I have been working on a major grant for the past few weeks and I am about at wits end. Luckily, it's due on Wednesday, so I have the home stretch ahead of me and then the grant is out of my hands. This particular grant is a fairly sizable award, and is one of those career-establishing grants so I definitely feel like a lot is on the line here. At this point I just have to get the thing cleaned up and presentable, but as anyone who has ever put together something like this knows, there is always more work to be done.

When people at my school apply for federal money, they are required to go through a grant review process that is relatively painful. After completing what one believes is a solid copy of their application, it is sent off to reviewers within the school and a formal grant review date is scheduled. I had my grant review on Wednesday. Because I am the first in my class to have completed this particular grant, the rest of the class was invited to observe the process.

So on Wednesday we were all there. Me, my five classmates, my grant sponsor, and the two reviewers. The smallish room was set up with one long table and I sat on one side directly across from the reviewer I felt would be most aggressive. I had picked my reviewers for their knowledge of the process, not really thinking about their interpersonal styles. As the review approached, I grew more and more nervous as I realized that one of the reviewers was not known for her tact and delicate manner.

Sure enough, the review was rough. They really picked apart my grant until I was laying naked on the table. They pulled out things I never even considered. They jumped on errors and stomped them clear through to China. My advisor sat silent at the other end of the table, observing and only coming to my assistance when I was totally backed into a corner. About three quarters of the way through I started to feel like I was back in undergrad, being forced to sing these horrific atonal melodies in front of a panel of stone-faced music professors. My reviewers took full advantage of the hour we had been given. It was a transcendent experience.

Overall, I felt like their review was fair. Until the review I had felt a little scattered and exposed. I wasn't entirely sure just what I should work on. This is almost a carbon copy of a grant I submitted (and won) earlier this year, so I felt it couldn't be THAT bad. I am grateful that one of the reviewers took the time she did to pore over my grant word for word, editing grammatical errors and exposing flaws in my research plan. Overall, this was meant to be a productive review of my grant and I felt it was.

That is, overall. Until the agressive reviewer started in on "inter-rater reliability." This particular reviewer has done a sizable amount of research with Black women who have diabetes. She has also worked on one study of Native Americans in the Boston area. She sees herself as the school's expert on minority research issues. She has been pushing me for awhile to find a second interviewer to assist with my study. She believes that the mere fact that I am an Indian interviewing other Indians will bias my results. She believes that my study will be biased simply because I am Native, and is insisting that I hire a non-native interviewer. She thinks that my subjects won't tell me as much as they would tell a white interviewer. She made this case (again) during the review. While she was jabbering away about bias and how I wasn't going to get funded based on this, I just clicked.

"Wait a minute. So you're telling me that all research needs to be conducted not just with a researcher of the same race or ethnicity as the population, but also a person from outside the population? So when big-wig researcher name does another study with upper middle class kids from rich people's county in connecticut, she needs to make sure she has a black poor researcher on her staff, just to make sure to avoid interviewer bias?"

The aggressive researcher agreed. This is what she meant. But you can probably already see that this isn't how research works. You can also probably see that they were saying that I would need a non-native babysitter to help me with my research because I lack the ability to get good interviews from my subjects. Because I am Indian. just like my subjects. The second reviewer jumped on the bandwagon and started citing studies that found that black women were more likely to reveal private things about themselves to white interviewers than to black interviewers. They completely missed the point that I was making that I felt they were implying I was incapable of getting good interviews just because of my race.

I see their point, in some ways. They really are just trying to help. But they are missing the boat in such an enormous other way. I pointed out that my subjects from my earlier, pilot study, often wouldn't even sign consents until they had established my Indian pedigree. People wanted to know my family, my tribe, if I spoke the language, if I danced traditional dances... before they would even aknowledge my research goals. How can I expect these same people, who I learned were so private they were completely isolated in their suffering from cancer, these same people would be more forthcoming with a complete outsider. Isn't the point of my research that I am not an outsider and therefore have an advantage, and can gain access to information otherwise kept closely protected?

Not to mention, I can actually claim to partly understand the culture! People will tell you more if they are comfortable with you, and if you aren't violating major cultural taboos they may just feel more comfortable around you!

I got a little riled up, more so after the review was over. Just so you don't think I started screaming at the top of my lungs during the review itself.

After the formal review ended, I debriefed with my advisor. She seems to be on my side with this particular issue. At least I have support from those who I need most. But at the same time, I am completely disgusted with this ignorant and racist view of minority research at my school. They do their thing and think they are saving the world, but in reality they won't listen when the world is looking them in the eye and challenging them with the truth. I may not be the best thing to ever come to Indian Country, but I am fairly confident to say that my research will actually mean something to Indian country. their research only serves to maintain their positions of power within their ivory tower of academia.

and this is yet another reason why I want to go home.