Cultivating allyship in academia: towards culturally responsive ethics and methodologies in western agroforestry research

Abstract

As a practice of integrating perennial agricultural systems with long-term land stewardship, agroforestry is rooted in Indigenous cultural and ecological contexts that extend around the world and through centuries. However, the modern science of agroforestry has largely been conducted within Western and Westernized institutions where researchers, many of them non-Indigenous, are typically trained in ways that contrast with Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, and that can result in extraction and exploitation of Indigenous knowledges. This reflexive review of relevant research approaches and methodologies considers how non-Native agroforestry scientists can begin to shift away from patterns of exploitation in land-based research, and move instead towards cultivating allyship and cultural humility, ethically centering Indigenous contributions and perspectives. Drawing from ethics guidelines, community-based and participatory action research methodologies, Indigenous methodologies, and intercultural case studies, and written from my perspective as a non-Native academic in agroforestry in the United States, this paper contributes to the limited literature on methodological praxis as allyship in land-based research, towards elucidating approaches that can create new patterns of respect, responsibility, and relational accountability.