Ecosystems for Community Research and Recordkeeping

“Ideally, we envision a collaborative ecosystem of research efforts led by impacted communities, in which all parties benefit and help each other achieve substantive change.”

Caty Simon, Sarah Brothers, and co-authors, “We are the researched, the researchers, and the discounted,” 2021, pg. 3

“I cherish the belief and practice that it is never enough to just critique the system and name our oppression. We also have to create the alternative, on the ground and in real time.”
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, in Rehearsals for Living, 2022, pg.36

“But emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies. Emergence is our inheritance as part of the universe; it is how we change. Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.”

adrienne maree brown, Emergent strategy: Shaping change,changing worlds. (p.3) (2017)

“…We aspire to be full participants in the research process by shaping the research design and ensuring that the research questions address the problems that we face.”
Caty Simon, Sarah Brothers, Knina Strichartz, Abby Coulter, Nick Voyles, Anna Herdlein, and Louise Vincent’s We are the researched, the researchers, and the discounted: The experiences of drug user activists as researchers. (p.3) (2021)