Science and Research Committee on Dec. 4th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Welcome to meeting number 69 of the Standing Committee on Science and Research.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Therefore, members are attending in person in the room, and we also have some representatives who will be presenting remotely using Zoom.

For those who are virtual, there are a couple of rules. You can speak in the official language of your choice, but you can also choose interpretation services, at the bottom of your screen, for floor, English or French. If you lose interpretation, please let me know right away and we'll make sure that it gets restored.

For members in person, before speaking, wait until you're recognized, and if you are on video conference, unmute yourself. Speak slowly and clearly for the benefit of our translators, and when you're not speaking, please keep your microphone away from your earphones so that we don't have feedback events and cause injury to our interpreters.

Again, for all members, I remind you to address comments through the chair.

Now we'll get started on our session. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, September 18, 2023, the committee resumes its study of integration of indigenous traditional knowledge and science in government policy development.

It's my pleasure to welcome our witnesses today.

We have Dr. Mark Bonta, geographer. He's up from Pennsylvania. Welcome to our committee. We have Dr. Kyle Bobiwash, assistant professor. It's good to see you again, Dr. Bobiwash. We also have Mr. Jared Gonet, Ph.D. candidate in conservation biology, also via video conference. In the room, we have Dr. Brenda Parlee, professor and UNESCO chair at the University of Alberta, joining us from Edmonton.

Each presenter will have five minutes for an opening statement, and then we'll open the floor to questions.

We'll start off with Dr. Bonta for five minutes, please.

[Mark Bonta, Geographer, As an Individual]

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. I have been to the Yukon and to the Arctic, but as a researcher, I focused mostly on the tropics. I have extensive experience from Honduras, Mexico and particularly Australia.

I'll cover things you've probably heard before. I do a lot in philosophy as well as geography.

One of my major concerns is that we do a lot in indigenous knowledge with talking about what we should do. We've been doing this for a long time as academics: How should we incorporate and bring together these two different systems? Each country has different experiences.

I do have some ideas about that. Without further ado, let me go through and hit a few of my points.

I will say that I don't think indigenous traditional knowledge and western science are monolithic knowledge systems per se—western science particularly. I'm a geographer, both a social scientist and a natural scientist. We don't agree on the fundamentals, even in geography, of basic issues like time and space and what they are. The idea that science is this one thing definitely needs to be examined. Indigenous knowledge is obviously not one thing either. We always want to look at the nuances of that.

We want it to be something truthful. It often ends up being very political, so we need to be realists about what we're trying to achieve when we try to figure out how to bring these different ways of knowing together.

I've written down some reflections on indigenous traditional knowledge. One thing that I am insistent on is that although we do see it as a corpus of knowledge that extends back through time with different ways of gathering information, it does get field-tested. There's an experimental nature to it. It's not just something you learn out there from your elders. Many of us probably know that.

It's also eclectic. I've worked, for example, with a shaman in Mexico. He's learned a lot of this himself. He didn't inherit it from someone else. He's part of an indigenous group, but a lot of what he's done has been done with his family. He's accumulated this knowledge. It's not something that is only back in the past. It's very dynamic, wherever we are and whatever group we may be working with.

I'm interested in a synthesis, I guess. A hybrid, truly humanity-centred science would synthesize disparate knowledge systems in service to the abiding questions and problems faced by our societies. What I mean is that, with climate change and a lot of these issues, for example, we should not be bringing in indigenous voices. We should have many different voices coming together to create some sort of new science, instead of constantly saying we need people to inform our science. This happens a lot in conservation, but I think there are also much deeper ways to think about what indigenous knowledge involves.

It's all very general here. I have a very brief example.

I wrote some of these things about the Northern Territory in Australia. That's one place that has really made a lot of headway. The indigenous groups there own the land. They bring scientists in to work for them—they hire them. We were brought into that arena to document fire-spreading by raptors. This then goes into fire management and restoration of the land. It's also this incredible chance to.... It's like a hybrid space where everybody comes together to create new knowledge. It went beyond what we had coming out of our different disciplines.

I had a lot of things to say, but five minutes is a very short time.

