Indigenous perspectives on and in tax research policy

This article examines the participation of Indigenous populations in tax research and policy. It commences with a structured literature review to capture and analyse current knowledge on the involvement of Indigenous peoples, together with their values, practices and perspectives, in tax research. In finding few Indigenous voices in tax research, as well as minimal attempts to incorporate Indigenous voices, we postulate that if academics, as the critics and conscience of society, are not engaging with Indigenous peoples and their perspectives, then their influence is also unlikely to be present in tax policy. We show this to be the case in New Zealand, which we use to contextualise our analyses. Therefore, we call for academia to actively partner with Indigenous peoples in research. We propose that a Kaupapa Māori Research (KMR) lens is an effective and appropriate methodology to facilitate this partnership, and to give Indigenous peoples agency and subjectivity in defining the research and its processes, and in controlling research results and outcomes.