Openness to ethical research dilemmas as a means to be connected to decolonization agendas

Research in the context of Indigeneity comes with several specific ethical research responsibilities and dilemmas. This is especially so in research connected to the decolonization projects of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous scholars developed an Indigenous research paradigm to enable Indigenous peoples' own ways of producing knowledge, founded on their cosmologies, ontologies, epistemologies, axiologies and practices. This research paradigm places each Indigenous people in question – their epistemes, concerns, interests and needs – into the center of the research inquiry (Kovach, 2009; Kuokkanen, 2007, 2008; Smith, 2012). It has motivated a Special Issue in QROM on Indigenous knowledges, priorities and processes in qualitative research, edited by Tulk and Starks (2020), to advise researchers on how to do research ethically in Indigenous contexts in the field of Management and Organization studies (MOS).

The discussion on ethical research responsibilities in research involving or conducted with Indigenous communities and the proposed measures are of great importance, especially today, and particularly in the field of MOS, where publications on Indigenous peoples have been on the increase (Salmon et al., 2023). Such work often, regrettably, founds itself on positivist and dualistic thinking, relying on the premise of the researcher as an objective knower and “Indigenous peoples” as its object (Banerjee and Linstead, 2004; Prasad, 2003; Ruggunan, 2016). The increase in publications on Indigenous peoples in MOS (Salmon et al., 2023, p. 439) is not only an outcome of the institutionalization and attractiveness of the term Indigenous peoples and of the “rush to Indigeneity” as its consequence (Junka-Aikio, 2019, p. 14); it can also manifest continuity of extractive research practices (Girei, 2017; Smith, 2012).

The discussion on how to conduct research ethically in Indigenous contexts shares many goals and working practices with recent work by scholars in the field of Critical Management Studies (CMS) on how to decolonize research methodologies and research (Allen and Girei, 2024; Faria, 2014; Ibarra-Colado, 2006). This has lately been phrased as a decolonial turn, referring to diverse and heterogenous efforts to create space for epistemic plurality and to challenge positivist and Westocentric knowledge production (Jammulamadaka et al., 2021). The decolonial turn builds on the postmodernist turn (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000; Clegg and Slife, 2009; Fournier and Grey, 2000) and on postcolonial scholarship (Mir and Mir, 2013; Nkomo, 2011; Prasad, 2003). Inspired by the Special Issue (Bull et al., 2020; Colbourne et al., 2020; Tulk and Starks, 2020), I join the discussion by critically reflecting on the processes and activities of qualitative research in Indigenous contexts and the challenges and opportunities resulting from research strategies toward the decolonization of research. I discuss these calls in connection with work by decoloniality scholars (Allen and Girei, 2024; Girei, 2017; Ruggunan, 2016) within CMS, having engaged with the concept of critical reflexivity (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000; Fournier and Grey, 2000). This work has not only critically reflected on ethical dilemmas in the researcher's identities, positionalities and roles in research working for the decolonization of research practices, but it has also been connected to a variety of decolonization projects outside the academy. The former discussion can build a sound ground for further discussion on ethical research in Indigenous contexts. However, this discussion has focused on describing what the principles are and on how researchers should follow them. This discussion has not reflected, however, on the dilemmas that researchers experience when making research choices related to the principles. In this research article, I therefore ask: How does reflection on ethical dilemmas (challenges, difficulties, tensions, conflicts, etc.) in Indigenous contexts relate to a researcher's connectedness to decolonization processes? How can researchers reflect on ethical dilemmas in Indigenous research contexts?

I draw from the decoloniality school of thought that emphasizes the role that knowledge production has had in colonization and as an underlying knowledge structure reproducing power asymmetries, referred to as modernity/coloniality. This literature emphasizes the link between the decolonization of knowledge production in the academy and the decolonization of power asymmetries outside the academy (Grosfoguel, 2013; Jammulamadaka et al., 2021, p. 732). The former can be seen among the many means to undo the underlying structure producing power asymmetries. I understand decolonization in Indigenous contexts as the dismantling of power asymmetries between Indigenous and mainstream societies. This includes the dismantling of power asymmetries between Indigenous and Western knowledge in ways that acknowledge both their strengths and their connectedness (Bull et al., 2020; Colbourne et al., 2020; Girei, 2017, esp. 460, 467; Ruggunan, 2016). I thereby understand decolonization as the efforts to disassemble power asymmetries related to epistemes, ethnicity, race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality, language, and geographical location, as well as to the hierarchies between nature and humanity.

I reflect on ethical dilemmas in research connected to decolonization processes with the consciousness that those projects are as open to interpretation, as full of contest and as power laden as any other organizing process (Girei, 2017, p. 458–459, 467; Olsen, 2016; Sylvestre et al., 2017, pp. 754, 760). Decolonization processes are part of, and need to adapt to, complex colonization-decolonization-recolonization dynamics (Jammulamadaka et al., 2021). They are relationally unique to each context, people(s) and location. Therefore, instead of referring to research involving (a) specific Indigenous community(ies) or people(s), I use the concept of research in Indigenous contexts that I understand to cover research on social phenomena around Indigeneity. Here, I understand Indigeneity as a relational organizing concept that Indigenous groups around the world have employed to gain recognition for themselves and for the worlds they relate to (Radcliffe, 2015, p. 2; Valkonen et al., 2017, p. 533). Indigeneity can thus be considered also part of, but not limited to, the colonial institutions and practices that created it (de la Cadena, 2010, pp. 347–348; 2015, p. 33).

