By: Katrina Anthony, Geraldine Andersen, James Jacque, Debbie Lyall, Lena Onalik, Inez Shiwak, Liz Pijogge, Kayla Wyatt, Elizabeth Tuglavina, Max Liboiron, Paul McCarney, Alex Bond, Laura Crick, Joby Razzel-Hollis, Reuben Flowers, Valerie Flowers, Nick Flowers, Sarah Semigak, Josephine Jararuse, Lawrence Semigak, Sukattai Lidd, Tyriekah Semigak, Beverly Hunter, Ian Winters, Nora Winters, Joseph Onalik, Lauren Pilgrim, Philip Abel, Annie Lidd, Maria Merkuratsuk, Carla Pamak, Michelle Saunders, Darrel Lyall, Louisa Lucy – Broomfield, Emma Haye, Joe Atsatata, Todd Broomfield, Julia Dicker, Liz Evans – Mitchell, Errol Andersen, Malcolm Wolfrey, Susan Nochasak, Martin Onalik, Seth Tuglavina, Bridget Kakooza, Silaqqi Jacque

I would like to see more researchers train community members to be able to do the work and get paid the same amount as a grad student because they’re doing the same work that a grad student may be doing, but they’re not getting paid the same amount. I would like to see that the knowledge and the experience that we are bringing to the table [are] just as equally important as the knowledge that the scientists or the researchers bring to the table.

– Carla Pamak (in Pijogge et al., 2024)

Our research team is a mix of northern-based Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and southern-based researchers. Often, the research team extends to Inuit community members that we learn from or analyze information with on the Land, in boats, and over email. Inuit hunters and fishers bring us samples, and we (the southern-based researchers) say, “Where did this come from?” and they tell us the place name in English and sometimes in Inuttut, what’s good about that spot (good fishing, but bad flies), and we work out the latitude and longitude data for that spot, sometimes with them and sometimes with others. If we’re lucky, someone shares the meal made from the animal that sample came from.

In traditional Western academia, those of us with university degrees would write up whatever knowledge came from “field work” (work that takes place on the Land in Indigenous territories and homelands) and interactions with community members, put our names on it, and submit it for publication. Now, that’s not good enough– or rather it was never good enough, and now more community members are speaking out or joining the conversation about attributing their knowledge and recognizing their roles in research. 

The Community Authorship and Attribution Working Group

CLEAR Lab discussions identified the need for a process to guide community authorship and attribution decisions. These discussions also coincided with conversations and considerations taking place in other projects I (Katrina) and Paul McCarney were involved in. We fundamentally recognize that decisions about research products may look different between communities, projects, and groups of people. A one-size-fits-all approach is not desirable or possible. However, we also recognize that our value to appropriately, justly, and properly attribute the knowledge and roles of everyone who contributes to research can guide us in making decisions across research contexts that enact that value. 

Moreover, just because certain people (junior researchers, gender minorities, Indigenous Peoples, community knowledge-holders) are routinely and summarily excluded from authorship on projects they/we are part of does not mean that the ideal correction of those power dynamics is to automatically add us as co-authors. Authorship is not inherently good for everyone, given complex relationships with universities, knowledge professions, and communities. We must think about principles and processes, not demands or rules. The decision to be an author (or not) must also be an expression of autonomy based on collective and individual priorities, aspirations, and values.

Max, Paul, and I (Katrina) decided to start a Community Authorship and Attribution Working Group to hold discussions about how to structure decision-making processes for authorship involving community researchers appropriately. Right now, the group consists of James Jacque (Nunatsiavummiuk), Debbie Lyall (Nunatsiavummiuk), Inez Shiwak (Nunatsiavummiuk), Lena Onalik (Nunatsiavummiuk), Geraldine Andersen (Nunatsiavummiuk), Paul McCarney (settler) and Katrina Anthony (Nunatsiavummiuk). 

The working group members and others in the larger CLEAR and Nunatsiavut Plastics research team have been part of multiple, structured conversations about authorship that the working group is building on. Here is some of what we’ve heard and said so far.

