Relationship Building as a Research Method

Abstract

My experiences conducting research with an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic have taught me that building meaningful community-researcher relationships is fundamental to doing good research. I learned the importance of spending time with people to create spaces for sharing and doing so at the pace of the community. In this chapter, I talk about my first trips to the Arctic and share some of my experiences and lessons learned doing community-based research. Arctic research is fraught with challenges, but equally with opportunities, many of which can be realized through the relationships that we build with the people we work with.