ABSTRACT. This article presents an abridged kōrero (conversation) between Professor Sandy O’Sullivan (Wiradjuri), Associate Professor Sean Sturm (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa [Ngāti Rakaipaaka]), Moana Murray (Ngāpuhi) and Dr Ampersand Pasley (Ngāti Pākehā). Initiating this kōrero, Pasley raises the question of how we do our academic work in ways that are meaningful to us. Amidst their responses, Sturm notes the indeterminacy of the ethical status of research processes outside of relations. Understandably, given the ongoing non-innocence of education, O’Sullivan denotes a certain reticence around trusting academics’ and ethics committees’ capacity to enact ethical research responsibilities. Likewise, Murray describes a wariness around how institutions often use the very mechanisms designed to protect Indigenous communities to avoid their own accountability. Drawing on examples from academic and museological spaces, the three Indigenous scholars speak to the strategies they employ to operate within these Westernised institutions. While Pasley plays a predominantly facilitatory role, reflecting the need to prioritise Indigenous voices in the decolonisation of academia, they gesture towards similar patterns of disenfranchisement found in the colonialities of disability and gender that pervade higher education. In response to the matter of balancing caution and indeterminacy, Sturm, Murray and Pasley round off this collated kōrero with a series of reflections, acknowledging that the materialisation of this kōrero amidst the academic colonialities speaks to the abiding possibility of radical, fruitful difference.

Keywords: kōrero; coloniality; ethics; universities; museology; decolonisation

How to cite: O’Sullivan, S., Sturm, S., Murray, M., & Pasley, A. (2025). Ethics committees and ethical considerations: what works methodologically or for a community. Knowledge Cultures, 13(2), 84–97. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc13220255

Received February 12, 2025 • Received in revised form August 14, 2025
Accepted August 17, 2025 • Available online September 1, 2025