This paper is motivated by my experiences and reflections as a non-Indigenous scholar belonging to the majority population, having studied contestations around land-use intensification in the Sámi homeland in Northern Finland. I answer the research questions by moving across the two previously-mentioned discussions on ethical research in Indigenous contexts and on researchers' critical reflections on ethical dilemmas in their identities, positionalities and roles in research connected to decolonization processes. My reflections focus on two themes: (1) Ethical dilemmas in a researcher's considerations and choices related to the ethical research principles of relevance to the community, contemplated especially in relation to considerations of the potential harms and risks of the research to the respective communities. Reflections on these dilemmas illustrate how complex the principles, such as relevance to the community and assessing consequences to the community, are when weighed in real-life encounters. Nevertheless, I felt there was a lack of safe space where I could have reflected on those ethical dilemmas without feeling that I was deemed unprofessionally biased or advocating against Indigenous rights. The latter feeling resonated with my constant fear that my reflections on ethical research dilemmas would be misused by a countermovement advocating against the Sámi rights, also strongly present in the academy. Therefore, (2) the second theme of my reflection concerns the experience of a lack of safe space to discuss ethical dilemmas.

In the next section, I briefly review the recent literature of ethical research principles and frameworks in Indigenous contexts in MOS. I then discuss the intertwining of contestations on land, livelihoods and identity in the Sámi homeland as the context and location from which this paper emerges. Guided by reflective work drawing from decolonial conceptual approaches within CMS, I then reflect on some of the most challenging ethical dilemmas that I experienced during my research when considering my research choices in relation to the ethical research principles in practice. This is followed by reflections on how I coped with the ethical dilemmas.

I conclude the paper by arguing that reflection on ethical dilemmas during research in Indigenous contexts is an important dimension in our considerations about the accountability of research to relationships. I suggest that the ethical research principles and responsibilities for research concerning Indigenous peoples can be more influential when they are associated with conversations on the actual experience of ethical research dilemmas. My contention is also that silencing reflection on ethical dilemmas in research in Indigenous contexts results in a lack of understanding of community life in Indigenous/non-Indigenous encounters.

Postcolonial (Prasad, 2003), decolonial (Faria, 2014; Girei, 2017; Jammulamadaka et al., 2021) and Indigenous (Alderson, 2020; Kuokkanen, 2007, 2008; Wilson, 2008, pp. 45–52) critiques have witnessed that Western knowledge production has played a central role in the historical practices through which territories and peoples around the world were colonized. These practices included land appropriation, the relocation and enslavement of nations, the replacement of existing territorial sovereignty and forms of organizing peoples with the organizing principles of the new rulers, and the weakening of the ability of the earth to sustain diversity in forms of life. Not surprisingly, Indigenous communities often experience that research has been conducted to misuse knowledge for purposes that have been harmful to them and to extract knowledge from Indigenous communities and nations without giving back. Knowledge extraction has included misinterpreting Indigenous nations and communities and treating them as research objects (Banerjee and Linstead, 2004; Kuokkanen, 2007; Prasad, 2003). Researchers argue that present practices in research related to Indigeneity continue those historical and extractive practices and therefore are founded on neocolonial political, ethical and epistemological assumptions (Ibarra-Colado, 2006), with consequences for constructing Indigenous identities and for the politics of representation (Banerjee and Linstead, 2004). Given these historical and contemporary patterns, it is, unfortunately, not surprising that research by Western institutions has had severe impacts on Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities and Indigenous lands (Bull et al., 2020; Love, 2020; Smith, 2012).

Ethical principles for doing research relating to Indigenous peoples have been developed along with the Indigenous research paradigm to counter harmful research practices (Drugge, 2016; Smith, 2012; Tulk and Starks, 2020). Some of the ethical principles and frameworks for doing research relating to Indigenous peoples include general “Pan-Indigenous” principles that concern research engaging with Indigenous peoples as Peoples. Other ethical research principles and frameworks are nation specific, which means that researchers should consider legislative, cultural and epistemic dimensions of each respective nation in their research. The measures include drafting ethical frameworks and principles for research concerning Indigenous peoples (Heikkilä et al., 2024; Tulk and Starks, 2020), founding Indigenous ethics review boards and dialogue toward ensuring sovereignty of the respective People over research (Bull et al., 2020). Aligned with this development, academic institutions and Indigenous nations have initiated their own frameworks and principles. It is thereby maintained that researchers should follow the nation-specific research protocols in addition to general ethical principles (Alderson, 2020; Bull et al., 2020). Among the proposed ethical research principles are awareness of colonialism and of its effects on Indigenous peoples and on the respective nation, in both the past and the present, as well as a deep contextual understanding of the territory and people in question. Contextual understanding includes the need to recognize the particularities of each nation by becoming familiar with the historical and geographic contexts within which the study is located and situated. Along the research process, the researcher needs to be conscious of the histories of colonization, of the continuity of the epistemic and material structures established by colonization and of their effects on the respective territory and people (Alderson, 2020; Tulk and Starks, 2020).

Apart from historical and contextual understanding, ethical research principles address the researcher's responsibilities to the community involved. These responsibilities include that research priorities and aims should emerge from the community, and research should be founded on both individual and collective informed consent from the community (Bull et al., 2020; Ellis and Earley, 2006). Research practice emphasizes “4 Rs” (Chilisa, 2012, p. 174; Kirkness and Barnhardt, 1991): respect for People and its territory; relevance for the People and community/communities; reciprocity between the researcher and the community/communities, and responsibility. Researchers are also encouraged to reflect on their accountability to relationships, including relationships to family, community, kinship and all living beings (Kovach, 2009; Kuokkanen, 2007, 2008; Wilson, 2008). An individual researcher's responsibilities to community members are expressed to extend beyond the scope of a single research project (Alderson, 2020, p. 52).

