Thank you.
Thank you for being here today.
This is something that I used to work with many years ago. Twenty to 25 years ago, I was an ecologist trying to develop regional ecosystem recovery plans. I also worked on the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada for 10 years, at the beginning of the time when indigenous knowledge was being considered. It was an awkward time, because we didn't know how to work together. That was one of the reasons I wanted to bring this study together: to find out what we have learned in those 20 years about bridging these.
I would like to start with you, Dr. Ballard. You mentioned this idea of bridging, braiding and weaving. For instance, when I was doing ecosystem recovery plans, we would have digital maps. The western scientists would put layer upon layer upon layer of things they knew, but it was difficult to layer on indigenous knowledge. It just didn't seem to work in the same way.
I'm just wondering, as an example, how that bridging, braiding and weaving process would work in a broad study like that.