Enhancing Indigenous Health Promotion Research Through Two-Eyed Seeing: A Hermeneutic Relational Process

Abstract

The intention of this article is to demonstrate how Indigenous and allied health promotion researchers learned to work together through a process of Two-Eyed Seeing. This process was first introduced as a philosophical hermeneutic research project on diabetes prevention within an Indigenous community in Quebec Canada. We, as a research team, became aware that hermeneutics and the principles of Haudenosaunee decision making were characteristic of Two-Eyed Seeing. This article describes our experiences while working with each other. Our learning from these interactions emphasized the relational aspects needed to ensure that we became a highly functional research team while working together and becoming Two-Eyed Seeing partners.

Reclaiming food security in the Mohawk community of Kahnawà:ke through Haudenosaunee responsibilities

“…Consensus‐based decision‐making is a hallmark of Haudenosaunee governance (Horn‐Miller, ). In practice, our team reached agreement through discussion on the purpose, study design, data interpretation, and findings (Delormier, McComber, & Macaulay, ; Hovey, Delormier, McComber, Lévesque, & Martin, ). Our methodology values community member's view points as the source of identifying ways to support self‐determination and fortify community strengths and well‐being (Chilisa, ; Smith, ).…”

Humanizing Indigenous Peoples’ engagement in health care

“…In essence, trusting is the confidence in a person to do the right thing, take the right action, be what they purport to be, and be aware of how others interact through their cultural norms and practices. 5 Indigenous children will be more trusting of clinicians whose practice is guided by this approach.…”

A barrier-free health system for Indigenous Communities

“…This process of working together began several years before this study was conducted, with the relationship among the researchers already well established. This relationship facilitated working on this study because we had already had time to learn deeply from each other (Hovey et al, 2017).…”

“…Two-Eyed Seeing is a complex relational interaction among people who are ontologically, culturally, historically, and philosophically different but linked by their willingness to engage in a relational process toward a common horizon of understanding. A detailed description of how this process has unfolded in KSDPP can be found in an earlier KSDPP paper (Hovey, Delormier, McComber, Lévesque, & Martin, 2017).…”