Taking the ethical research principles and frameworks seriously, I reflect on ethical dilemmas that I experienced when making research choices related to the referenced ethical principles in practice during the research around land contestations in the Sámi homeland. My multi-site ethnographic research started from the study of recognition of the Sámi's claims for contested land, natural resource and development projects in the Finnish part of the Sámi homeland. The Sámi are an Indigenous people in Northern Europe. There are between 75,000–100,000 Sámi who have organized through their self-governing bodies, the Sámi Parliaments. Sápmi – the ancestral homeland of the Sámi – comprises lands north from Central Sweden and Central Norway, the northernmost part of Finland and the top of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. I studied contestations especially around mechanized gold panning, expansion of the mining industry and a large railway project plan, the Arctic Railway, in the Finnish part of Sápmi. There are about 10,000 Sámi in Finland, of whom about a third live in the Finnish Sámi homeland. Roughly one-third of the population living in the Sámi homeland identify as Sámi, while two-thirds as majority population. The state owns 90% of the land in the Finnish Sámi homeland, most of which is used for Sámi reindeer herding.

The recognition of the Sámi as an Indigenous people in 1995 activated a strong countermobilization that developed into a form of self-Indigenization (Junka-Aikio, 2019, pp. 14–15; Junka-Aikio, 2023, p. 291). Self-Indigenization refers to a recent social phenomenon whereby individuals who have not identified as Indigenous earlier develop and claim an Indigenous identity based on a strong desire to be Indigenous. They base their claims on distant or fictitious ancestry but with little or no kinship ties to an Indigenous community (Leroux, 2019, esp. 1, 22). Meanwhile, the Finnish economy was neoliberalized relatively rapidly after Finland joined the EU free trade agreements and the EU in 1995. This development brought along a mining and tourism boom in Northern Finland (Kröger, 2016) and economic development but also raised new questions on the epistemic foundations of development paradigms and on the local and regional distribution of benefits and burdens.

There was pressure to expand large-scale mining and to construct a large railway project, the Arctic Railway, across the Finnish Sámi homeland during my study in 2015–2025. The Sámi Parliament of Finland, the Sámi reindeer herding cooperatives and many Sámi associations had decided on a policy to counter industrialization efforts. Today, among the most important reforms related to the Sámi rights is the implementation of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) Principles into existing institutional frameworks. This means that, apart from existing participatory processes, the Sámi Parliament and the respective Sámi organizations should be recognized as rightsholders with whom the public sector should negotiate on land use, natural resources and development in the Sámi homeland (Kirchner and Heinämäki, 2017). However, many studies have argued that elite-support for countermobilization (in the form of self-Indigenization) on the one hand enabled to replace discussion on many advancements in the adoption of the FPIC principles with a conflict on Sáminess (Junka-Aikio, 2023; Jääskeläinen, 2026). On the other hand, the self-Indigenization movement spread to Northern Finland outside the Sámi homeland and claimed Indigeneity to advance their land interests and the agenda of some municipal governments, especially in mining municipalities in Northern Finland (Jääskeläinen, 2026).

Along with pressure to intensify land use, FPIC principles and the pressure caused by the countermobilization, many Sámi politicians and leaders had undertaken a strategy of differentiation. It meant having a land policy that treated Sápmi mostly as a Sámi land instead of as a multiethnic territory. In this paper, I use the concept of ethnicity as an umbrella concept to also cover nationality, although mindful of the differences. The Sámi Parliament had decided to counter all mechanized gold panning that had been practiced in the Sámi homeland especially by non-Sámi since the 1970s (Jääskeläinen, 2026). In these conditions, conflict provocateurs had received special visibility in public discussions and hate speech towards the Sámi had increased (Junka-Aikio, 2022). Meanwhile, my notion was that all community members irrespective of their ethnicity shared expectations of services provided through the existing Nordic welfare state model: publicly provided health care, day care and schools in four languages; vast amounts of land and state incentives for reindeer herding; strengthened fishing and hunting rights; energy supply; infrastructure and communications maintenance and development; state incentives for cultural practices; defense of the area; etc. I became simultaneously aware that many conflicts in Northern Finland were motivated by desires of land ownership among some Sámi, on the one hand, but as the main agenda of the self-Indigenization movement on the other hand. The objectives of gaining land ownership were often hidden and were a factor, in my observation, fueling most land-related conflicts and the reason behind conflicts on Indigeneity. I focused my research on three issues: (1) (mis)recognition of the Sámi's claims on the sustainability of the planned activities, (2) the tactics used by actors in charge of the contested projects in relation to the Sámi's claims and decisions (Jääskeläinen, 2020, 2024, 2026), and (3) the consequences of the tactics into conflict dynamics (Jääskeläinen, 2026).

Researchers working in Indigenous contexts know that it requires a lot of resources from the researcher to cope with the extent of the ethical dilemmas that research in these kinds of situations, processes and dynamics brings to the researcher. Living through the relationships that constituted my identities, positionalities and roles in the research process was filled with ethical dilemmas and tensions. During my research, ethical frameworks and principles for research involving the Sámi people in Finland were being drafted, and I was in contact with and supported by many researchers involved in the drafting of the guidelines. The ethical guidelines for research involving the Sámi people in Finland were published in May 2024 (Heikkilä et al., 2024). Before that, I searched for help from ethical research principles, as discussed especially in Indigenous studies, when reflecting on ethical dilemmas related to research choices during the research (from 2016 onwards). However, during this research process, I experienced that the frameworks, guidelines and academic events in them were less responsive to the variety of ethical dilemmas that each principle seemed to bring along. I therefore discuss my reflections of ethical dilemmas related to some ethical research principles in practice.

