The reason I started with that was to really underpin the idea that knowledge institutions are convened and developed by first nations people who are living in situ on their lands and working on various ways to make sure that their lands are healthy and producing the resources that they have a right to. That means working with the the seven chiefs and councils of the Okanagan nation.
In fact, it means collaborating with the Colville Confederated Tribes, which is the other half of the Okanagan nation in the state of Washington, to look at how we fix the river. How do we put the salmon that have been gone for 52 years back into the river? The Columbia River is dammed. There are 14 dams south of us in Washington state. How do we do that?
Our work with the En'owkin Centre and the chiefs of the nation in collaboration with all these agencies has been able to do that. That's because it's led by our nation; it's led by people. The science tools are brought in to support that, not the other way around. It's not researchers coming in and saying, ”We want to do this”; it's the chiefs saying, “This is what we want to do. Here are the tools we need”. If they don't know what the tools are, they call on people like me, who are embedded in the university system, to be able to translate what can help, what could help, and how that collaboration.... That model of collaborating with someone in between who can speak the language and who is part of that land needs to be part of the policy. That's what En'owkin Centre does with its tech team.
