Indigenous cultural identity of research authors standard. Research and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in rural health journals

INTRODUCTION

‘It is vital that Indigenous researchers are recognised and duly acknowledged, and that the research being published is culturally appropriate’ (Professor Donald Warne, Oglala Lakota, International Adviser, Australian Journal of Rural Health, 2021).

Background

In health research publication, it is difficult to distinguish authors who self-identify as Indigenous peoples, for example, as First Nations, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Māori, Pacifica, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Métis, Inuit or as any of the 370 million Indigenous peoples worldwide. Their invisibility is partly due to the lack of attribution in the publications; for instance, the author list – with first and last names only – restricts the conveyance of identity. Our goal as an academic community should be to expand the inclusiveness of research governance to include publication governance. Editorial rules stipulate the publication of ethics approvals, statements of interest, organisational affiliations, declaration of funding sources and author contributions to the articles, but what about Indigenous cultural identity? The issue of author identity is especially relevant for rural and remote health journals because Indigenous peoples living in rural and remote health locations experience health inequities linked to racism and cultural suppression. We, the editorial teams of the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine (CJRM), Australian Journal of Rural Health (AJRH) and the Rural and Remote Health (RRH), are changing our editorial rules so that research published about Indigenous peoples includes Indigenous peoples as authors, or evidence is provided of Indigenous peoples’ genuine engagement in all the stages of the research process, including crafting the manuscript. Our next step is to propose the development of an Indigenous Cultural Identity of Research Authors Standard (ICIRAS, pronounced ‘I-keye-ras’, short ‘I’ sound in Indigenous, hard ‘k’ sound for Culture and long ‘eye’ sound in Identity).

Environmental scan

Discerning the cultural provenance of the authors of a research paper involving Indigenous peoples is difficult (Cultural provenance is a concept that signals the diversity of Indigenous peoples’ cultural roots specific to local tribes, e.g., Ngiyampaa is one of hundreds of tribes of Indigenous Australians). Published articles vary in how the Indigenous identity is flagged, and for most journals reporting the Indigenous identity of authors is optional and, therefore, often completely absent in many manuscripts. An environmental scan was conducted to detect the Indigenous cultural identity of authors using a novel method of hand searching author libraries, and scholarly databases, for example, where Indigenous author identity was explicit. Notation of cultural provenance was variable. It appeared in the byline of both the webpage header and in the pdf, researcher positionality, acknowledgements section, ethics section, methods section, materials and methods section, the introduction and preceding the methods, citation format, front page of author information on preprint and indicated with additional author information symbols (*, †, ‡, §).

Definition

For the purpose of this standard, we specify Indigenous cultural identity as the self-identified Indigenous status of authors whose ancestors ‘inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived’.[¹] Many Indigenous peoples have a shared experience of occupation, settlement or colonisation. To align with current United Nations nomenclature, we use the term Indigenous peoples.

Lock (Ngiyampaa), Mark J PhD1,; McMillan (Wiradjuri), Faye DHSc2; Warne (Oglala Lakota), Donald MD3; Bennett (Gamilaraay), Bindi PhD4; Kidd (Ngāpuhi), Jacquie PhD5; Williams (Bkejwanong), Naomi PhD student6; Martire (Australian settler), Jodie Lea MCommun(CSC)7; Worley, Paul PhD8; Hutten-Czapski, Peter MD9; Saurman, Emily PhD10; Matthews (Quandamooka), Veronica PhD11; Walke (Bundjalung), Emma12; Edwards (Worimi), Dave BSc12; Owen (Nurrunga and Ngarrendjeri), Julie PhD13; Browne, Jennifer PhD15; Roberts, Russell PhD16. Indigenous cultural identity of research authors standard: Research and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in rural health journals. Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine 27(3):p 104-110, Jul–Sep 2022. | DOI: 10.4103/cjrm.cjrm_25_22