My reflections focus around two broad themes that surfaced throughout the study: (1) The ethical dilemmas that arose when I was reflecting on the ethical research principle of relevance to the community, especially in relation to considerations of the potential harms and risks of the research to the respective communities. (2) During those reflections, I became more attentive to the extent that these principles and frameworks enable the researcher to see the polarizing effect that dynamics between increased interest on Indigeneity and research conducted with Indigenous communities may have. This also came with a follow-up question regarding to what extent I felt there was a safe space to discuss this risk. Therefore, the experience of a lack of safe space to discuss ethical dilemmas forms the second theme I discuss in this article.

I especially reflect on the ethical dilemmas in my positionalities and roles in relation to the contested land, resource and development projects in the Sámi homeland. Before that, however, Girei’s (2017) comprehensive reflections on her positionalities and roles in her research on management practices in a development organization in Uganda demonstrate the challenges inherent in qualitative ethnographic work with a decolonial commitment. She raises the difficulty of balancing between the research principle of relevance to the different research participants and considerations on how one's research strategies and approaches might contribute to broader objectives of decolonization. She writes that while the leader of the development organization where she conducted her ethnographic work expected her to contribute to the organization's practical problems, she considered her role would have been to support the adoption of participatory approaches as a normative stance of her research and as a means to decolonize hierarchical management practices. She also reflects on the balancing between her commitment to advance participatory management practices in the development organization where the leader had a hierarchical leadership style and the staff members had expressed a wish for noninterference. After reflecting on this dilemma, she chose to respect the self-determination of the staff members in their wish for noninterference. She reflects on these as illustrations of the difficulties when balancing between expectations among the different research participants toward the research (including their right of self-determination) in relation to the researcher's right to live up to her professional, ethical and political principles and commitments. She then asserts that reflecting on the difficulties of balancing the variety of expectations the research participants had about the relevance of the research for them and her research approach committed to decolonizing management practices helped her to demystify the romanticizing of local communities.

Girei (2017) draws upon and contributes to the discussion on critical reflexivity to our identities, positionalities and roles (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000; Dar, 2018; Fournier and Grey, 2000; Nkomo, 2011; Ruggunan, 2016) in CMS (in Sámi studies see, Olsen, 2016). This notion refers to researchers' critical reflexivity on the assumptions, values and interests underpinning and guiding their actions and thinking but also to their readiness to question them (originally by Alvesson and Deetz, 2000, pp. 112–113, also Girei, 2017, p. 459). It also refers to a critical awareness of how one's research connects to power positions in the broader sociopolitical system in which the researcher operates (Alcadipani and Hassard, 2010; Alvesson and Deetz, 2000; Fournier and Grey, 2000) and on considerations of the potential consequences of the research (Cunliffe and Alcadipani, 2016, p. 536). This discussion has much in common with the notion about researchers' considerations of their accountability to the relationships, as referenced in the subsection on ethical research principles in Indigenous contexts (Kuokkanen, 2007, 2008; Wilson, 2008). The difference between the two is that the former is more individualistic in its framing, while Indigenous approaches emphasize relationality between the researcher and the involved community members.

My considerations are inspired by Girei's (2017) reflections, although the theme of her research differs from the context of the intertwining of conflicts on land and Indigeneity. I also often experienced unsolvable dilemmas when balancing the variety of expectations that some leaders and community members had toward my roles and positionalities compared to my considerations about my responsibilities toward the communities in the situation. I especially balanced finding a research approach that would critically address topical shortcomings in the recognition for the Sámi claims on land use, natural resource and development governance but also recognize the Sámi homeland as a multiethnic territory. I did not have personal stands on the studied projects when starting my study. My positionings and roles during the study differed between the study contexts of (1) the attempts to expand industrialization into the Sámi homeland as new land-use pressures, and (2) the contestations between Sámi reindeer herding cooperatives and gold prospectors' advocacy as existing and competing land-dependent practices.

Regarding the industrialization attempts (1), taking the detected power asymmetry between the mining industry and the Sámi's “no mining politics” together with questionable pro-mining tactics to silence their “no mining” policy, I decided to take a position that recognizes this Sámi communities' decision. I also detected that some state agencies and development organizations in charge of the Arctic Railway project had been preparing the project in secrecy from the Sámi while many of them had simultaneously resisted advancements in the adoption of the FPIC principles. These conditions made me position myself with the Sámi coalition against the Arctic Railway. Despite having discussed mining and the Arctic Railway project with tens of community members, the ethical dilemmas related to these research choices include that I cannot know how inclusively the decisions to counter those projects had been made in the Sámi communities, nor can I know to what extent the community members were willing to share their real views with me. The main ethical dilemma here is that noninterference would not have made the Sámi's collective decisions visible. Noninterference would neither have enabled me to pay attention to the present characteristics of how the Sámi's collective decisions were delegitimized. However, prioritizing the Sámi Parliament's and the Sámi reindeer herding cooperatives' decision to counter large-scale mining and the Arctic Railway project have made the reasonings of project proponents in my research outputs less visible. The ethical dilemma that remains is that I also cannot know beforehand the indirect consequences that such a position may have had. This is followed with the awareness that the focus of my attention may contribute to the feelings among the majority population that they are not as heard by researchers in comparison to the Sámi.