From No One to Everyone

In a workshop in Apvitok (Hopedale), when the formal research team brought up the idea of workshop participants being listed as co-authors in publications and outputs that would eventually use information gathered in Hopedale, workshop participant Beverly Hunter said, “When I contribute to something, I don’t consider myself an author.”

Paul asked, “How come?”

Beverly replied, “Because I learned the school way of being an author, you gotta write it down, and you gotta be right there writing it and doing reports, writing stuff […] on paper. To me, that’s what being an author is.” She continued, “before [this conversation] we didn’t think there was a chance we could be an author because we’re just too busy being on the land and doing physical things. Or even just talking about stuff, being interviewed” by researchers. Beverly is describing research activities, so one way to interpret this last point is that community members were too busy creating and sharing knowledge to be considered researchers and thus credited with authorship. 

But a shift happened during the meeting. Valerie Flowers said, “Is it fair to say that, traditionally, we thought that authors would be the ‘main’ people that keep it together? And then they acknowledged the people that helped out?… Is that the traditional way?” 

She was looking at Max (aka Dr. Liboiron), who replied, “Yeah, but the problem with that is who gets to decide who’s ‘main’ and who’s not?”

Valarie said, “Exactly.”

Max added, “And what counts as main?”

And Valerie summed up what would become the workshop consensus: “Well, if that’s the case, everyone should be an author.” 

This is not the first time this decision has been made during a conversation about community attribution in research in Nunatsiavut. In a meeting in December 2023, Paul, Liz Pijogge, and Kayla Wyatt had a similar conversation with participants from an earlier workshop in Nain in 2021 (Pijogge et al., 2024), some of whom are now in the Community Authorship and Attribution Working Group. 

Participants at the meeting in Nain in December 2023 decided that everyone who attended the workshop should be listed as an author, including all youth, bear guards, and camp managers. There was a clear recognition that writing was not the only valued form of labour that contributed to the knowledge written in the report. Everyone who contributed to the workshop also contributed to the development of the report; without each person’s individual contributions, the report would not have been the same piece of information. The end result of that meeting in Nain was the multi-authored  Nain On The-Land Workshop 2022: What We Said (Pijogge et al. 2024). The decision about authorship turned a “what we heard” report into a “what we said” report. 

I (Katrina) feel that seeing the overall shift in perspective and understanding about co-authorship from local and external participants show just how important it is to have these conversations and to work by what we discuss. To be inclusive, communicate well and dedicate time to relationships with people involved. It is a process we all hope to continue to see until it is the norm. 

Authorship is not the only form of attribution

During the Hopedale workshop, Valerie, Max, and Katrina discussed the importance of being acknowledged for specific roles and what someone does in a project. Valerie said, “I think everyone should be acknowledged somehow. Personally, I would like to be acknowledged but not be an author because I haven’t said a whole lot. I’ve done things, so acknowledge me that way.”

Valerie changed that as the conversation went on, later arguing acknowledgement sections can meaningfully attribute people’s roles as co-authors: “I say, acknowledge everyone by being an author because we all participated and then acknowledge us for what we did.”

In the meeting in Nain, attribution went beyond authorship and included ensuring that everyone’s photo was in the report so they were represented fully. People decided that direct quotes from workshop participants should be bolded to stand out so that people can see everyone’s personal words clearly. Even when we have a group of co-authors, we note which direct quotes or ideas came from a particular person, since the co-authors’ social, cultural, and community location does matter to the type of knowledge shared–such as when an Elder speaks. 

You have to make the space, and you have to make it right 

During the conversation in Hopedale, Susan Nochasak noted that “Not all researchers […] really consider anyone else the author other than themselves.” Beverly Hunter added, “Inclusion is our Inuit way, and you’re doing that” by including community members in conversations about authorship.

Yet making space for conversations about authorship, when the role of an author is often a guarded, elite position also means making a certain kind of space. Susan Nochasak theorized that, “If we had these conversations [about authorship] inside [like in a board room] it wouldn’t have been as comfortable.” On the land, there is less judgment on what you say and how you say it, so collaborative conversations across power dynamics become more possible. Being on the land also emphasizes and makes visible where certain types of knowledge are at home and clearly leading the group, so there is less space for specific voices to dominate conversations based on traditional Western power structures.

