This paper responds to Jääskeläinen’s (2026) two questions about researchers’ connection to decolonization and reflection on ethical dilemmas in Indigenous research contexts. It examines how reconciliation changes the practical meaning of the four R’s: respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility.
This collaboratively written reflexive viewpoint is informed by duoethnographic principles. The authors compare situated experiences of research, teaching and supervision in Indigenous contexts, then interpret points of convergence and difference through the four R’s.
Decolonization and reconciliation are distinct but interdependent. Decolonization confronts colonial structures and epistemic inequalities. Reconciliation sustains the accountable relationships through which structural change is negotiated. It recasts the four R’s as obligations to recognize community authority, center community priorities, negotiate mutual benefit and remain accountable beyond a project’s formal end.
The argument is situated and does not claim universal applicability. Its value lies in transparent positionality and critical reflection across different relationships to colonization.
Communities should help determine research questions, methods, benefits, knowledge governance, interpretation and dissemination. Institutional ethics approval begins rather than exhausts researchers’ accountability.
Ethical decolonizing research can bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge into dialogue while preserving the integrity and authority of each.
The paper clarifies how reconciliation supplies the relational accountability needed to sustain decolonizing change and turns the four R’s from procedural principles into continuing tests of research practice.