In closing, I will say that one thing to think about is interspecies communication in birds. This is one of my biggest issues right now. It has been known that birds talk to each other in their own species and across species. They have languages. People also talk to birds—we know that and we have specific examples. This is what we're doing in Australia. This is now becoming something that ornithologists themselves are studying and learning about.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much for your testimony. Hopefully we can cover some of the rest of it in questions and answers.

Dr. Bobiwash, you are next, for five minutes, please.

[Kyle Bobiwash, Assistant Professor, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me.

Based on my experiences with Indigenous communities, public services and academia, both as professor and student, more and more, facilitating Indigenous knowledge and science within the Canadian science system is what's guiding my career and my life.

The braiding or weaving of indigenous knowledge and indigenous science is increasingly a global priority. From our challenges with conserving planetary biodiversity, mitigating or adapting to climate change, building a net-zero economy or ensuring both food security and food sovereignty, the work that we put into building processes and infrastructure to support the weaving and resourcing of indigenous science also improves our ability in Canada to build evidence-based policy and decision-making that optimize using knowledge from people who are often the closest to and have the longest relationships with many of the phenomena and systems that we wish to study.

As the committee has heard, indigenous science is a place-based knowledge system that is responsive to the needs of local people and enhances our relationships and responsibilities to each other, whether that be among humans, among species or in particular landscapes, but beyond that, indigenous science is also driven by distinct indicators and values.

Among the people I belong to, the Anishinabe, we have a variety of teachings, such as the seven grandfather teachings, or principles like the seven-generation concept that not only help guide our decisions and science development for today, but also give us an evaluative metric enabling us to measure the quality of our science and decisions for the future of those not yet born and even their children.

In Canada, we have some of the world's premier researchers in health, natural resource management, engineering, conservation biology and the list can go on and on, yet despite more interaction with science than ever through technology and the outputs of science, the youngest generations of Canadians risk facing shorter lifespans, more economic insecurity, more risks to life and livelihood due to climate change and—especially dear to me—less diverse, less beautiful and less resilient ecosystems and environments.

Indigenous science alone will not solve these problems. However, it's through the building of mechanisms that create space for indigenous science and self-determination in that science that we can enhance the thoroughness of our current scientific approaches. We can also improve the trust and transparency in our science and the decisions that stem from it, and we can build better ways to implement, share, mobilize and translate science for stakeholders and rights holders.

Through things like indigenous-led science priority-setting and indigenous science evaluation, we can drive science initiatives and funding opportunities that will drive the well-being of people, again, whether that be personal, economic or sociological, and at the same time we can also enhance that sense or the idea that science investments of all manners, both indigenous and non-indigenous, will improve and benefit the lives of people, their environments and workplaces.

From enhancing our ability to monitor sea ice or environmental change to providing modern crop breeders with plant traits to build new drought- or pathogen-resistant cultivars, the science and technology that have been developed by indigenous nations are already embedded in our science systems, as well as in our national and global economies.

However, a lot of this work has gone unrecognized and, more importantly, under-resourced, and it's this historical under-resourcing that represents an inefficiency in our science strategies and systems. Whereas professors like me have the opportunity to dedicate time to things like fundamental questions associated with sustainable agriculture or beneficial insect conservation, many land-based educators and knowledge-holders in our communities don't have that same resourcing support to continue developing and building their local knowledge systems.

Similarly, while it can always be better, funding and resources for the creation of the next generation of scientists—our undergraduate and graduate students—can be accessed through a variety of means in academia, while with indigenous communities, accessing funding to support the next generation of knowledge-holders is a lot more difficult, often due to funding programs' structures or processes.

Beyond these what I consider relatively easy issues to solve, we have larger-scale challenges that will require collaboration among Canada, the provinces and territories, academia, indigenous communities and industry. The building of an indigenous knowledge-holder or a scientist requires a lifelong network of support and outreach structures to create ethical space where scientific and indigenous knowledge can interact and be taught alongside each other and weave, where appropriate, for better evidence-based policy-making.

This involves a huge, wholesale effort to support the professional development of everyone in that science ecosystem, from the person collecting that science to the policy- and decision-makers using that science and even to the science teachers in our schools and communities.

