convinced that would like naturally come from this research question we weren't sure that that was really something these communities could benefit from and I guess it came down to the only way we can answer it like we debated it a long time but the only way we could answer it is by consulting these actual communities and having their input. So we decided to start from the point that maybe the researcher hasn't or is just about to begin the consultation process. So what we ended up doing was kind of putting a plan together for how that process would look like. So, and this is what I really admire about my group members. It wasn't just setting out all the questions that needed to be asked and the different issues that might come up but also offering a couple different solutions or a couple different ways these ethical questions could be handled and offer that to whoever we'd be consulting with so that they could have something to instead of asking them to come up with all the answers to give a few solutions and say, well, we're open to other things and here are some ways we could approach that. And I really admired how my group members were trying to produce solutions because one thing we were really concerned about with this project was and the process of consultation is overtaxing our research participants and you'll kind of get to see what I mean because I haven't read off the research project so I'll do that now before I say too much. The student researcher will conduct an ethnographic study in order to better understand how the urban indigenous population in Ottawa utilizes programs offered by local community organizations for the purpose of sharing traditional knowledge and in turn how they incorporate that knowledge into their daily lives. In order to gather data, the student will participate as a volunteer at various community events including feasts, pow-wows and ceremonies over the course of a year. She will keep a journal of her observations for later analysis. She will also conduct key informant interviews and talking circles, in other words focus groups, with elders, community members and staff. The findings of this study will be shared with participants at a community feast, be used by local organizations in future funding proposals to highlight the importance of culturally relevant and safe programming and will be used to develop articles for publication in peer review journals and conference presentations. So right off the bat, especially given that our group wasn't all anthropologists, there was some ethical questions right away about the kind of methods because they're sort of intrusive. Is it appropriate to bring a journal into ceremony and take notes? What kind of information would come up in focus groups? And also if the question itself is a bit paternalistic by saying I'm a researcher, I can tell you how you use your traditional knowledge and if that kind of question and that approach is gonna be useful for a community. And but actually we were kind of divided because we found ways that it could be useful in terms of translating needs for these kinds of services. So that's kind of where we landed in terms of we need to figure out what this consultation is gonna look like and what kinds of things we need to ask before we can make any decisions about this. So we kind of worked with the sheet anyways in making this kind of plan. And it might take me a minute to get organized because I'm, I just wanna pick out the things that haven't been said yet that were kind of specific to our project. So under voluntariness, we talked about withdrawal and redaction of information similar to some of the other groups. We wrestled a lot with the idea of whether or not it was coercive and in terms of compensating participants, that was one thing that we decided right off the bat that would need to be consulted about what was appropriate for the different demographics we'd be working with. But one thing we felt we need to guarantee in terms of that is that I guess one of the benefits is that the researcher is offering labor and helping with these events, which we imagine would be like cleaning dishes or transporting equipment or whatever kind of volunteer help they need. And that we would guarantee that that would happen whether or not this project went forward. And the same with compensation, that it would happen whether or not people are withdrawing. We also talked about giving a 24 hour period between informing participants of the project and having them sign and consent and move forward. Which I guess deals with a lot of the different issues around if somebody's, like if they understand the project, if they're in the right mindset to be able to consent to something, giving a little extra time kind of helps with dealing with that. Confidentiality under informed consent or I guess that's all I'm gonna, I'll talk about that later maybe. So in terms of informed consent, a big question was who needs to be represented, who's gonna come to the table. And we came up with the idea that we should work with a community advisory committee on the research. But then we also struggled with overtaxing an organization that's they're already running at capacity and providing services. So we thought maybe that advisory board should be composed of the users of the services instead of the organizers. I don't know if I'm missing anything about that. But we ended up with a lot of open ended questions of things that we would need. We just, we weren't comfortable making decisions when we didn't have the information and the approval. One thing that was really important that we talked a lot about was the researcher's duty to translate what the research was about. And that really spoke to me in my research too. Because when you're doing anthropological research, you're informed by a lot of theory that kind of guides the way you ask your research question. And we talked about, is that just like two different worlds that can't come together, like just two different languages? And we kind of talked through it and came to a realization that theory has to touch down somewhere. Otherwise it's just kind of a waste of time. And we talked about it more and kind of exercised it too. And we thought if we really understand what we're doing in our research project, we should be able to translate it in an understandable way. And that if we're not able to do that, we have to work a little bit more. And that this is really important. And it's something I haven't thought about enough myself in my own, developing my own research. So I'm really glad for that insight about the importance of translation and making sure that understand, not just saying what it's about, but making sure it's understood as well. So confidentiality was an open question for us. We didn't try to answer that. But we came up with a couple solutions of how it could be approached. And then we would hopefully bring that to our advisory board. So we talked about if participants