Thank you.
In January 2022, Environment and Climate Change Canada created a new indigenous science division to best integrate indigenous science or traditional knowledge with western science, better known as two-eyed seeing, into government policy development.
ISD, the indigenous science division, was structured to be most effective in combining synergies between indigenous and western science. To do so, the indigenous science division developed three pillars: bridging, braiding, and weaving.
Bridging means to connect the two sciences together to foster awareness, understanding, and recognition of indigenous science as a science distinct from and equal to western science.
Braiding brings together the different ways of knowing and being by integrating the policies in indigenous science and western science that can work best.
Weaving is to ensure that both indigenous and western science are employed to complement each other for better-informed decision-making.
While we integrate the indigenous science into government policy development and develop the indigenous science lens to ECCC's science, policy and program activities, it's important to be guided by the importance of indigenous science indicators, tools, and perspectives, such as repatriation, reconciliation, renewal, respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and relationships.
Indigenous science tools must be applied to inform approaches regarding, for example, environmental issues, as well as ECCC's work on the national boreal caribou knowledge consortium, the oil sands, the shellfish of Tsleil-Waututh and the polar bear research in the Inuit Nunangat.
This must be accomplished in a manner that aligns with the approaches specified by indigenous nations, governments, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, specific communities and international instruments such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The effective use of bridging and braiding will allow indigenous science to weave indigenous science and western science into reports and publications that will be used by decision-makers, governments and other parties.
Additionally, bridging, braiding and weaving indigenous science priorities and indigenous leadership to the entire spectrum of science practice within the federal government is essential in supporting Canada's commitment to our renewed nation-to-nation relationship and reconciliation with indigenous peoples.