This article represents our collective reflexivity in the process of applying an Indigenous methodology in a North–South, cross-cultural collaboration, funded through the British Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund. The projects’ aim was to bring together Bribri and Jakun leaders (from Costa Rica and Malaysia) for constructive dialogues about sustainable development. Specifically, we applied ulàpeitök (traditional form of Bribri collaboration and translates to lend [peitök] a hand), a concept of collaboration that honours family and community; we also used S-kṍpàkö, the Bribri word for conversation, a concept that translates to feeling the space around each other together. We analyse successes and challenges and elaborate on lessons learned including (a) how and why Indigenous collaboration and reciprocity should be understood before a project is planned or financed, (b) why western academic concepts of reciprocity (such as one-to-one exchanges) need to be decolonized to include Indigenous ways of relating to others, and (c) paying special attention to language in the co-writing of publications to avoid cultural misrepresentation. Our research can inform other North/South, Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaborations that aim to contribute to decolonizing research.

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Although there is a growing interest in Indigenous research, education regarding how to put Indigenous research into practice is not often part of academic training. To increase the awareness of how Indigenous methodologies can be applied to academic research, we describe how we used Bribri Indigenous teachings to develop a Ph.D. research methodology for a food security project in Costa Rica. Our research approach was based on a Bribri concept related to cooperation, ulàpeitök; this concept guided our work and helped to reduce the negative consequences associated with conventional research with Indigenous people (e.g., extractive practices, reinforcement of gender inequality, misrepresenting cultural information). We identified three considerations that may be useful for other scholars applying Indigenous teachings to academic research: 1) build flexibility into the entire research program, 2) ensure that community-level and university-level researchers are willing to play multiple roles beyond those associated with conventional research, and 3) proceed with an ethic of friendship. Our work is relevant to scholars working in Indigenous/non-Indigenous research teams that aim to transform conventional research approaches to ensure that they support human rights, equity, and cultural continuity. In Costa Rica, our research is specifically relevant to building wider acceptance of Indigenous methodologies in higher education.

This conceptual paper reflexively explores an emerging turn towards a dialectic engagement in the development of Indigenous methodologies, using insights from Bourdieu and Foucault in a deconstruction of discourses regarding hierarchies of positionalities, which are associated with the construction of epistemic authority. The paper draws on examples from the authors' completed study with Indigenous communities in Costa Rica and Malaysia in exploring localized understandings of key concepts that may form a potentially fruitful terrain for further dialectic engagement.The challenges of this process are considered within the context of superior-inferior hierarchies of knowledge and being, as implicated in the colonial 'Other' versus the 'Indigenous' identity. The paper considers how the benefits of an interrogation of these discourses of the oppositional binary, create the conditions for the dialectical production of shared and expanded knowledge.