want to be recognized for their stories and their knowledge, or maybe have like a pseudonym, but keep their story intact. Or if it's completely anonymous, we'd want to bring options to the table. So in terms of recruitment, we talked about it a lot, but in the end, it ended up being pretty straightforward. We decided that this researcher would build on her existing relationships and work through word of mouth. And that work with the groups of people that knew each other. And then we also brought up the idea of information sessions. I don't know if you have more to add to that idea. It was kind of a new idea to me that I thought was really interesting. I think the main idea was that there might be sessions that the researcher would hold at the agencies to provide information about the purpose of the study and more information about the background and to answer any questions to community members just so that they could learn about it as a means of recruitment. And I guess it would be more like a social, informal kind of, maybe we'd provide food, I don't know. Instead of putting people on the spot, it would just be to learn about what's happening. So that a collection, we talked a lot about the appropriateness and kind of ethnographic methods and if they're appropriate in this research scenario. Might be too hungry to get into this debate because it was like a pretty, I don't know if anyone wants to add. I don't wanna put you guys on the spot, but. Yeah, it got a bit feisty because like the anthropologists had to defend themselves. But we weren't bullheaded or anything. We accepted that journaling might not be appropriate in ceremony and we talked about the benefits of journaling because, and participant observation because there's more than one way of learning. You can learn by somebody telling you about something or you can learn by being there in that environment and doing things and acting. And doing participant observation and journaling is an opportunity to reflect on those other ways of learning. But at the same time, it might not be appropriate in some context. So that would be another question in our, yeah. By journaling, do you mean like in the session, in the ceremony, or do you mean like an auto ethnography kind of situation where you reflect and you, well, or that you leave the ceremony and you reflect and write your experiences? I think we were talking about doing it there. And we mentioned both, but we felt that like it shouldn't be kind of like behind the scenes that it should be an open part, like a transparent kind of practice that people knew that the researcher would be taking notes and observing. But yeah, we were talking about, we got into a whole debate about different research paradigms and how reflexivity and noting your position as a researcher and how you relate to other people influences the kind of things that you learn. So journaling is also useful for keeping that in check. And not, so that way the researcher isn't just saying, you know, I'm an objective expert and I know all of this about these people. It's more like I came to know certain things through this relationship. Yeah, but I think it's hard to do auto ethnography if you don't recognize yourself as an insider. But it's similar, yeah. Did you want to raise any other points or can we open the floor? Are we running out of time? Yeah, these are really great conversations and very thoughtful. I guess the biggest thing was ongoing consent, how we can do that without overtaxing an organization that's already has a big burden of providing services. That was one big one. Also about ownership of data and how to give back. And then I think the biggest thing that we spent the most time talking about that was really difficult was understanding what is a benefit from this type of research project and how can we weigh that with potential harms. It's a difficult kind of thing to think about. Yes. Okay. I think when you talk about consent and informed consent it's not just about getting permission to interview people. It's also consent to participate and it's consent. If you go to ceremony you need to know if you're allowed yet to go. Like you should use the guidance of the people who are there to tell you whether or not it's acceptable. I don't think any white researcher can go into a place and say I'm gonna document, I'm gonna journal, call it what you will if you don't have the permission to be there or to write about it. I think full stop you're not doing it. But that's, and I think researcher positionality if you're writing as a white researcher part of your positionality is I'm a white researcher and I was allowed to participate in these ceremonies but I'm not gonna write about them because it's not for you as a white researcher to be the one writing it. But that's my own reflections on that. Yeah, I agree, but unfortunately it's not the way anthropology was done in the past. They'd kind of just like, yeah, yeah. No, but I feel like we need to clarify that that it's an issue that needs to be addressed. I just want to remind you that Aboriginal ceremonies are sacred to that group and it may be that you have these motives for being there but you have to treat the whole thing with respect and remember that if you were ever allowed to be there that you have to treat the information or whatever with great respect and you have to be really careful and you have to put the good of the community before your own personal motives in being there. So I just wanted to remind you, it is a sacred time and for the, as you know the Aboriginal spiritual ceremonies were always discounted by outsiders, by mainstream and you just can't barge in and do what you want for your own sake and it would be sacrilege. I agree and that's one of the reasons we had a bit of a struggle with this research if the benefit is, assuming she did do it in a respectful way, if this type of project is really necessary for the community because it's a sensitive and sacred area. I just wanted to, oh, sorry Joe. This is a facetious remark but people who commit sacrilege usually fry. In eternity. Oh! Okay, thanks for inviting me. At stake here, apparently. I just wanted to, nope. I just had a conversation. Oh, I just wanted to bring up something else too which is, and you know, this is the perspective of my, from where I'm coming from, from my own community but when, you know, you can have five people that invite you into their lodge and say you can document something but, and you can say well I have permission and you can go and you can do that but you have to recognize like the way that I was taught is those five people don't own that ceremony. That ceremony belongs to the people and so how then do the, like, it's communal, right? So you can't just have the permission of five people to take that ceremony and do what you want with it because it doesn't just belong to those five people it belongs to the whole community. So you have to think about that too, like how that