However, balancing my roles and positionalities in relation to considerations about my responsibilities toward the communities was much more complex in the context of gold panning (2). The conflict on gold prospecting was in an active stage when I was collecting the empirical material. In my discussions with one community leader, we thoroughly discussed the different actors involved, how the leader and the community members considered the impacts, including differences in community members' views. We also discussed the consequences that the alternative focuses of my research could have and characteristics of land and ethnic contestations in the territory. This leader shared with me his experience that disagreements in the area tended to escalate into conflicts at that time. This overlapped with my notions that the positionings of community members in conflicts were often contradictory, not coinciding with the livelihood-based positionings of the parties in matters they seemed to disagree on both on paper and in the media. Their positionings were rarely as diverged as suggested by many politicians and activists. An example is when a leader of another group deliberately took me to a place to show that the leader's near relatives practiced gold prospecting as well. I interpreted this was a way to subtly expose to me without words that there were more nuances than the storyline of the politicians suggested. Meanwhile, a leader of another group expected me to politicize all mechanized gold panning and to gather contacts for such action; in other words, to act as an activist.

Shortcomings in the governance on gold panning, as in the case of mineral exploration governance and decisions on the Arctic Railway, were evident when processing the empirical material. The empirical material clearly indicated that the FPIC principles had not been adequately adopted into the governance. The ethical dilemma in that stage was that I hoped my research would be relevant for the Sámi's work in maintaining the quality of (reindeer pasture) land. However, I did not want to take a position for the banning of all mechanized gold panning or a position that would treat the Sámi homeland as only reindeer pastureland. I also did not want to be in a role of politicizing gold panning. I therefore decided to focus my scholarly critique on the shortages in the governance of gold panning (Jääskeläinen, 2020). My political role in the context of governance on gold panning was to write modest statements on policy processes as suggestions of how the governance on gold panning should be developed during legislative changes. These choices come with an awareness that my positionality is likely to be viewed by those working for the ban as favoring gold prospectors but simultaneously by the gold prospectors as favoring the Sámi reindeer herding cooperatives. The reason is that dynamic in an active conflict is likely to polarize the researcher's positionings as well.

My interpretation of the situation, when I reflected on the discussions with the leaders just referenced, was that noninterference would not have responded to the problem that I also viewed as a governance challenge apart from a land and ethnic conflict. However, taking a role in favor of banning mechanized gold panning would, in my observation, have contributed to the deepening of conflicts in the local communities. Along with these reflections, it became clear to me that the expectation by the leader who proposed that I become an active political actor resisting gold panning was not consistent with how I saw my role. These reflections made me continue the discussion more with those with whom I could discuss the nuances of the contestations in the area and in the positionings of the community members and myself. Meanwhile, the expectation by the leader for me to politicize gold panning made me more attuned to how some leaders collaborate with researchers and activists who feel solidarity toward Indigenous communities. These reflections also made me more critical of how concepts central in the decolonization of research, such as “Indigenous-led research” and “Indigenous sovereignty over research”, but especially the concept of “Indigenous land”, risk being used, if left unchallenged in researchers' ethical reflections.

Another example of a contradictory expectation was a request by a community member to explore how the increase of tourism has contributed to internal colonialism in their community. My notion was that both reindeer herding and tourism provided the community members with their income today. After listening, I kindly refused to have such a focus, expressing during that discussion that such a focus would in my view contribute to intracommunity tensions. Other instances when I felt dilemmas in my positionalities were expectations that researchers should focus only on Indigenous communities, instead of being inclusive to members in the communities across ethnic dividers. These expectations were for instance expressed as a critique of the use of the “local community” concept. The ethical dilemma is that the researcher balances how to prioritize the relationality of Indigenous land-related practices in ways that are not exclusive to the views of non-Indigenous community members either. However, a focus only on Indigenous community members seemed to me an underlying and unchallenged assumption in many current Indigenous-related studies, although in my experience it does not necessarily mean compromising on an approach that prioritizes Indigenous experiences. In my observation, such an assumption can have devastating consequences to the possibility of the community members solving land-related contestations and learning from each other. This characteristic made me ask why it seemed so self-evident that Indigenous approaches would not be interested in characteristics of multiethnicity in the communities. These notions also made me ask to what extent Indigenous approaches would allow the researcher to keep distance from identity politics.

The more I reflected on the preceding examples of ethical dilemmas along with more details of the history of the territory and the peoples, the more I felt that an approach that would have treated the communities only as Sámi communities and the territory only as Sápmi would have deepened divisions in the local communities. Treating the Sámi homeland only as part of Finland would have misrecognized the Sámi's own decolonization processes. However, treating it only as a Sámi territory would have excluded the views of two-thirds of the population in the Sámi homeland. I felt that the latter would also reinforce the feeling among the non-Sámi population that they are not heard in times of increasing attention on Indigeneity. Thus, during reflections on these ethical research dilemmas, I became critically aware not only of how research approaches treating the Sámi homeland only as Finland but also those treating it only as a Sámi land, although not synonyms, mutually risk contributing to conflicts within the local communities and between the ethnic groups (nations).

Using these examples, I have reflected on the ethical dilemmas in my positionalities and roles when trying to find a research approach that sought to contribute to the development of land, natural resource and development governance more inclusive to the Sámi's ways of conceptualizing sustainability. These considerations took part in a political and conflict situation in which neoliberalization and strong countermobilization threatened the Sámi rights. Meanwhile, both Sámi self-government and the countermovement were constructing rather strict land, identity and livelihood dividers, which were in many ways motivated by land ownership claims. Reflecting on these dilemmas made me pay attention to how the combination of relatively fast neoliberalization, land ownership claims and differentiation processes around Indigeneity polarized complex positionings of the community members into opposite coalitions, silencing the variety of positionings in the respective communities.

