Objectives: Indigenous epidemiology has emerged as a critical intervention to address health inequities and the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples from population health research. While advances in Indigenous data sovereignty and community-led surveillance have strengthened ethical accountability, less attention has been given to the epistemic conditions that shape how Indigenous knowledge systems are evaluated, constrained, and authorized within epidemiological research.

This article examines how routine methodological, governance, and interpretive practices constrain Indigenous epistemologies in public health research and introduces the Theory of Epistemic Containment.