Stakes: Conducting Relational Research with Indigenous Peoples

In this chapter, I describe how my research with Indigenous Peoples has informed my understanding and conceptualization of what ethical research with Indigenous negotiators, representatives, and researchers at environmental negotiations based on the principle of relationality entails. Following Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, I reflect on how I build relationality with Indigenous groups taking their politics at the negotiations in dialogue with their politics at the territory as part of a diplomatic effort (Indigenous diplomacies) of reciprocity between the world of global environmental negotiations, which is a world of multilateralism, and the worlds of Indigenous Peoples, which is a pluriverse of life projects. For doing this, methodologically, I look at Indigenous participation at negotiations, and in a given meeting, in conversation with how they define global environmental negotiations as both a political place and a political event that is part of a continuous political process