Thus, during the research, I became critical toward what the use of umbrella concepts mean in practice, such as the expectation that researchers should contribute to the “repatriation of land” (Tuck and Yang, 2012). Researchers who are expected to devote themselves to the repatriation of land to an Indigenous party in the name of ethical research should have space to reflect on what that means in that context and situation, and what the alternative consequences of related positionings might have. However, in many encounters I felt that such reflections were in many ways still a taboo and often deemed as taking a position against Indigenous rights.

The second theme I address is that shifting the policies and practices of research ethics within academic institutions (Smith, 2012; Tulk and Starks, 2020) has not yet actualized in an institutional level. Rather, misuse is still the norm, and individual researchers discussing how to decolonize research carry these responsibilities on their shoulders. Moreover, I experienced during my research that the existing discussion on having critical reflexivity about our identities, positionalities and roles remains largely limited to considerations about one's insider/outsider identity, privileges and resources. In Indigenous contexts, to illustrate, non-Indigenous researchers are expected to reach the conclusion that they are white scholars in a privileged position in a research organization that reproduces power asymmetries. Meanwhile, I felt that there was less safe academic space to reflect on the consequences that research attempting to be relevant for Indigenous communities has on the power positions and on the social processes in the Indigenous and local communities.

Among the remaining challenges is that committed scholars are transferred the responsibilities: e.g. historical and contextual knowledge, relevancy both to the decolonization of the academy and to the agenda of the respective communities, respect, responsibility, reflexivity, reciprocity, commitment beyond research project, commitment to repatriate Indigenous lands, etc. However, there remains a culture of silence and less institutional support available for dealing with the amount of expectations, critics and tensions that come along with research related to decolonization projects in Indigenous contexts. Researchers connected to decolonization projects are themselves simultaneously facing exclusionary encounters (Ruggunan, 2016; Jammulamadaka et al., 2021).

The ethical dilemmas vary greatly depending on, e.g. the characteristics of colonial encounters, present decolonization projects of the respective Indigenous people, ongoing colonization/decolonization/recolonization dynamics, a researcher's identity and positionality as an Indigenous or a non-Indigenous scholar, and on the negotiated content of the researcher-community partnership (Indigenous knowledge, language and cultural revitalization, land rights, education, social well-being, etc.). Sámi scholar Saara Alakorva has, e.g. reflected that Indigenous scholars conducting research in their own communities often feel being treated primarily based on their ethnicity instead of based on their expertise and research outputs. She also writes that she feels that Indigenous scholars are requested to use considerable time to reflect on what interests their research serves, in comparison to researchers belonging to the majority population. Her reflections on dilemmas include a constant concern whether one's research adequately responds to the challenges of the Sámi society. She also emphasizes the consequences that a lack of Sámi self-determination in research concerning them have had for the Sámi people (Alakorva, 2021). Non-Indigenous scholars have discussed on their own behalf the complexity and relationality of identity and positionality, including that of a privileged position (Olsen, 2017).

The purpose of this subsection is to address a need for space for researchers to reflect on a dynamic in research in Indigenous contexts that risks leaving an important phenomenon around Indigeneity without attention, namely, the risk that an increase in attention to Indigeneity may contribute to the polarizing of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in local communities. Here, I discuss this dynamic by reflecting on my experiences about dilemmas between fear for misuse of my research and the consequences of a phenomenon referred as “double bind” (Ruggunan, 2016).

The literature review in the previous section suggests that Indigenous relational cosmologies, ontologies, philosophies, values and knowledge systems are central in the decolonization of academic institutions, but they often become misused for neocolonial purposes (Kuokkanen, 2007; Love, 2020; Ruggunan, 2016). Ruggunan (2016) exemplifies this tension in the context of South African management studies by addressing that Ubuntu as an Indigenous philosophy has become misused in the name of “diversity management” to further neocolonial projects and managerialist discourses without epistemological decolonization of the discipline. He reminds us that racial and gendered democratization does not equate to an epistemological decolonization of a discipline. Ruggunan (2016) discusses the dissonance that an individual researcher experiences when trying to act as an agent of change but is simultaneously afraid that one's work is co-opted for neoliberal purposes. He describes this as a particular state of vulnerability and a central dimension in the critical-reflexive project that may lead to creativity when the researcher is working to create disruption to power asymmetries and critical space for researchers engaged in decolonization.

Meanwhile, scholars drawing from postcolonial literature remind us that dualistic thinking reinforces borders on both sides of the colonial divide: among both the colonized and the colonizer (Frenkel and Shenhav, 2006; Ruggunan, 2016; Srinivas, 2012). Ruggunan (2016) reflects on the presence of dualism in South African management studies as a “double bind”. He suggests that the “first bind” in South African management studies is the hegemony of Anglo-Saxon knowledge production in the discipline. The “second bind” is a historic Afrikaner-nationalist dominance in the discipline. He then asserts that decolonization from the “double bind” requires a double decolonization of both the hegemonic Anglo-Saxon knowledge production and the nationalist dominance in the discipline. Drawing upon this notion, I contend that the “double bind” described by Ruggunan (2016) is strongly present both in research and in decolonization projects in Indigenous contexts.

The “Indigenous” concept currently attracts considerable attention without considerations of research ethics, especially of the potential impacts of research on the respective communities. During my study, the “first bind” has manifested as intuitive ideas by colleagues about working “on Sámi issues”, proposals of co-authorship to meet the theoretical needs of those researchers and requests for sharing “data” based on their individual needs. Extractive practices have also included attempts to contact community members behind my back and demands about access to Sámi communities. Some have also tried to position themselves in the role of an objective conflict mediator, deeming me biased. Hence, the tension between a need to make Indigenous peoples' histories, philosophies, knowledge systems and claims more visible in the academy and the risk of extractivist research practices is always present in our research practice. Reflecting on each of the events mentioned has required a substantial amount of time and came with consequences.

