Reconciling Ways of Knowing

The establishment has for too long diminished #Indigenous #STEM, and by the matter, it has #appropriated and #acculturated #Indigenous #big #data, information, and knowledge continuously. Too often, Indigenous Peoples are folklorized through our Arts, and we have been kept in the box, furthering our separation from our Data. We are our ecosystems, food systems, and social structures, and they are us all, embracing uncertainty, adaptation, and complexity. Brooke Rodriguez, it was great to discuss this issue at the ELSI. I fook forward to embracing our shared future, present, and emerging past in Indigenous Big Data and #Indigenous #data #sovereignty.

Lytton and Reo Rafting are just two examples of how climate change-induced natural disasters are becoming all too frequent for the Lytton First Nation and the other 14 bands that make up the Nlaka’pamux Nation who have called the region home for millennia. But this needn’t be. There are ways to mitigate the impact of some aspects of climate change — particularly the severity of forest fires — which is why I’m spearheading an Indigenous-led initiative to plan and create an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area that will encompass the Stein-Nahatlatch Valleys and surrounding valleys under the management and protection of First Nations. We would have Indigenous guardians in permanent, full-time career positions — not make-believe jobs that disappear after the fire season — to develop fire management plans and weave together traditional knowledge and Western science. The guardians would thin the land to reduce the fuel load in the forests, conduct cultural burns, respond quickly to fires and develop evacuation and interface fire plans to protect lives and property. I believe conservation based on Indigenous knowledge of land management will help mitigate the impact of climate chaos — particularly wildfires — by drawing on traditional methods that have helped First Nations maintain an ecological balance for millennia. Read more:

As a province-wide heat wave continues and health officials warn about the health effects of dangerously high temperatures, Western University researcher Nicole Redvers draws strength from elders who have taught her about hope for the planet. "We need to recognize that there's a great need for more focus on Indigenous voices within the conversation about planetary health and how we move forward in a good way," Redvers, an associate professor in epidemiology and biostatistics and director of Indigenous Planetary Health at Western University. "There are already many changes and impacts we're seeing and hearing from elders." "It's a delicate balance in the world when you're an Indigenous person schooled within Western ways of knowing and trying to balance that with the Indigenous knowledge and teachings," she said. "We have to acknowledge that there are many different kinds of knowledge bundles or knowledge expertise, and we need to bring in the strengths from both perspectives." https://buff.ly/3XFfspN.

We assume science is objective, uniquely isolated from politics. But as University of Guelph geography professor Dr. Jennifer Silver writes: “Science is not separate from or neutral to power.” The questions researchers can ask, the funding that is granted and the methods that inform these decisions are all shaped by norms and values that often align with socio-economic interests. But values and societies change over time, and the social sciences and humanities have a lot to tell us about the relationships between science and inequity. Examining Pacific herring specifically, the team traced how subsidized industrial fisheries catalyzed the collapse of herring stocks. Indigenous peoples, who had sustainably managed these stocks for generations, were marginalized, their traditional practices outlawed and their knowledge dismissed. Today, this has led to a complex market-based licensing system. As Silver has written in The Conversation Canada, governments on the West Coast grant fish licences and limit the right to harvest in certain places. In practice, licences can accumulate in the hands of wealthy investors and powerful firms, who can in turn sell and lease them to earn revenue and build control. As waters are subject to licensing, they’re also statistically parsed by Western science, and the models treat fish as biomass to be fine-tuned and optimized. Linking this back to the history helps us appreciate the “intertwining” of science, institutions and colonialism that Silver and others emphasize. “A place in the ocean adjacent to someone’s community becomes a single data point, used to make a scaled-up or generalizable conclusion,” Silver says. “I constantly hear that the way decisions are made doesn’t feel like it’s connected to what people experience in their everyday lives.” In other words, the large scale of Western science can, ironically, yield a sense of tunnel vision. “When you’re only making decisions about one type of fish, you miss the broader web of ecological and social connections,” Silver says. “A person living there can see the implications of the smallest changes for the other species around.”

Non-Indigenous scientists increasingly realize that Indigenous data are key to solving today’s environmental challenges. Indigenous Peoples have generated and cared for data for millennia, passing down knowledge through traditions like storytelling, art and language. This knowledge is crucial to Indigenous ways of life, including the sustainable stewardship of ecosystems. With partnerships between non-Indigenous scientists and Indigenous knowledge holders proliferating, incorporating Indigenous data sovereignty (IDS) — the right of Indigenous Peoples to govern the collection, ownership and application of their data — is vital for successful collaborations and conservation. Efforts to protect wild Pacific salmon populations in B.C. demonstrate the importance of IDS for conservation. Pacific salmon are essential for healthy ecosystems and hold deep cultural significance for Indigenous Peoples across Western Canada. Threats to salmon, spanning freshwater and marine habitats, are complex and diverse. For millennia before colonization, many First Nations in B.C. utilized data to manage salmon fisheries sustainably. Today, the reliance on industry data by government regulators like Fisheries and Oceans Canada poses risks to salmon populations and undermines Indigenous stewardship. Read more:

