Jessica Dutton

Recent efforts to expand Tri-Council funding eligibility to non-academic organizations have provided Indigenous groups the opportunity to hold and administer research funds independently – an important step towards building Indigenous capacity for leading research that affects their communities. In order to hold Tri-Council funds, organizations must establish an in-house research ethics board (REB) or identify an existing REB (an REB of record) to review all research carried out under the auspices of the organization. Given that Indigenous organizations are seeking Tri-Council eligibility to increase the direct oversight of research by Indigenous people, there may be reluctance to designate an existing REB from another organization as the REB of record. Furthermore, Indigenous organizations are responsible for considering a broader spectrum of ethics review than REBs that only apply the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS2), as they are representing community concerns at the REB review level. The Northwest Territories (NWT) provides a unique and complex environment for imagining how research ethics review can be accomplished by Indigenous organizations with multiple (and sometimes competing) spheres of representation at multiple levels. The high volume of research conducted in the territory, paired with the expansion of Tri-Council eligibility to Indigenous organizations, provides an opportunity to start interrogating the tensions between academic and Indigenous conceptions of ethical research, authority, representation, and self-determination in research. This presentation describes the progress of a study that explores review processes, priorities, and values in the NWT by working with Indigenous governing organizations to a) map the process of research review throughout the territory, b) understand how the visions of research ethics review in NWT Indigenous organizations align with and diverge from the vision articulated in TCPS2, c) collaborate on a model of research ethics review that addresses the needs of NWT communities and TCPS2. Keywrods: Indigenous, capacity building, proposed model