However, the inconsistency between what is required from an individual researcher in Indigenous contexts in comparison to the life security of the researcher in academic institutions has been less a matter of attention. As I reviewed in the previous section, research in relation to an Indigenous people is expected to include personal devotedness and often involves professional and personal risk-taking. Less discussed remain the consequences of such research to researchers personally, as they often become the subject of the epistemic violence that is directed to the one excluded (Ruggunan, 2016, pp. 116–118). The inconsistency between what is required from researchers and how the academy comes to treat researchers forces them to use timely and material resources beyond what academy offers. Jammulamadaka et al. (2021) remind us that engaging with any decolonizing project comes with different vulnerabilities and is often emotionally demanding. It also greatly influences both the safety and the private life of the researcher. In my case it has meant, on the one hand, the need to protect myself from hate speech, directed at the Sámi in this case, and from the lobbying attempts of an aggressive countermovement. On the other hand, from my experience, it leads to substantive losses in income, including periods of economic insecurity. The consequences of connecting one's research to the decolonization projects of an Indigenous people thus considerably affect the personal life security and well-being of the researcher.

An even less-discussed characteristic is the consequence of the “second bind” on the everyday lives of researchers connected to decolonization projects. Among the dilemmas of a non-Indigenous researcher that I have experienced is that I found myself in a situation in which I was positioned at the peripheries of the Anglo-American centers and of mainstream MOS because of the “first bind”. I was simultaneously a white outsider to Indigenous communities and Indigenous scholars because of the “second bind”. This led to a temporary self-isolation from both the “mainstreams” and the “margins”. I name this experience as “dualism-relationality tension” in our research practice. Dualism-relationality tension is partly an outcome of not participating in collaboration that, in our experience at a particular time of the research process, runs the risk of leading to misuse of the research. It can be interpreted as a consequence resulting from the avoidance of, in Ruggunan’s (2016) terms, the “first bind”. However, the subjective feeling resulting, in Ruggunan's terms, from “the second bind” is also a result of trying to respond to the expectations directed onto the shoulders of an individual researcher.

The outcome resulting from the “first bind” into our ethical considerations is, regrettably, that reflections on the complexities risk becoming misused for objectivist valuation and research purposes. The researcher risks becoming deemed an unprofessional and unknowing object of the knowing and more professional researchers. Even more damaging is the risk of the reflections becoming misused by those supporting and leading the countermovement. The outcome that results from the “second bind” is that the researcher's reflections on the ethical dilemmas may become deemed an individualistic, self-exploration journey and an extractive research practice. It leaves the researcher with the feeling that little space exists to reflect on ethical research dilemmas as a member of research communities.

In other words, a dualistic division into Indigenous and non-Indigenous spheres influences the research practice to the extent that the researcher's reflections on ethical dilemmas are expected to happen in isolation, not as part of the research communities working together for the decolonization of research. In the actualization of ethical research principles, I experienced that many academic institutions are still in the stage in which ethical research principles pose a number of expectations on individual researchers, including that of connectedness to the decolonization projects of Indigenous communities. However, less safe space remains to reflect on ethical dilemmas, although decolonization processes are full of controversies. This is especially so regarding considerations on how research in connection with decolonization processes risks reproducing existing power relations. Lack of space to reflect on the ethical dilemmas is not just problematic in research in Indigenous contexts. “The double bind” dynamics may also hinder collective work across different kinds of decolonization projects (see Allen and Girei, 2024; Faria, 2014; Jammulamadaka et al., 2021).

Reading more about different relational posthumanist (Latour, 1993, 2005; de la Cadena, 2010, 2015) and relational Indigenous approaches (Kuokkanen, 2007; Valkonen et al., 2017) and thinking through partial connections (Haraway, 1991; Strathern, 2004) helped me to live with the presence of tensions in the everyday research practice and to overcome self-isolation. The notion of partial connections is based on Haraway's (1991) work on the Cyborg, partiality and situated knowledges and on Marilyn Strathern's book “Partial connections” (Strathern, 2004), coinciding in many ways with Indigenous holistic and relational approaches. Partial connections refer to the making of a connection with others and to knowledge practices that can be partially shared despite differences (2004, p. 27). Based on her work on relational approaches to personhood in Melanesia, Strathern (2004) develops the analytics of “more than one, less than many”. A person is not someone with a separate mind who occupies a position or a number of different positions in particular fixed communities, organizations or places. “One does not simply take turns with oneself, managing an endless internal dialogue as though one were a collectivity of participants. Finally, it is not simply a question of two perspectives. For the entity who experiences is neither two different persons nor one person divided in two.” (Strathern, 2004, p. 35).

From this approach, a researcher's position is not either as an outsider or as an insider but as a subject who has positions in one's own body, both fragmented and integrated, moving between different orders of complexity (2004, pp. 34–39). From this mode of thought, as human members of a number of partially connected collectives, we have more than one identity, positionality and role, but less than many, because a person cannot be divided into separate persons, either. Our identities, positionalities and roles in the research are instead composed through the relationships that we practice with a number of members in a variety of collectives. Apart from the critique against relations of domination and hierarchy, the notions of partial connections and Cyborg resist the forming of all totalities that are founded on clear boundaries and antagonistic dualisms (Haraway, 1991, p. 37; Strathern, 2004, pp. 36–40). This includes the forming of all totalities that are founded on clear boundaries and antagonistic dualisms formed in the name of modernity but also in the name of decolonization, because “the positionings of the margins are not exempt from critical reflection” (Haraway, 1991, pp. 188–195).

