Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's great to be here with all of you.
I'll start with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which means “Inuit United in Canada”. Kanatami means “in Canada”. Hopefully, that helps you with remembering.
I've thought of many ways to spend my five minutes here with you all this afternoon. I'll start with the term “conflict”.
As the previous speaker mentioned, the term “conflict” is used because of the systematic inability of western science, and all the mechanisms and structures the Government of Canada has that rely on western science, to accept, on principle, indigenous knowledge as being equal to western science. It isn't necessarily a conflict as much as it is an outcome of your policies, legislation and ways of funding. It is no surprise to us as Inuit that we are in this dilemma. There are huge challenges in our communities that need science and knowledge to be solved, but we get stuck sometimes in the relationship more than we do in the actual work.
ITK represents the rights of 70,000 Inuit in this country. We have settled modern treaties and we have co-management structures that cover 40% of Canada's land mass. These govern things such as wildlife. Immediately, when I think of the incorporation of Inuit knowledge into decision-making, I think of those bodies, especially for things like wildlife—polar bears, beluga and narwhal—and the needless fights we've had over the past 30 or 40 years trying to get recognition of the knowledge we have about the species we interact with every day.
We've tried to move this conversation into systemic change conversations. I am going to quote myself from the 2019 Canadian Science Policy Magazine about this very subject:
It is time to end the research community's unhelpful focus on integrating Indigenous knowledge into science and policy and replace it with a focus on advancing Inuit self-determination in all aspects of research through partnerships between researchers, research institutions, and governments, and Inuit rights holding organizations. The research community has positively responded to calls by Inuit, First Nations, and Métis to respect and support the integration of Indigenous knowledge into research projects, policies, and initiatives. However, an unintended negative consequence of this trend vis-a-vis Inuit is that the discourse around Indigenous knowledge is often wielded to limit Inuit participation in research projects, policies, and initiatives to their Indigenous knowledge components. Despite being characterized as part of a progressive research agenda, the focus on Indigenous knowledge all too often maintains the status quo of limiting Inuit involvement in research to the role passive research subjects. Inuit seek to permanently transform this colonial paradigm through the advancement of Inuit self-determination.
To this end, we have released the national Inuit strategy on research. We have provided a copy to this committee. We have also worked with the Government of Canada to ensure that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is signed into law in Canada, and that article 30 under the UNDA action plan focuses very specifically on supporting indigenous data sovereignty and indigenous-led data strategies through legislative and regulatory policy options, supports indigenous jurisdiction over their data, and enables indigenous peoples to lead surveys and other sorts of data collection strategies.
We have to recalibrate a system that was never intended to support indigenous knowledge in any way.
I look forward to the conversation about how we do that, but Inuit have provided a road map. We would love to work with government on implementing it.
Qujannamiik.