Richard Oster on Being Transformed as an "Active Disruptor"

Dear Maira’s Curious Learners,

Hi! My name is Richard Oster. I have been lucky enough in my life and career to be working with Indigenous communities and partners to (hopefully) foster tangible benefits on wellbeing and health. Maira asked me if I would share a little bit about the work that I do and my experiences doing that work. Before I say more, let me say this: I do not aim to speak on behalf of Indigenous peoples or anyone other than myself. I am not an ‘expert’ in Indigenous health, nor would I ever aspire to be. At most I can aspire to be what Dr Marica Anderson recently described as an “active disruptor” of racism and colonial systems [1].

Indigenous health research is dominated by what I call deficit-focused research that tends to mostly identify and describe disparities in health. I believe those stories have been told enough, too much in-fact. The stories we like to tell in relation to our research are those of strength, resilience, positivity, and opportunity for our next generations. We call our work “strengths-based community-based participatory research (CBPR)”. We use mixed-methods approaches, and qualitative inquiry in particular has been the most relevant and impactful part of our collaborative research. The goal of our partnership is to better support pregnant women and their partners, with the overall aim of improving pregnancy outcomes and in-turn reduce the risk and burden of non-communicable diseases.

Researchers are very used to having power. In my work, I give up that power freely. To me it is nonsense to have my voice from the ‘ivory tower’ of the University, or the voice of any outsider-expert, informing and addressing issues within the communities I partner with. Indigenous people are the experts in their own context, and it must be their voices that are heard in order to bring their communities to healthy places. Thus, our CBPR approach relies heavily on building capacity, includes community members as equal partners, and ensures the research is relevant to the community and leads to community-owned and viable benefits.

Much has been written about CBPR and the many challenges a community-based researcher may face. Is it challenging? Yes. Do I pay out of pocket and not get reimbursed sometimes? Yes. Is it time-consuming? Yes. Is it messy? Yes. Are there failures? Yes. And so on. However, that narrative is unhelpful in my opinion. I feel that how truly impactful and wonderful the experience can be is often missing from the conversation.

Without a doubt the best part of my work is the privilege of going to the communities I work with, experiencing all of the beauty that exists there in the people and culture. To many, it would seem that I could not be more of an outsider. I come as a non-Indigenous Caucasian man of European descent trained in a western biomedical way looking to do research on Indigenous women’s pregnancy health. Their reasons to mistrust me and not give me the time of day would seemingly be many. Yet, that has not been my experience at all. From my very first day in the community I was welcomed with open arms at every turn. I consider myself a student there, a student learning about life. These are teachings that cannot be learned in a classroom or in a textbook, and which have enriched my life in ways I never thought possible. They ground me. They humble me. They give me spirituality. They give me laughter. They give me peace. They give me knowledge. They give me morals and values. They give me guidance. They give me family. They give me support. They give me a sense of humanity. They have made me a better version of myself. They have made me feel much more interested in love, family, and friends as opposed to wealth, individuality, materialism. I am grateful every day.

Many of us either already encounter Indigenous peoples in our work and/or have the opportunity to work with Indigenous peoples and communities in the right way. If that is the case, then this is my way of saying to you: consider yourself lucky and make the most of it.

Talk soon,

Richard Oster

[1]Anderson M. Indigenous health research and reconciliation. CMAJ. 2019 Aug 26;191(34):E930-E931.

P.S.: Maira writing now…I loved reading Richard’s post and hope you did too.