Transformative Topics August 2026

Advancing Indigenous Scholarship Through Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk Methodology

In this transformative topics newsletter, in honour of the recent International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, we feature an article written by Diane-Laure Arjaliès, Julie Bernard, Sam Whiteye, and Bobby Banerjee, entitled “Creating Third Epistemological Spaces with Indigenous Communities: A Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk Methodology,” recently published in Organization Studies. The article proposes “a Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk methodology that offers an inclusive, culturally sensitive approach by integrating the best of both Indigenous and Western perspectives. It seeks to provide scholars interested in working with and for Indigenous people, a guide in how to do this work.

In the spirit of the transformative topic newsletter, Laurel sat down with Diane-Laure to get the backstory on the article – what the inspiration was, challenges, and what the authors hope the impact of the article will be. Diane-Laure shares:

"The inspiration for the article was twofold. We had done a project in which we had co-created a financial conservation impact bond with Indigenous people, called the Deshkan Ziibii Conservation Impact Bond (Arjaliès & Banerjee, 2024). Each time we presented the project, people asked questions about how we did it: How did you gather the support of the communities? How were you sure the Indigenous people were heard? Did you face any troubles? We received a lot of methodological questions. It was something I did not anticipate. And I got a little frustrated because I wanted to speak about the bond, but colleagues seemed to ask more questions about “the how.”

The second reason we wrote the article was that there were people who wanted to replicate the bond. I was meeting and talking with many of them. Eventually, we thought, “Okay, we must write about our experience and what we have learned. We must write a methodological piece so others can understand better what we have done.”

However, I had never written on methodology before. I am an ethnographer – I love the fieldwork, but I never really aimed to explain it. I received a few suggestions. Some colleagues were interested in a paper about my personal journey: How did I end up doing this type of work when, a decade earlier, I was working on the financial markets in Paris? But I did not feel ready to write this piece. The other angle was the one we took, in which we both reviewed and analyzed the literature on collaborative methodologies with Indigenous communities and shared our own experience. It was important for us to reflect on how we engaged with the communities, how this differed from what we read in the literature, and what we would have done differently had we known what we know now. We hoped to provide some guidance and maybe some inspiration.

We also had to figure out where to publish this article. I did not really know where initially, until we saw the call for the special issue in Organization Studies on qualitative research methods. That seemed like a good fit. I love this journal, and I had always had good review processes in the latter – even when my papers were rejected. However, I did hesitate for a few weeks before submitting there, because the journal targets more of a European audience, while the Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmunk methodology appeals more to colleagues from North America, Australia, or New Zealand. I thought perhaps we should instead go to AMLE (Academy of Management Learning & Education). But eventually we decided to go there, and the article was accepted after a lot of work. We were extremely happy about the outcome, as the review process really helped strengthen the article.

Some of the challenges we faced in the review process were that the reviewers rightfully wanted us to have an Indigenous co-author. At the beginning, however, we did not want to bother Sam (our Indigenous co-author) because articles are time-consuming and they do not really help the Indigenous partners. We got frustrated, though, because we did not think an Indigenous academic was the right person because they did not work with us. We felt it would have been a tokenistic move.

Therefore, instead of reaching out to an Indigenous academic, we reached out to Sam. She was our Indigenous partner, and Julie and I had worked closely with her on the bond project for years. We apologized for not contacting her initially because we did not want to bother her with this time commitment. But she was enthusiastic about working with us. Then the question became, “How are we going to do this?” Writing academic papers is a very Westernized process, and this was not very aligned with her oral tradition as an Indigenous knowledge holder.

What we did eventually was share drafts of the paper with her for her to read. We then met with her in person and online and had several-hour sessions that we recorded. We would go line by line, and she would say, “I don't agree with this part.” And we would discuss and implement the changes. This was how we could keep our old tradition of academic writing while integrating and ensuring alignment with her Indigenous oral tradition and perspectives.

