KT Connects - Decolonizing research: Collecting Two-Spirit data in culturally affirming way

KT Connects (2021) - "Decolonizing research: Collecting Two-Spirit data in culturally affirming way" with Harlan Pruden (Nehiyô/First Nations Cree) 

Centering Two-Spirit and Indigenous experiences and ways is critical for more respectful, reciprocal, relevant, and responsible health research. Two-Spirit is often equated to an LGBTQ Indigenous participant, thereby rendering this community’s unique experience and history invisible and erasing important distinctions. This type of scholarship becomes a site of colonization. The challenge is how to collect Two-Spirit data in a culturally safe and affirming way so health research(ers) are given the opportunity to do rigorous sex- and gender-based analysis that promotes science, considers biological sex, and accounts for all genders in an effort to expand our collective understanding(s) within a diversity framework.This presentation examines some decolonizing practices to better formulate health research, policies and programs that are relevant, respectful and mindful to Two-Spirit people and communities, or in other words, be a site of reconcilia(c)tion in research. To redress historically underrepresented respondents like Two-Spirit requires an examination of survey instruments (method of collecting Two-Spirit data); who is recruiting, how is recruitment occurring, and finally the analysis of the data that will impact participation and thereby the research outcomes.