Decentering whiteness and decolonizing educational research is not a simple matter for researchers who may (initially) be unaware of their social locations. This paper begins by describing the three authors’ individual work within indigenous populations and subsequently explores the impact of their critical journey together as a community of scholars working to decolonize their research practice. Following an overview of their individual stories, the authors share principles of ethical scholarly engagement within indigenous communities, particularly positionality, ownership, and answerability, that they hope will be valuable to others who may embark upon similar critically reflective journeys. Alongside each of these principles, they pose “unanswered questions” so as not to uphold their journey as a model, but rather to illuminate how this work is messy, challenging, eye-opening, unsettling, and ongoing. The authors conclude that it is the “methodological responsibility” of white scholars to do the ethical work to understand, untangle, and dismantle potentially harmful dispositions, orientations, and practices before engaging with indigenous communities, and suggest that such transformation may be most powerfully pursued in a purposeful and collaborative space.

对于可能（最初）不知道自己的社会位置的研究人员来说，去中心化白人和去殖民化教育研究并不是一件简单的事情。本文首先描述了三位作者在土著居民中的个人工作，随后探讨了他们作为一个致力于非殖民化研究实践的学者社区的关键旅程的影响。在概述了他们的个人故事之后，作者分享了土著社区内道德学术参与的原则，特别是地位、所有权和责任性，他们希望这些原则对可能踏上类似批判性反思之旅的其他人来说是有价值的。除了这些原则之外，他们还提出了“未解决的问题”，以免维护他们作为榜样的旅程，而是要阐明这项工作是如何混乱、具有挑战性、令人大开眼界、令人不安和持续进行的。作者得出的结论是，白人学者有“方法论责任”，在与土著社区接触之前，进行伦理工作以了解、解开和消除潜在有害的倾向、取向和做法，并建议最有力地追求这种转变在一个有目的的协作空间中。