Collective wisdom: Participatory research and Canada's native people

Abstract

Many development problems now confronting Third World nations have been spawned by the culture clash between colonizer and colonized. To a large extent, Canada's Native people, some 3 percent of the country's population, share that historic predicament. In this commentary, Marlene Brant Castellano, a Mohawk Indian and professor of Native studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, describes the process and development-related benefits of "participatory research". Her example is that of the efforts of Canada's Native people to resolve the thorny issue of family and child Fare.