To do this, though, we had to invent the way we wrote. In the article, you will see that we quote Sam throughout the paper – her reflections that bring light to a key point. But Sam is not an unidentified respondent; she is a co-author. We had a tough conversation with the reviewers on this, as one reviewer worried it was tokenism—they were not sure Sam could be contributing enough given her non-academic background. We had to clarify the process of writing the paper itself – which is in the article now. For us, it would have been more tokenistic to have taken an Indigenous academic author who had not been part of the bond project. One of the key arguments of the article is that you must work with the Indigenous knowledge holders of the community. For us, whoever represents the Indigenous eye had to be the co-author. Sometimes this may be an academic, but it might also not be an academic. This is part of decolonization - to recognize that Indigenous knowledge holders do not need an academic degree to be considered as researchers. That was the key argument we had to push forward. We said to Sam, “We are behind you. If they reject us for this, it is okay.”

It was not an easy conversation since we had to disagree with the reviewer. You know, often in a review process, you just do whatever the reviewer wants so that you please them. But this was not what we wanted to do in our case. So, we had to push back. The reviewer was helpful, though, as it was a conversation done in the spirit of helping us to clearly communicate and clarify for others what we meant by bridging a Western and an Indigenous eye.

We also struggled in the editing process after the paper was accepted. They wanted to treat it as a normal quote, but we wanted it to be integrated and seen as part of the article.

We did a lot of different things with this paper because, to be honest, this article should not be here. It is challenging to account for what “noticing” entails, which is critical to land-based practices from an Indigenous perspective. To bridge this, we brought in something more visual - a drawing done by an Indigenous artist, Liberty, who had also worked with us on the bond project. The drawing was co-created with her, in parallel to the writing of the article.

What I hope the impact of the article will be is to support others to do research with and for Indigenous people. When I started to work with Indigenous people, I had no idea what I was doing. I was really scared by what I was reading. I knew I had to be genuine and respectful, but I am not an Indigenous person, so it felt nearly impossible. I stopped reading because that paralyzed me instead of inspiring me to do my best and guiding me. I was also criticized a lot, especially by anthropologists and sociologists, and even some critical scholars in management, who said, “What are you doing? You should not do it.”

It was quite challenging because the critical scholars said, “We want to change the way we do research; we want to inspire; we want to emancipate; do transformative projects.” And at the same time, they were denying the very possibility of it!

This article allows people to see that this work is possible. It explains the journey, not in a rosy way, but in a way that surfaces the mistakes we made, the frustrations of doing this work, but also the joy and the achievements. It seeks to offer guidance when you do not know where to go. For Ph.D. students, this might offer them a reference point they can cite to legitimize work they may want to do in this space. People can read the article and understand a bit more of what they need to do and decide if this way of working with Indigenous people is or is not for them. I also do not see this as a rigid template. This is one experience people can take inspiration from. They need to always adjust their approaches to fit their communities and the work they are doing. This is a land-based methodology, so you must adapt to the Indigenous communities with whom you are working.

Essentially, I see this article as just the beginning of the conversation. I hope it opens the path towards more methodological conversations that embrace different ways to study the plurality of perspectives in the world.

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Read: Arjaliès, Diane-Laure, Julie Bernard, Sam Whiteye, and Bobby Banerjee. "Creating Third Epistemological Spaces with Indigenous Communities: A Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk Methodology." Organization Studies (2026): 01708406261459086. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01708406261459086

Abstract: This article offers insights into the Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk methodology. Developed by Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall in Nova Scotia, Canada, Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk advocates a synergistic blend of two perspectives, or eyes: one Indigenous and one Western, each embedded in its respective knowledge system and way of knowing. We describe the unique characteristics of this integrative methodology and offer various forms of collaboration employing Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk, which we refer to as Territory-Based, Team-Based, Nation-Based, and Indigenous Collective-Based. We then address the challenges of implementing Two-Eyed Seeing/Etuaptmumk by discussing our experience as partners in a community-based participatory research project. The article offers critical insights and proposes strategies for creating and nurturing inclusive and diverse epistemological spaces. This work serves as both a call to action and a guide for researchers to rethink and reshape their methodologies by respectfully engaging with diverse ways of knowing.

Also check out:

Arjaliès, Diane-Laure and Bobby Banerjee (2024). ‘Let's Go to the land instead’: indigenous perspectives on biodiversity and the possibilities of regenerative capital. Journal of Management Studies. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joms.13141

And keep an eye out for the Special Issue in Organization Studies on The Future of Qualitative Research in Management and Organization Studies