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Community protocols have always been a focal point among researchers at the Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations (ISITI) as communication with communities is the key towards a long cooperative relationship between the researchers and community members. As more researchers around the world are becoming increasingly involved in projects concerning indigenous communities, guides on community protocols have to be designed and developed in order to ensure that a fruitful relationship between all the stakeholders can be maintained.
In that vein, two representatives from ISITI recently made a trip to Cornell University to present on issues regarding community protocols, their experiences when working with indigenous communities, approaches and opportunities in collaborating with research and indigenous communities.
One of the areas addressed during their sessions looked at how researchers increasingly navigate unfamiliar terrain to communicate with indigenous communities while dealing with socio-cultural, socio-political and socio-economic issues within limited time, resources and differing protocols. These circumstances can produce decisions that increase distrust of outsiders by the community, resistance or rejection of solutions or interactions that can have long-term negative local impacts. These are some of the considerations that have brought about the need to evaluate the current research process trends and examine how these research processes can be conducted differently.
Apart from that, they also presented on their research experiences on “ICTs and Indigenous Language Preservation”, highlighting internationally recognized projects that they have worked on with the Penan community in Sarawak.
Community representative, Garen Jengan, was one of the key speakers during the presentations delivered at Cornell University. A fierce advocate for indigenized and controlled development, he has been a local champion and liaison between Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) and the Long Lamai community in research and development projects such as the Homestay Programme, Microhydro, eLamai Telecentre, Indigenous Knowledge Management and Service Learning. ISITI research fellow, Dr. Tariq Zaman, also spoke about his research work with the Penan community at Long Lamai during the presentation sessions at Cornell University.
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