Two-Eyed Seeing methodology centers Indigenous governance in HIV aging research, challenging extractive academic paradigms
Original framing: “Two-Eyed Seeing reshaped research with Indigenous LGBTQ+ people aging with HIV” — bing news
Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) is not a methodology but a Mi'kmaw guiding principle: learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges, and using both together. The study's framing as 'qualitative methodological study' colonizes this framework by extracting its utility while severing its treaty-based obligations to Mi'kma'ki territory and the Marshall family's intellectual leadership. True Two-Eyed Seeing requires non-Indigenous researchers to submit to Indigenous ethics review first — not as consultation but as jurisdictional recognition.
This study documents a real achievement — Indigenous community governance reshaping HIV aging research — but the framing obscures that Two-Eyed Seeing is a Mi'kmaw treaty obligation, not a methodological accessory.
The power audit reveals universities celebrating 'trust' while retaining control over the very structures (funding, ethics, publication) that broke trust historically. Cross-culturally, Māori and Diné models prove Indigenous research sovereignty requires jurisdictional authority, not consultation. The trickster reads the institution's solemn 'decolonizing' language against its refusal to cede copyright or data control. Restoring the erased genealogy — CAAN's Visioning Health, OCAP®, CARE principles — shows this work stands on decades of Indigenous resistance. The solution pathways converge on one structural shift: Indigenous communities must commission research, not collaborate on university terms. Until Two-Spirit elders can fire the PI, Two-Eyed Seeing remains a metaphor, not a practice.