Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health 2(2)

During the summer of 2002, we worked on a project exploring issues surrounding ethics and research with Aboriginal people. As we reviewed a number of articles published in this area, our library and Internet searches were accompanied by multiple conversations. Within these conversations we often wondered about the written words, words primarily written by aca-demics, rather than community members. In the written documents, many authors identify some of the complexities and ethical issues that are equally exciting, frustrating and engaging. Overall, however, there is a dearth of pub-lished and readily accessible discourse on ethics in the context of research and Indigenous communities, perhaps reflecting the early stage of critically contemplating the ethical implications of research within Aboriginal com-munities. During the fall of 2002 we took the class From Written Text to Oral Tradition at the University of Alberta with Dr. Stan Wilson. Throughout the course we often thought about our ethics project and began to recognize th