Drawing from this thinking, our connections to the respective communities' calls for justice and agendas are partial, as is the scope of our understanding and the scope of our research (de la Cadena, 2015). Partial connection to collectives inevitably comes with tensions, but what is important is to be unafraid of partial, overlapping and relational identities, positionalities and roles as well as the tensions therein (Haraway, 1991; Strathern, 2004, p. 38). “… contradictions do not need to resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessarily true.” (1991, p. 147; Strathern, 2004, p. 35). The analytics of partial connections thus resonate with the call by Bull et al. (2020, p. 21) suggesting that sharing difficult issues enables learning on what needs attention. From this mode of thought, reflection on ethical dilemmas enable rather than hinder conversations and collaboration across differences.

The analytical framework of partial connections helped me to live with tensions present in our everyday research. I use the expression live with tensions instead of managing problems, because tensions cannot be “managed away” but should rather be reflected as part of all research choices made along the research processes (Clegg and Slife, 2009). Those tensions are to some extent manifestations of dualistic thinking models, such as the outcomes of “double binds” (Ruggunan, 2016), but are not limited to them. Reflecting on the partiality of my work and on the presence of ethical dilemmas formed an additional and necessary element in the process of reflecting on my self-in-relation to and by others and on my accountability to those relationships. It would not have been possible to continue the research without discussing those dilemmas with many colleagues and accepting their presence as inevitable and, most often, also unsolvable. More importantly, the notion helped me to reflect on my identities, positionalities and roles in relation to the present decolonization projects of the respective people. However, it simultaneously helped me to be critical toward the present decolonization processes. Thus, the notion enabled me to live with the dualism-relationality tensions during the research and to see these phenomena as manifestations of broader colonization/decolonization/recolonization dynamics.

Reflections on the ethical dilemmas in these encounters and the notion of partial connections made me rethink and redirect my research. I came to rely much more on my self-determination as a researcher when valuing my responsibility towards relations. I directed my focus much more on how the dynamics between neoliberalization, Indigenization and self-Indigenization gave the impression of polarized Indigeneity/non-Indigeneity positionings that, in my assessment, were fragmenting and silencing a great variety of positionings and needs in the local communities. I consider that critical reflexivity not only towards power relations in the broader socio-political system but also toward the complexity of social phenomena around Indigeneity enabled me to connect with the decolonization projects of the Sámi in their demands for more inclusive governance processes but by recognizing the Sámi homeland as a multiethnic territory.

I have sought with this article to join the recently opened discussion about critically reflecting on the processes and activities of qualitative research in Indigenous contexts (Tulk and Starks, 2020, p. 2). I join especially Bull et al. (2020) and Colbourne et al. (2020) in their calls to create ethical and safe spaces where both Indigenous and non-Indigenous members can feel safe when sharing difficult issues related to research in Indigenous contexts. I connected these calls into relational reflexivity with decolonial scholars within CMS, having critically reflected on the ethical dilemmas in their identities, positionalities and roles in research working for the decolonization of research and connected to decolonization outside the academy (Allen and Girei, 2024; Girei, 2017; Ruggunan, 2016).

I drew upon researchers' critical reflections and reflected on my experiences with ethical research dilemmas in the choices related to ethical research principles. Through this, I seek to bring into further discussion a phenomenon that, in my experience, may silence critical discussion on topical phenomena around Indigeneity: that not only research on (an) Indigenous people(s) but also with (an) Indigenous people(s) may enforce dualistic bordering processes in Indigenous communities to the extent that they are also multiethnic communities. This is especially so if research is conducted without critical reflexivity on how research in Indigenous contexts not only historically but also presently impacts Indigenous/non-Indigenous relationships and the respective communities' possibilities of living with the land together. Such dynamic may for instance overlook complexity in land-related debates, simplify complex positionings of the community members and overlook power relations within decolonization processes. It may direct an increasing amount of research attention on Indigenous communities as pre-given and fixed units at the expense of understanding multiethnicity in local communities. It may also feed appropriative processes, such as land appropriation from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members, e.g. through polarization. This may, in fact, be contrary to the decolonization processes that can be meaningful for both the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous community members.

I contend that reflection on ethical dilemmas during research in Indigenous contexts is an important dimension in our considerations about accountability of research to relationships. Reflection on ethical research dilemmas in research conducted in Indigenous contexts can advance the decolonization of research and connectedness to the decolonization of power asymmetries. In contrast, silencing reflection on ethical dilemmas in research in Indigenous contexts results in a lack of understanding of community life in Indigenous/non-Indigenous encounters. Researchers may for instance loose understanding on how conflicts on land, livelihoods and Indigeneity evolve, with what consequences to the communities, for whose benefit and how those conflicts could be solved. Therefore, I join the addressed calls for academic discussions in which researchers with varying backgrounds who are connected to varying decolonization projects can share difficult issues and reflect on ethical considerations in their research in Indigenous contexts.

Therefore, the ethical research principles and responsibilities for research concerning Indigenous peoples can be more influential when they are associated with conversations on the actual experience of ethical research dilemmas.

I thank Pirjo Virtanen, Frank den Hond and Martin Fougère for their support along the whole research process. I am grateful to the two reviewers for their insightful comments. I am thankful to many colleagues for their support, encouragement, critical discussions and space to reflect on the issues. More than anything else, I thank those who expressed that difficult issues can and should be discussed. This article was produced in accordance with the research ethical practices related to informed consent in research in Sámi context in Finland.