Through the work of the interdepartmental indigenous science, technology, engineering and mathematics cluster, we are now just scratching the surface of supporting this work. The I-STEM cluster—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm afraid we have to cut off on that sentence. I wanted you to get one last sentence in. Thank you for your presentation.

We are on time.

We'll move now to Jared Gonet via video conference.

[Jared Gonet, Ph.D. Candidate, Conservation Biology, As an Individual]

Thank you, committee members, for taking the time to hear from me and many others on this important topic.

I am first nations with deep family ties to Carcross/Tagish First Nation and Taku River Tlingit, with relations from Fort Liard to Whitehorse. My status is with Taku River Tlingit.

I am a Ph.D. candidate studying how conservation issues may justly walk with indigenous knowledge. In many ways, I consider how indigenous knowledge systems may bring in sciences.

Context matters. For example, your work falls in line with a path we are all on for reconciliation, though we indigenous nations seek a resurgence of our own knowledge systems. In reconciliation is an acknowledgement of the truth, such as my own grandmothers both having gone to residential school, and my mother. One was in a school for 14 years.

As Ernestine Hayes, a Tlingit author, writes:

The original people were told they must speak the new language. They were told they must wear the new clothes. They were told they must gather from the ocean for profit and not for balance, and they must look upon fish as things and not as salmon-people.

Because of the recent past, trust is an issue in sharing our knowledge. To help with trust, I recommend that each indigenous nation be supported to share their knowledge in a way that leaves it protected through their laws and stored safely for and with them from the grassroots level, as one of my elder mentors, Norma Kassi, reminds me.

Direct comparison of indigenous knowledge to science will create challenges, indigenous knowledge being a diverse system of philosophies, ethics, laws and ways of relating with our non-human relations. Our knowledge-holders exist within this system and may guide a person to use science in a more indigenous way.

I recommend that indigenous knowledge be seen as a system that must be uplifted through an indigenous nation’s place-based authority. Policy and legislation must support elders to be advisers, have their wisdom recognized, and, as Kyle was just recognizing, support the space for the creation of the next generation of knowledge-holders, as mentor Mark Wedge, an elder of the Deisheetaan clan in Carcross/Tagish reminds me. Land guardians and indigenous conserved and protected areas are important steps.

Many indigenous nations come from a differing world view, so the terms we use are important. For example, in many parts of the Yukon, we have begun relationship planning rather than management planning. This helps to maintain our connections to our non-human relatives on emotional, spiritual, mental and physical levels. Here in the southern Yukon, we must maintain these relationships out of the laws that require respect, sharing and caring. This is a part of a systemic change that is required to allow more indigenous knowledge to come into policy.

Consider the words of Edna Helm, matriarch of the Ishkahittaan clan in Carcross/Tagish, when thinking of a more Inland Tlingit world view: “We must recognize that Caribou are our protectors, not the other way around.” Another example of first nation world views in action is Joe Copper Jack’s championing of the voiceless, where, for example, caribou may be given a seat at the table when decisions are made about them, future generations or anything under discussion.

Indigenous peoples often see the world through a holistic lens where we are equal members of a vast web of life that has spiritual and feeling parts that we must honour, as late Daḵlʼaweidí elder Norman James often reminded me, and as is written in “Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow", a document presented to Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1973, which started the treaty process in the Yukon. I recommend that policy consider how it may be written with love and pay homage to a great equity of us with all other parts of the lands and waters.

As one of our late Yukon elders, Virginia Smarch, noted, “We are part of the land and part of the water.” Many of us see this as literally true, that the destruction of the lands and waters is the destruction of indigenous knowledge and us. We fight to teach others how to walk with the land and water, as an initiative in the Yukon is named. Hence, I recommend that indigenous sovereignty over lands and waters be acknowledged and that true decision-making authority through co-management or co-relationships be intertwined with how indigenous knowledge walks with and informs government policy.

In reconciliation is healing, so that Tlingit haa kusteeyi, southern and northern Tutchone dan’ke, Han and Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in tr’ehude, Kaska dene k’éh survive and exist in the future. All these are different names for indigenous knowledge in the Yukon and parts of B.C. This knowledge and many others throughout Canada must inform policy to create a more just and lasting society.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you for your testimony.

Now we'll go to Dr. Parlee for our final five minutes.

