Research has to be objective and its goal should be to discover universal regularities, but who has the right and the power to define what objective research actually is? Who has the authority to define and speak for indigenous peoples? These are questions that come up constantly in various situations.

Indigenous peoples researchers (such as the New Zealander Maori researcher Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 1999) have emphasised that research cannot remain an innocent or remote academic exercise divorced from reality; it is action which takes place in different political and social circumstances.

Thus researchers can no longer conduct studies that are separate from the people, nor can the data collected be treated as a value-free product. For indigenous peoples, the social and cultural aspects of traditional forms of knowledge carry a great deal of political and social meaning: they have begun to be used as a way of justifying the possibility of controlling those matters that they find important.

The goal of indigenous studies is to promote these peoples' self-determination, decolonisation and equality in relation to other peoples, and to develop indigenous peoples' epistemologies and methodologies. These days, much attention in indigenous studies is paid to those whose voice is brought up when presenting their cultural heritage and data in the study, as well as in both scientific and ethnopolitical discussions overall.

According to researchers, their right to conduct studies from the cultural insider's point of view stems from the fact that it can guarantee that the voice of the group being studied and the voice of the researcher are heard in the data and the analysis. The goal of indigenous studies, as well as postcolonial studies, is to challenge, dismantle and find new ways of defining the otherness generated by a Euro-ethnocentric worldview and to move away from the monopoly of Western academic knowledge to which everyone must always follow.

Our own experiences are meaningful in research, and in addition to academic education, our own world views have an impact on how we conduct research. In research it is necessary to bring up both the voice of the subject as well as what you have experienced on a personal and/or collective level. Autoethnographical research and participatory observation have proven to be useful methods in this kind of research.

Whether the researcher is an insider or an outsider, it is important that they are aware of their role as the presenter of different representations and interpretations. In indigenous studies it is necessary to keep up a dialogue between the dominant Western science and research, and try to avoid new juxtapositions and representations of otherness. Indigenous peoples studies conducted by outside researchers are more than welcome to bring new approaches and comparability to matters relating to indigenous peoples.