Next steps

Other themes and insights have come up in our discussions, such as the positive ripple effects that occur in a research program due to community co-authorship and proper attribution; that attribution is not only co-authorship but can and must appear in other ways in publications; that framing conversations about knowledge is crucial to these discussions; and that there are personal and interpersonal repercussions from being recognized as an author. These are all things we have to consider moving forward. 

We are now focusing on how to have a community authorship discussion for a large report that contains five years of research from across Nunatsiavut and has potentially over 100 authors. These authors range from youth to Elders, community members to external researchers, and many individuals who contain multiple and overlapping identities and roles. We are trying to figure out a good approach to discussing the concepts and principles of authorship and attribution with community researchers, which requires meeting with everyone who is listed as a potential co-author and getting to a mutual understanding about how they want to be acknowledged for their contributions to the work, and importantly, everyone consenting to the direction we go with authorship. 

We need to have conversations about authorship decisions in group settings, not one-on-one, because the outcomes impact communities and because the principles of community co-authorship should come from community values and project-specific considerations. From working on the large research report, we want to create a process to identify the values and the group of people in each project that can guide decision-making when it comes to authorship and attribution with Nunatsiavummiut. From these guidelines, it can branch down into community-specific and project-specific approaches (and they can overlap). 

---

For more information about the Community Authorship and Attribution Working Group, contact Katrina Anthony. 

Further reading

Further reading on the topic of community attribution, the relationship between colonialism and authorship, and principles of Indigenous co-authorship, see: 

Anderson, Jane, and Kimberly Christen. (2019). Decolonizing Attribution: Traditions of Exclusion. JRL 5, 113–152.

Cooke, Steven, Vivian M. Nguyen, Nathan Young, Andrea J. Reid, Dominique G. Roche, Nathan J. Bennett, Trina Rytwinski, Joseph R. Bennett. (2021). Contemporary authorship guidelines fail to recognize diverse contributions in conservation science research.

Liboiron, Max. (2021b). Firsting in Research. Discard Studies. https://discardstudies.com/2021/01/18/firsting-in-research/.

Liboiron, Max, and Riley Cotter. (2023). Review of participation of Indigenous peoples in plastics pollution governance. Cambridge Prisms: Plastics 1, e16.

Lock, Mark J., Faye McMillan, Donald Warne, Bindi Bennett, Jacquie Kidd, Naomi Williams, Jodie Lea Martire, Paul Worley, Peter Hutten-Czapski, Emily Saurman, Veronica Mathews, Emma Walke, Dave Ewards, Julie Owen, Jennifer Browne, Russell Roberts. (2022). Indigenous Cultural Identity of Research Authors Standard: research and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in rural health journals. Rural Remote Health 22, 7646

Pruys, Sarah. (2019). Consultation and protocols in publishing: A framework for Indigenous communities and publishers. Master’s thesis: Simon Fraser University. 

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (2015). Guidelines for the ethical publishing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and research from those communities (Aboriginal Studies Press).

Works cited

Pijogge, Liz; Onalik, Joseph; Flynn, Mel; Jarause, Wilson; Lidd, Annie; Angnatok, Ethan; Jararuse, Josephine; Semigak, Lawrence; Lidd, Sukattai; Semigak, Tyriekah; Merkuratsuk, Siegfried; Semigak, Susie; Lyall, Susie Debbie; Semigak Lidd, Sarah; Pilgrim, Lauren; Semigak, Chesley; Lyall, Darrel; Haye, Emma; Onalik, Lena; Pamak, Carla; Saunders, Michelle; Merkuratsuk, Joseph; Merkuratsuk, Jenny; Angnatok, Pauline; Ikkusek, William; Michelin, Wilson; Maggo, Richard; Solomon, Shawn; Kohlmeister, Simon; Dwyer-Samuel, Frederic; Ortenzi, Kate; Gleason, Amber; Anderson, Matthew; Houde, Magali; Martinez-Levasseur, Laura; Barbel, Heloig; McCarney, Paul; Bond, Alex; Liboiron, Max. (2024). Nain On The-Land Workshop 2022: What We Said. Nunatsiavut Government; Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), Memorial University; Natural History Museum.