Community-Based Research

• Research has been historically intertwined and filtered through colonial and imperial lenses and the structures of power that are harmful, extractive, and exploitative.
• Communities have shared their stories and experiences without having a say in what questions were asked, how their stories were interpreted, or how the findings were used.
• Revivifyy wants to avoid replicating such colonial means of representing knowledge through exploitation, extraction, and harm. We earn trust from communities through building relationships, accountability, and transparency.

• Communities and people are more than participants; they are knowledge holders and keepers.
• The stories, experiences, wisdom, and knowledge shared through the research process belong first and foremost to the people and communities who share them.
• Revivifyy's role is to care for these stories, experiences, and knowledge responsibly, and to protect people's stories, honour their experiences, and represent them with respect & consent.
• Revivifyy's responsibility is to share theories and analysis that inform the way knowledge and information are constructed and represented in non-colonial ways.

There is no single way to do community-based research.

As researchers, we search and record, select and interpret, organize and represent.

What guides our work:

• Land sovereignty
• Relationship building
• Community participation
• Collaborative stewardship
• Transparency and reciprocity
• Reporting back
• Data sovereignty/stewardship

Methods:

• Community conversations
• Relationship-building meetings
• Focus groups
• Surveys
• Community reflections
• Interviews
• Knowledge-sharing

At Revivifyy, honouring relationships is a part of the process; we focus on the means and not the ends:

• Spending time in the community
• Being transparent about goals and intentions
• Listening before deciding what survey questions to ask
• Respecting community knowledge and expertise
• Respecting community knowledge holders
• Maintaining communication throughout the project even after information has been collected and shared
• Collaborative stewardship of methods and methodologies
• Returning findings to communities for review and approval before dissemination
• Compensating people for their time and contributions

Our goal is to improve the social, economic, and material conditions of people and communities who have been harmed, marginalized, excluded, or oppressed by systems and structures of power.

The communities themselves will determine the specific outcomes of the project. Depending on the findings, the outcomes:

• Stronger understanding of community needs and priorities
• Access to nutritious and fresh food
• Improved housing supports for families, newcomers, youth, and seniors
• Visibility of issues that are often overlooked, minimized, or ignored
• Community participation in decision-making processes
• Improved income supports and financial security
• Reduced barriers to accessing primary healthcare services

Research is not neutral.

Every research project is shaped by values, assumptions, lived experiences, and decisions about what questions are asked, whose voices are included, and how findings are interpreted.

Revivifyy is committed to transparency, accountability, and care. This means being transparent about the values, assumptions, and commitments that shape our work while remaining accountable to the communities with whom we build relationships with.

Our commitment is to conducting research in ways that are less harmful, less extractive, and less exploitative. Not all stories, experiences, or knowledge shared with Revivifyy will be disseminated, and/or captured in the reports. Some knowledge will remain confidential to protect individuals, communities, relationships, and culture.

Reporting back is a core responsibility of Revivifyy's protocol and practice. We believe in data sovereignty; knowledge should return to the communities that helped create it.

Revivifyy will disseminate the findings back to communities in culturally appropriate ways and in language that is easy to understand. Reporting back will look like:

• Community presentations/meetings
• Oral Community gatherings
• Visual summaries
• Community feedback sessions
• Academic reports in certain circumstances

Reporting back is an act of accountability and reciprocity.

• Values: Revivifyy will refuse to work with your organization if our values do not align. Our values center land sovereignty.
• Gaze: While our focus is on regeneration of our communities, our gaze is on the power structures and on the colonizers, and how knowledge is produced.
• Silences: Not everything that is shared by research participants will be "captured" or shared in our documentations. Some stories will live with us in our hearts and in our memories and will not be shared or documented.
• Ethics: Our "ethics" are defined by us and our values and what we will and will not do when it comes to research, and this necessarily means moving away from "ethics" as defined by colonial institutions such as academia.
• Not Knowing: We rather not know if it comes at the expense of someone else and somewhere else.
• Colonizer Logics: We will not center the "greater good" while doing research.
• Collective Harm: We will not collect data and knowledge from the individual only to cause harm to the collective.
• Ventriloquists: We are not ventriloquists, and we are not the ventriloquist's puppet.
• Limits: We know we will have reached the limits of research when it does not contribute to First Nation, Inuit, and Indigenous sovereignty, and/or when people are reduced to objects to be studied and extracted from, and/or when we reinforce colonial logics.