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Cultural safety and Indigenous Gender-Based Analysis

Last updated on January 26, 2024

For a truly culturally safe process, Indigenous people must be included from the beginning. We all have biases and things we may not be aware of, so it’s wise to work with more than one Indigenous person to inform your work.

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Indigenous Gender Based Analysis (IGBA+)

IGBA+ is an approach that can be used to analyze how Indigenous Peoples may experience policies, programs and initiatives. It aims to recognize and understand both historic and current discrimination and to provide a lens which recognizes intersectional identities.

Identifying your audience

  • Consider who your audience is. Are any generalizations being made that could lead to Indigenous Peoples, Nations, groups or genders being excluded?
  • Did you talk with those who will be directly affected by your writing? What informed your decision of who to consult? Did you include those whose voices are at risk of being left out?
  • Is diversity and perspective represented in the process and writing?
  • Did you partner with anyone?

These questions refer to relational accountability:

“Relational accountability is an ethical guideline for conducting research with Indigenous Nation partners. It references the kin-centric beliefs among many Indigenous Peoples. It implies that researchers are responsible for nurturing honorable relationships with community collaborators and are accountable to the entirety of the community in which they work, potentially including collaborators' more-than-human network of relations.”

Source: J. of Ethnobiology, 39(1)

Using data

  • Is your data disaggregated by various identities such as sex, gender, age or race? How? Does it consider status vs. non-status, reserve vs. away from home, Métis and Inuit?
  • How did you represent the stories of Indigenous Peoples?
  • Does the analysis and presentation of data reflect social factors, norms and roles?

Measuring outcomes

  • Is an equity approach being used?
  • Do those measures take intersectional factors into consideration?