The project, in summary

The IPG team is composed of 39 indigenous and non-indigenous researchers (33 co-researchers and 6 collaborators) from 21 different university groups. It is the largest team of its kind in Canada. Professor Pierre Noreau, director of the Centre de recherche en droit public (CRDP) at Université de Montréal heads the project. Professor Noreau is highly regarded in a number of interdisciplinary fields. The CRDP, which is supported by the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), is itself the largest research centre in its field in Canada, with 14 regular researchers, 31 associate-researchers and close to 25 Canadian and international collaborators. About 100 students study and work at the Centre every year under the supervision of the Centre’s regular researchers. Professor Noreau is also coordinator of the Regroupement stratégique Droit et changements, which receives financial support and institutional collaboration from Université de Montréal, McGill University and Université Laval. The CRDP is linked to a collaborative network that includes more than 15 international research centres. Professor Noreau directs several research teams funded by a variety of sources. His success in organizing collaborative scientific research is demonstrated by the variety of research projects he has directed throughout his career. In addition to his own work and many publications, he has headed a number of collaborative publications in fields related to research in Law including Political Science, Sociology and Criminology. CRDP’s considerable expertise handling major funding and research programs will ensure effective project management. Professor Noreau’s expertise as a senior researcher in Law, Political Science and Sociology will also encourage multidisciplinary cooperation among the researchers.

A project of this scope can only be successfully carried out by clearly assessing existing contemporary research and the nature of the team. A team of this size requires close guidance, both in scientific and administrative terms. This is achievable, given that many of the team members worked collaboratively on an earlier project. The Indigenous Peoples and Governance project comes out of a Quebec research program funded by Valorisation-Recherche Québec. Sixteen of the researchers on the current team worked on that first project, from 2002 – 2006. The current project, which has SSHRC funding, involves more researchers (39), but also benefits from established practices and research collaborations that form the basis of this Canada-wide project being carried out under the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI) program.

In scientific terms, the team’s cohesiveness is also aided by the identification of three main areas of research, or domains. In a collaborative process, however, this means that extensive communication and exchange is required. The project therefore calls for an annual one-on-one meeting with researchers, two meetings within each research domain and one meeting of all team members. Exchanges also take the form of ongoing and systematic discussions of texts between team members, within each research domain and between domains. The team has access to a shared Internet network and a website that is open to the national and international scientific community, to project partners, to parties involved in indigenous issues and to the general public. There is a regular electronic newsletter and the use of videoconferencing, teleconferencing and chat functions make it possible for researchers to remain in regular contact. This also makes it easier to organize the scheduled meetings for working groups and domains. The project will also issue publications to share research results and ongoing discussion of research orientations.

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