Using visual approaches with Indigenous communities

For over 15 years, the authors of this chapter have been engaged with the Indigenous communities of the North Rupununi, Guyana, in working through complex natural resource management dilemmas. Over time, we have developed a critically reflective approach to collaborative research with Indigenous community members in order to evaluate the type of research methods and techniques we apply, to reposition power relationships in the research processes, and analyse the immediate and long-term impact of the research intervention on participants. Why do researchers and participants engage in the use of visual methods? What are their differential motivations and how does this affect decision making during the research process? Who participates in and benefits from this research? What is the role of technology? How are Indigenous people’s rights and knowledges taken into account and advanced? How do visual methods contribute to transformative change and social justice? With what limits? Like other chapters in this book, in this chapter we discuss our transition from an expert led research approach, which was dominated by quantifying research methods imposed by non-Guyanese academics, towards increasingly more participatory, qualitative and visual approaches, and the challenges that we faced in this transition.