[Dr. Brenda Parlee, Professor, UNESCO Chair, University of Alberta, As an Individual]

Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathering on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin nation.

I'm a non-indigenous scholar at the University of Alberta, which is located in Treaty 6 and Métis territory. As noted, I hold a UNESCO chair, which I hold collectively with Danika Billie Littlechild and Mariam Wallet Aboubakrine. Along with many other amazing people, we lead the Arramat project, which is a six-year initiative funded by the Canadian tri-council focused on supporting indigenous-led research on biodiversity, conservation, and health and well-being.

I have been working in Canada and internationally for over 25 years at the interface between traditional knowledge, science and natural resource management. Today, I bring to you some reflections, with gratitude to the many indigenous people with whom I have worked for many years.

One cannot talk about the linkages between science and indigenous knowledge without recognizing the inequities of representation that are so clear in post-secondary institutions and government. There are significant biases in who has access to resources, including the provincial norths, to produce knowledge and be heard at tables like this. The fact that I am presenting to you today, and not a great northern indigenous scholar such as Nicole Redvers or leader such as Herb Nakimayak from the Inuit Circumpolar Council, speaks to the unsettling biases we have in Canada about whose knowledge matters.

Indigenous knowledge is often stereotyped as produced and held only by elders and based in the distant past. However, I have had the honour to witness that indigenous knowledge comes from deep and ongoing physical and spiritual relationships to nature, and it is generated, held and shared within and between communities in diverse ways. It is more relevant today than ever, particularly for youth, who often struggle to find their place.

As expressed recently in a science-culture camp led by Łutsel K'e Dene First Nation in the Northwest Territories, youth want to learn and speak their own languages and to develop knowledge and skills from both elders and scientists. There is much to learn from indigenous youth about creating culturally safe learning spaces and opportunities. Let's ask them.

We need to pay attention to places where things have gone—and are still going—terribly wrong. Conventional kinds of science have created, rather than solved, many environmental sustainability problems. Knowledge conflict over the risks of oil sands mining in Cree, Dene and Métis territory in Alberta is an obvious case in point. Headlines about the extirpation of southern mountain caribou herds in Alberta are also revealing of the profound science-policy disconnects that we have in Alberta and Canada. It has only been through the leadership and courage of indigenous communities that some glimmers of hope have emerged for caribou and for people.

There are also success stories of knowledge co-production and co-management that I'd like to highlight, including the long-term collaborations between biologists and Inuvialuit communities to monitor beluga whales in the Beaufort Sea. Thanks to the hard work and vision of harvesters such as Frank Pokiak and devoted scientists—I'll note that most of them in this example are women—this program has produced over 40 years of data on beluga health, which is the envy of many governments around the world.

What differentiates the success stories from those of conflict? Many things do. At the forefront is respect for indigenous knowledge, but also legally binding institutional arrangements—agreements with teeth—that uphold indigenous land and resource rights. The successes of these kinds of programs also lie at the community level, with small organizations like hunters and trappers committees—also managed by powerhouse young women—whose efforts are little recognized and whose work is chronically underfunded. Support from the federal government for the indigenous guardians program is a wonderful step forward, but more resources are needed for indigenous-led research.

Addressing these issues cannot be done in a vacuum. Why do indigenous peoples in Canada, particularly in the provincial norths, not have access to clean drinking water, safe and affordable housing, healthy environments and foods, and opportunities to build thriving livelihoods? These are basic human rights. Let's implement the calls to action on truth and reconciliation, address the terms of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and also address the commitments on climate change and in the global biodiversity framework.

Let's work together to create and ensure healthy environments and communities where we can all be proud to live.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll move to our six-minute rounds of questioning, starting with Mr. Soroka, please.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being so patient with us.

Seeing as you are from Alberta, Dr. Parlee, I'll start off with you.

In your experience with community-based natural resource management, what have you found to be the most effective ways to include indigenous perspectives in conservation efforts?

[Dr. Brenda Parlee]

Thank you very much for the question.

I think I noted a couple of key points in my presentation, notably recognition of the value of indigenous knowledge systems and respect between scientists and indigenous knowledge-holders.

