Sharing elders' stories through culturally resonant research: A narrative perspective on the Kūpuna Interview Project.

Abstract

This article provides a first-person perspective on the Kūpuna Interview Project, a culturally resonant, community-based, qualitative research project designed to examine the health experiences of Native Hawaiian elders. The voices included in this article are from two elder research participants, three representatives of a community partner organization, one university faculty member, and one student member of the research team, all of Native Hawaiian ancestry. Together, these individual testimonies highlight the importance of community-engaged, culturally relevant narrative research. Lessons learned include the importance of self-reflexivity among members of the research team when working with the community, meaningful gifts for participants, the need for interviewers to take time getting to know the participants and their communities, and the potential for research to create and strengthen meaningful relationships. Finally, this project demonstrates the potential of future research in community psychology to intentionally facilitate spaces for narrative co-creation by participants and researchers.