Science and Research committee  For questions of climate change, it's a little immature now for us, in a sense, as human beings.... In my lifetime as a geographer.... Thank God, we're finally starting to see the earth as something.... People are realizing things that 20 years ago were very esoteric and having that space, not to bring in these people as voices but to basically centralize this and have these discussions, maintaining the separate knowledge and separate traditions and so forth.

Science and Research committee  In the last few years, we've had a lot of research in ornithology, given some rather advanced tools we have, to understand that birds have advanced communication systems within species and across species. There's always been this traditional belief that one could communicate with them or that there was communication back and forth.

Science and Research committee  They would be whistle sounds, more bird calls than any sort of human speech. The interesting thing about this that they've discovered is that it's only used between humans and birds. Birds don't use it with each other. It has a grammar, so to speak, a directional component. The honey exists in a certain place, so they alert the human.

Science and Research committee  No.

Science and Research committee  I just want to point out that if you talk to your pets, there's really no difference. Birds have the same cognitive abilities as mammals we know. If you're a birder, if you watch birds, you can attract them. Hunters know this. One of my issues with indigenous knowledge is that we need to realize that this is something we can also learn.

Science and Research committee  I had no translation.

Science and Research committee  We can hear the interpreter now. I couldn't hear it the first time.

Science and Research committee  Thanks. That is a fundamental question. Even in western knowledge, I think we like to make claims about what is true because we peer-review and because we have this whole process, but in reality much of what is published is not going to be true. Much is disputed. In studies of indigenous knowledge, which is based on what you heard, it can be more anecdotal and it may have importance.

Science and Research committee  I think the ranger groups, as they exist, are a huge success in the Northern Territory. I would highly recommend you look up the Northern Land Council and the Land and Sea groups. These are indigenous rangers who work to restore the landscape to pre-1788 conditions—before Captain Cook—through fire management and a lot of other aspects, but also through the protection of sacred sites.

Science and Research committee  I can speak to Mexico. I was thinking about this. It's a country in which the Spanish colonial point of view was to put people into pueblos. It was a very different way of doing colonization. In the Mexican identity, the mestizo identity, there's a tension with indigenous knowledge, definitely, but if you look at what's happened in Oaxaca, again, they have absolute control of what happens in their municipios.

Science and Research committee  Coming from our different experiences—

Science and Research committee  Thank you. It's a great honour to be here. I was just discussing with my colleague that I couldn't imagine anything like this happening in the U.S. It's very impressive to me. As a disclaimer, if you've seen some of the notes that I put forward, I am certainly not a specialist in Canada.