Next year, a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers will travel 27 hours by train from Toronto, Canada, to Lac Seul First Nation in the northwestern part of Ontario to engage with Knowledge Keepers. For two years, they have been meeting over Zoom as part of a seven-member Teaching Circle. The mission of the Teaching Circle, envisioned by Lac Seul First Nation co-author George Kenny, is to articulate a worldview held by Indigenous cultural Insiders. Insiders are people like George who practice the worldview called Ahnishinahbayeshshikaywin (pronounced Ah-nish-in-ah-bay-esh-shi-kay-win), which Outsiders—such as many anthropologists—tend to define as “animism.” The term Ahnishinahbayeshshikaywin encompasses practices that establish a relationship between places and people; these reflect a belief in souls, spirits, and the existence of human souls through eternity. Since mountains, rivers, land, plants, and trees are animate, all of these have souls. The team’s Outsiders will engage with Ahnishinahbayeshshikaywin on its own terms. Through direct experience, Outsiders will come to see the relevance and significance of what Lac Seul community members have to share. As part of this journey, the circle will consider how Insider worldviews can be translated for Outsiders, listening in a way few Outsiders have done.

Fire — called lakw in Simalgyax, the language spoken in Gitanyow — was used on the landscape for thousands of years as a tool to manage resources like food and medicinal plants and the animals that eat them. But under colonization, Indigenous use of fire was banned — suppressed along with every other aspect of cultural life. As governments enacted genocidal policies like the Indian Act, they used fire for nefarious purposes, burning down Indigenous dwellings as they forcibly removed communities from their lands and moved them onto reserves. Cultural burning in spring after the snowmelt and in fall before the rains stimulates plant growth and opens the land to wildlife. On Gitanyow lax’yip, the objectives of the burn include restoring for haast (fireweed), Ts’anksa gaak (nodding onion) and berries like ‘miiyahl (low-bush blueberry), T’imi’yt (Kinnikinnik) and gam (Saskatoon). As these plant species fill in after a burn, wildlife like bears and moose move in to eat the verdant regrowth. Using fire to clear tangled shrubs and provide paths through thick stands of trees also supports access for community members to harvest and hunt and visit culturally important sites. “When I was eight years old, a mountain became my mentor, and I connected with the ancestors then and continued to maintain that relationship for over 60 years,” [Gitanyow Elder Darlene Vegh] says. “The ancestors taught me how we, as Indigenous people, used the land before contact. How the land was our ‘food table’ and how we used fire to manage food security and to maintain wildlife habitat. That is why fire is integral to my being — it’s the culmination of a lifetime of struggle to help heal the land, in hopes of healing the people.”

Land management in the United States will need a paradigm shift to survive climate change and a legacy of mismanagement. A team of scholars and practitioners across North America are calling for a “two-eyed seeing” approach to land management. This means genuine collaboration between Indigenous and Western governments. Forest management in the United States is at a crucial juncture, and agencies such as the Forest Service are more open to integrating Indigenous knowledge and practices of land stewardship. “We are very interested in understanding how Indigenous knowledge can be used in combination with Western science to improve our management of all forest conditions including old growth,” Forest Service Deputy Chief Chris French said in a press release. “This report is a big step in improving our understanding of how to do that.” In the Pacific Northwest, two-eyed seeing in part addresses misconceptions about fire and conservation. For starters, it requires forests to be treated as dynamic and not static landscapes — this includes old-growth forests and protected areas. “Change is constant in nature,” says OSU’s Eisenberg (Rarámuri and Western Apache). “Change is a key element of Indigenous knowledge, acknowledging it. And then what comes with that change is we need to pay attention to what the natural world is telling us.” Eisenberg says Indigenous practices emphasize place-based land management strategies, where decisions are reflective of what each specific area needs.

Member States of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) – a specialized UN agency – on Friday agreed to a groundbreaking new treaty addressing intellectual property (IP) in relation to genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. The Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge also includes key provisions aimed at protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Its approval by consensus, in Geneva, marked the conclusion of negotiations that began in 2001. “Today we made history in many ways. This is not just the first new WIPO Treaty in over a decade but also the first one that deals with genetic resources and traditional knowledge held by Indigenous Peoples as well as local communities,” said Daren Tang, the agency’s Director-General. The Treaty mandates that, where a patent application involves genetic resources, the applicant must disclose the country of origin or source. If traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources is involved, the applicant must disclose the Indigenous Peoples or local community that provided it.

Indigenous knowledge doesn’t often end up on science fair posters. But for students in one Sitka High School class, traditional ecological knowledge is the center of their work. They recently shared their research in a regional science fair through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society — and two Sitka High teams took home prizes for their projects on yellow cedar trees. Students in the Sitka High class, which is funded through a grant from Sealaska Heritage Institute, have been researching yellow cedar trees for months. Caitlin Woolsey, who teaches the class, said yellow cedar was a natural choice for research because it’s both culturally and ecologically important to Sitka. “It’s a really important species to the forest and to our community,” Woolsey said. “It’s got huge cultural significance, and it’s dying off due to climate change, so it’s an opportunity to to learn about our forests, about climate change, and about our community.”