fits in but anyway. I think in terms of ongoing consent it wasn't about yes or no, can I have this knowledge but like what can I know and how, because we talked about how are we gonna, we had the debate is this researcher gonna learn some traditional knowledge and we were like, we decided that if it was a project about how it's being incorporated into people's daily lives you kind of do have to know. So then there was the question of what happens with that knowledge is the researcher gonna publish it so that would be another question about what can be learned and where can that knowledge be shared or reproduced or sorry. I think that some of this knowledge, the people want to research and from what I'm going through finding out this knowledge and bringing a lot of this knowledge back to the people. I don't know if the researchers have to go into ceremonies in order to understand what's going on because some of these ceremonies are protected and what I know about the ceremonies today, I give you a little bit of my knowledge and understanding of it and I think you're right, it shouldn't be exposed. Like I said, our ancestors went through a lot and a lot of our elders are gifted to go back and talk to our ancestors and ask what is it that they need to bring out and some of the teachings and through us, we bring it out and we don't have to have a major ceremony in order to gain that understanding and how is it going to help our people from gaining that understanding and that's how I'm seeing it now. A lot of people will not like to be interviewed. A lot of them, like I said earlier, have forgotten all those teachings and they wouldn't be able to answer a lot of these questions you may be bringing forward to them. So you might have to seek out the knowledge seekers, the spiritual elders that are there that have that knowledge and that can receive those knowledge and also like for me to bring that knowledge back to our people to help them remember it's there in their blood, it's there. We just got awakened that and it took me a while to awaken that part of me in order to share some of the knowledge. I know. Noguma. Thanks. So I'll bring this this way. Derek will go that way. I walked. Who goes first, do you want to go first? Gladious style. Oh, I go. Yeah. First of all, we do a lot of ceremony here in a city and a lot of times too as well, people come even with their phones and their pictures and we have to remind them, no pictures please, and but also too when you go into ceremony too when you bring your own notes, no, because you're supposed to it's the tradition is you learn orally. The other part is the respect to but I understand where the need for research comes in and that's why in a day one where I mentioned, for example, having the researcher, the anthropologist come in because of what happened to us in terms of also the confiscation of our sacred items. And then when you're looking at, for example, the repatriation of them, and one was gonna be on display and they were touting it was this and this and this when you need to do the research to confirm that. And with the anthropologist, they could only go so far. For example, with that certain item, they only went back to 1870 and this item is older. So again, that's where, for example, that's where the oral history would come in and that's where your process would come in as well and what do you disclose and what don't you disclose? But I see this too as a Nishnabe too as well because I got kind of frustrated about we're going to see these, the items together because they were seen only as collectibles to be traded because some of them went on Sotheby's but they're missing the spiritual impact and the spirit of the object too as well but it is seen just as a commercial, a commercial good to be traded as an art object and it was more deeper and it had such significance. So it said, but then that's where research comes in now and I was so with this researcher because because of her expertise, she opened a lot of doors in the mainstream area but then the need to open the doors on the native side in terms of research is required and that's where your protocol would come in too. We got you. So I'm just gonna probably refocus things a little bit. You guys had a really tough question because, and I'm assuming that this question was put in this way so we would have this discussion. I'm assuming. Because when you look at what our case study was, we were told what knowledge we were collecting. It was plant knowledge. You've got traditional knowledge. It's not even defined and you've already been placed in this thing. It's a very intrusive method as well. Yeah, like yours was dictated a lot more I think for this discussion. So I would actually say kudos to you, Megan, for standing up there and putting this all forward. Yeah, you have done really well. Like, and I just really want to point that out that you guys worked with what you had and you weren't saying, well, we're making this plan and we're going in and doing this instead. This is the information that we're working with. So I just kind of bring that back and I think we have some really crafty organisers here, obviously. So well done for that discussion. This was a particularly tough one. It was to bring home the points around conflict of interest, thank you, that you had a relationship already in the organisation. The organisation actually wants to use some of the information that you as a researcher would gather for them so that they could go and write grant proposals so they could bring money into their organisations in order to offer more programming so that the users of their space and their programs would actually have more robust programs. But yes, very much a part of it because the scenario talks about the fact that the researcher would go to community events like pow-wows and feasts, both of which for the most part if I may speak freely are open in public events unless otherwise said. But that ceremony was really the thing that you guys clued in on and so that becomes what ended up being the discussion in the room is around trying to determine and that will be the people who have invited you into their space. They'll tell you what it is that you can have access to, what it is that you can write about that you can reflect on in your journals. So this was a very, very tough one to talk about where could you legitimately go, what could you legitimately document, who would you share the information with and why? And this was a really mixed bag. So yes, thank you so very much for all of you. So I'm loving the conversation because this is actually what this institute is about is not to teach you how to tick the boxes on a protocol, but actually how to think these things through and figure out who it is that you can reach out to help you. So we're gonna break now for lunch. Thank God you're all saying. And we will come back and we will do the other two groups and on a good note. So thank you very much.