This paper addresses two questions regarding the use of Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) approaches with tribal communities. First, how do "gold standard" CBPR principles hold up when applied to Native American communities and what additional contextual information is necessary to understand and work with these principles in this setting? Second, what additional principles or recommendations are helpful for researchers interested in conducting research using a CBPR approach with tribal communities? We studied a variety of literature sources on CBPR and Native health research to answer these questions. We are unaware of any publications that contextualize CBPR principles for working with specific populations. This information has direct application for conducting research with tribal communities, and confirms the importance of using CBPR approaches in this setting.

http://www.pimatisiwin.com/online/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/01Contents.pdf

Contextualizing CBPR: Key Principles of CBPR meet the Indigenous research context.

Reframing Evaluation: Defining an Indigenous Evaluation Framework.

In 1998, when LeNora Fulton announced her candidacy for the president of the Navajo Nation, she faced criticism from Navajo/Diné men and women who argued that Navajo women should not be leaders because it would lead to chaos in society, as a traditional narrative stipulated.1 Navajo women have been discouraged from full political participation in the Navajo Nation government even as they exert considerable infl uence within their families and in local community politics. At the same time, women are most visible in the Navajo government as Miss Navajo Nation, the offi cial representative and ambassador of the Navajo Nation. What does it mean to valorize Navajo women as princesses and beauty queens who represent ideal Navajo womanhood? How are women signifi ers of culture and tradition in the construction of the Navajo Nation and, at the same time, denied full political participation in the Navajo government? How has the establishment of a modern Navajo government shifted traditional gender roles in ways that have been detrimental to Navajo women? This study examines the intersection of the Navajo nation and gender by considering women’s presence in the governmental structure and how Navajo leaders, who are primarily men, reproduce Navajo nationalist ideology to re inscribe gender roles based on Western concepts even as they claim that they operate under traditional Navajo philosophy. As feminist scholars note, the idea of nation relies on the language of family and casts women as the mothers and the culture

Chairmen, Presidents, and Princesses: The Navajo Nation, Gender, and the Politics of Tradition

Background. In this article, I discuss factors that may affect working relationships between non-Indian researchers and Native American individuals and communities and give recommendations for conducting successful research. Methods. I describe 7 factors including Native American communities must receive information back from researchers and have access to data collected from them, researchers must address assets and broader social issues, and researchers must place the needs of the community ahead of their own interests. Results and Conclusions. Carrying through on the recommendations will make for more effective, culturally appropriate research.

Recommendations for conducting successful research with Native Americans.

Research on bounded rationality has two cultures, which I call ‘idealistic’ and ‘pragmatic’. Technically, the cultures differ on whether they (1) build models based on normative axioms or empirical facts, (2) assume that people's goal is to optimize or to satisfice, (3) do not or do model psychological processes, (4) let parameters vary freely or fix them, (5) aim at explanation or prediction and (6) test models from one or both cultures. Each culture tells a story about people's rationality. The story of the idealistic culture is frustrating, with people in principle being able to know what they should do, but in practice systematically failing to do it. This story makes one hide in books for intellectual solace or surrender to the designs of someone smarter. The story of the pragmatic culture is empowering: If people are educated to use the right tool in the right situation, they do well.

Paul Boyer

Papers

The Model Scholar.

It Takes a Native Community: Educators Reform Schools in an Era of Standards.

The Utility of Scholarship: An Interview with John Red Horse.

Ways of Knowing: Extending the Boundaries of Scholarship.

Higher Education and Native American Society.