[nfbwatlk] research

[Alco Canfield]

Here here!

Alco 

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jedi
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 5:56 PM
To: 'NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [nfbwatlk] research

Indeed. That love study comes to mind with a resounding crash.

Respectfully Submitted


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Frederick Driver
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 2:00 PM
To: NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List
Subject: [nfbwatlk] research

Hi,

I just read an interesting article.  Here below is an excerpt from it.

I have seen a number of calls for blind participants in research studies.
Exactly what the results would be used for, how they might affect
participants or their community, and the purpose of said studies, other than
advancing the researcher's career, has not been very clear to me in those
requests.

Below, substitute the word blind for the words Native or aboriginal, and
you'll see why I'm sending it.

Rick

[excerpt]

This small essay is meant to provide a word of caution to those in the
social sciences where, in the name of [quote] objective science, it becomes
easy to render humans into objects. As Muller-Hill notes in Inventing the
Future,

scientists observe and analyze objects. An object is a thing without rights.
When a human being becomes an object he is nothing but a slave.
What interests the scientist is the answer to the question he asks the
object, but not the object's own questions. In general, the scientist never
analyzes the whole object but only a small part of it.
(Suzuki 1989, 32)

Anthropology, one of the social sciences, has often been referred to as a
tool of colonization. The discipline's approach of seeing small communities
as laboratories for [quote] scientific  cultural observation has in many
instances put Native people in the position of becoming objects of research.
Over the years the methods and approaches have changed, but often the
mandate is the same: to obtain information from Native people in any manner
possible in order to enhance one's career.

As members of the aboriginal community we need to be aware and informed as
to why research is undertaken, how it is performed, and what potential
impacts the research will have upon our lives and the communities to which
we belong. We also need to exercise our right to say  no to research, to
decide what research we wish to have done in our communities and who will be
allowed to proceed with it.

From:
Colonization within the University System, Marcelle Marie Gareau, American
Indian Quarterly, Winter/Spring 2003, Vol. 27, Issue 1/2

P.S.  All this underscores the importance of the National Federation of the
Blind Jernigan Institute.

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