ICA’s research projects are grounded in the following principles and commitments:

• We engage in research initiatives that inform, serve, and strengthen Indigenous-led climate justice efforts and Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.

• We approach research in ways that center Indigenous Methods and Ways of Knowing; in ways that reclaim our respective worldviews as standard practice

• We engage with robust forms of research ethics, including Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) and Ownership, Access, Control and Possession (OCAP) in all our research engagements with communities and individuals. This includes consent protocols that are ongoing through time.

• When conducting reviews of existing literature, we prioritize citing Indigenous scholars, youth, community members, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and other experts.

• When citing Indigenous authors, we include their names and their Nations when possible, to acknowledge the expertise grounded in community and intergenerational knowledge.

• We engage in a Two-Eyed Seeing approach, using Western research methods when deemed useful to our goals. We occasionally collaborate with non-Indigenous researchers, however, we only work on projects that are Indigenous-led. 

• We center lived experience and the knowledge that derives from it, recognizing the limitations in universities and other formal institutional settings. 

• Indigenous Knowledge is generational and stands on its own. It does not need to be validated with settler knowledge or Western science.

• We take inspiration from Anishinaabe researcher Deborah McGregor, who encourages us to ask: How does this research express our love for future generations? How can it help us enable sustainable relations with all life? Who is asking the questions and setting the standards?

• Learning from Cree researcher Shawn Wilson, we ask: how can we do research in ways that builds relational accountability with all the people we collaborate with during the research process?

• Taking inspiration from Potawatomi researcher Kyle Powys Whyte, we ask: how can we conduct research in ways that cultivate the relational qualities of consent, respect, reciprocity and trust?

• Conducting our research in ways that are committed to reciprocity means designing research projects so that they directly benefit the communities we seek to engage with in the research. It also means offering something meaningful in return when we ask someone to share their knowledge, ideas and stories. This can be in the form of money, direct support for their initiatives, and/or other gifts . We also need to learn what protocols different communities have (e.g. gifting of tobacco) so that we can respect and adhere to these in our research engagements. 

• If our research findings are to benefit our communities, we need to be communicating our research findings in ways that are accessible to them. This might mean presenting the findings orally and in person. It might mean releasing not only a report, but a series of storytelling circles. It might mean having our reports translated to different languages. And it means writing in ways that avoid the jargon common to academic research, and instead writing in clear, accessible and understandable language. As Rebecca Sinclair often asks: Would my Kookum understand this report?

• We reject the Western Science paradigm that tries to position the researcher as objective, dispassionate, disinterested and separate from what they are studying. Instead, we proudly acknowledge that we are deeply embedded in the worlds, communities, dynamics, and issues we research. We are deeply interested in the collective liberation of our people and all our relations. This commitment is part of, not separate from our research and as such, provides unique perspectives and research outcomes.

• We commit to being humble; knowing how much there is to learn, and how we may make mistakes on the research journey. We continue to actively learn what decolonial, transformative research is, as we do it with a commitment to decolonize ourselves in the process.