By Dr. Jen Sidorova

I am an Indigenous Sakha researcher from Yakutsk, Siberia, Russia with over 10 years of experience. I graduated with a PhD in Political Science from the University of Calgary in 2020. Although I come from academia, I believe in the decolonizing power of research. With my experience working for Indigenous and non-profit organizations, and by meeting the priorities and goals of communities themselves, I hope that one day research will empower Indigenous peoples across the world by supporting their policy objectives, preserving culture and language, and educating youth.

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As an Indigenous Sakha political scientist originally from Siberia, Russia, I have been asked a few times: “Can you help us, non-Indigenous scholars, understand Indigenous Knowledge?” They don’t even realize how complex this question is. There are many ways I could answer this, and I am still not sure. The only thing I know for certain is that working with Indigenous Peoples, regardless of one’s background, requires constant self-awareness and self-checks.

“What am I doing right now? Why am I asking this question? What will I do with this information?” These are the kinds of questions that should always arise when a researcher works with people in communities.

Academia often exists to extract knowledge from marginalized communities to find ways to control them better. While this statement may seem obvious, there is still some hesitation from marginalized scholars themselves to admit it. One might think, “I am not like them; I have lived experience and have faced a lot of discrimination in my life. I am different.” But it is not one’s fault that Western-trained scholars who are Indigenous can also apply colonial methods. This is how we were all trained. Regardless of how Indigenous and culturally relevant we are as scholars, we cannot deny that the moment we arrive in the communities with our own research agendas and priorities to fulfill, we all turn into the very person we don’t want to be.

This undesirable persona we try to avoid is the white academic who comes to study and do research on Indigenous peoples. I imagine a British entomologist landing on a tropical island to study exotic butterflies. Every person from an Indigenous community who is interviewed by academic researchers is analogous to this exotic butterfly with vivid, gorgeous wings. Beautiful, unique, exotic, authentic—anything but human.

And every time scholars, even Indigenous scholars, come to the communities with their own research agendas—even with the best intentions—they carry this colonial lens in their minds. Subconsciously, they see the people they interview as butterflies. I remember when I went fishing with my uncle to the native hunting grounds where my ancestors used to hunt hare and ducks. We had a wonderful family time, but I also came to interview him about our family’s Indigenous knowledge. The second he started talking about the spirits of the land and beliefs about hunting rituals, I felt a spark of passion and excitement inside. But I didn’t realize at the time that he had turned from my uncle into a research participant, and I had become a Western-trained researcher eager to collect data. His stories, which he generously shared with me, turned into quotes in my articles. I realized that his knowledge about the land reminded him of our relatives who passed away long ago.

After returning home, my uncle took out an old photo album and started showing me pictures from when he was young and when his parents and grandparents were still alive. I felt a sense of vulnerability around these stories. It’s hard to open up, and even more challenging not to start processing the past. For Indigenous peoples, knowledge is their life; it is their past and present. Every story is a piece of their family memories. I judged myself for turning his precious memories into a bunch of fancy academic words like “sustainability” and “preservation.” My researcher persona was happy to have collected this rare ‘study material,’ but my niece persona was saddened by the realization that the only reason I had come to listen to these stories and witness the fishing on our family’s land was for my postdoctoral study.

Reflecting on this trip, I thought about how vulnerable Indigenous communities are—regardless of the research topic—when it comes to sharing their knowledge, their stories, memories, and insights. Was the intention of my study good? Did I extract knowledge just to write a dry academic article that would be filed in journal digital archives? All my relatives knew I was collecting material. Did they want this study? They were, rather, intrigued that my uncle’s pictures and stories would appear in a fancy Western academic journal in English.

This study was, no doubt, very personal to me. Subsequently, I left academia and started working for Indigenous and other nonprofit organizations. I interviewed a variety of Indigenous people for my work, including midwives, people with disabilities, other researchers, and activists. Yet, every time they shared personal pieces of information with me, I offered to share my own stories as well. I talked about my grandmother in healthcare, my mother collecting medicinal herbs, and my own encounters with discrimination. My managers were aware of this and didn’t say anything against it. This experience made me realize that reciprocity in research is not only possible but perhaps should be mandatory.

I also realized that the reason why the Indigenous peoples shared their vulnerable stories with me was because the ideas behind the project were not mine. I was a tool—a person with the skill to turn human experiences into information that could contribute, even if just a little bit, to changing the existing system. I didn’t set up the priorities for the research; the goals and objectives of these studies were voiced by the communities themselves. That insight gave me hope about the possibility of research becoming a decolonizing tool.

Coming back to my uncle’s story, I didn’t share anything back with him. I didn’t talk about sunny hikes in the mountains of Canada, the difficulties of finishing my studies, or my relationship problems. I felt it was not necessary, and there should be moments of silence. I honored him while he spoke, and he was happy to see my interest. In some way, by sharing these stories, my uncle was fulfilling his obligation to pass this knowledge to the newer generation of family members.

He knew his stories would be written down, and more people—including other Indigenous scholars—would learn about how he spent his time in nature. That was his research priority, and I was a tool—a person who could preserve this knowledge. With that, I followed the community’s wishes and used my skills to keep the stories. But beyond that, I also learned an important lesson: a researcher must follow the community’s research agenda and treat this knowledge as a precious gift. What comes from knowledge keepers isn’t just dry data—it is their lived experience.