I think that at the root of a lot of the conflicts we see, or the lack of strong and healthy relationships between scientists and indigenous knowledge-holders, there are the issues of land and resource rights that are often an undercurrent. Until we address those issues, it can be hard to get past conversations of epistemology.

I'll mention a couple of other key points. I've been working, for example, with the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan first nations, and we've funded a number of community-based resource management projects over the last five years, recognizing the importance of indigenous people doing their own research on their own terms, communicating their knowledge in different ways and addressing capacity issues at the local level. Many communities are so chronically underfunded and the gaps and needs—for example, for youth engagement—are so great that it's a constant uphill battle in many cases.

I think the recognition, again, of land and resource rights is so critical. These aren't just issues that matter to Alberta first nations or Métis communities. These are about all Albertans or all Canadians, so I think that if we can solve these problems together, it's not just of benefit to them but, as I said, to everyone.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you for that.

I'm going to go to the next presenter.

Dr. Gonet, how do indigenous traditional practices contribute to modern conservation efforts, based on your studies?

[Jared Gonet]

You're jumping the gun. I'm not a doctor quite yet, but soon, hopefully.

How do indigenous traditional practices contribute to conservation practices? One thing that really works—and I've been sitting on a caribou management board for several years—and brings people from multiple different perspectives together is when our perspectives start to centre on what we want to preserve and protect.

I mentioned the example of the caribou sitting at the table. We always come back to what is the best thing for caribou. We all need to come together and figure out what is the best thing for, say, the lands and waters, and we're going to figure this out together because we all recognize that we need healthy lands and waters to exist into the future.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

What are some of the challenges with blending these practices with mainstream conservation strategies?

[Jared Gonet]

The big one is cultural education and the fact that it does take a lot of cultural education from us, as first nations people, to make others understand what it's like to come from our world view.

People really fall back into what's written in policy and what's written in law, and that can lead to a lot of challenges because all the laws and all the policies are currently written from a more Eurocentric, western perspective, just based on long histories there.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

I'm trying to get to everyone and ask a question of each one.

Mr. Bobiwash, regarding your course on indigenous issues and food systems, what key lessons would you share about integrating indigenous perspectives into agricultural policies?

[Kyle Bobiwash]

Thank you for the question. I think that's something worth highlighting.

This course has lots of non-indigenous participants from lots of farm families with a long history. Again, with what Jared was identifying, I create that little bit of indigenous cultural competency. However, beyond that, I enhance their ability and empower them to actually start to develop, utilizing their own expertise, their own knowledge of their own family farm systems, of being a resident of Manitoba.... I get them to really start to think about how incorporating something like indigenous values—the way we look at ecological relationships among certain plants, animals, or our water systems with our farm systems—actually translates into something like best management practices that all farmers are already incorporating. It's not only about the fuel or the agricultural productivity of a farm system, but also, how can we have additional benefits, whether that's through riparian habitat management, more efficient nutrient management, or even creating farm systems that actually serve as habitant for endangered species or at-risk species?

It's really about driving that unique perspective that lots of these students have from their own experience to actually be able to craft novel and unique perspectives that can potentially fuel indigenous development in agriculture.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

It was great to get the answers. Thank you for the questions.

Now we'll go to Dr. Jaczek for the next six minutes, please.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for their testimony. I'm sure you're aware that we've been hearing a lot of very interesting testimony as to the value of integrating indigenous knowledge and what we're calling “western science” into government policy development. I think most members of the committee are absolutely convinced that we need to do this.

That's what I'd like to really zero in on. What are the practical ways to ensure this actually happens?

Dr. Parlee, you mentioned under-representation in faculty and government. That's obviously something that needs examination in terms of universities themselves. You also mentioned the indigenous guardians program. Perhaps you could describe that particular program and why you feel it's so successful.

[Dr. Brenda Parlee]

Thank you.

The indigenous guardians program is an incredible network of indigenous communities supported by different sources of funding, but led through the hard work of numerous people in the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. When you think about the term “guardians”, it's about monitoring in some parts, and doing ongoing evidence-based research to collect data about issues that matter in communities. Can we drink the water? Can we eat the fish? How can we sustain resources that matter to our food security? However, it's also about sovereignty, about communities having that identity, that connection to the land, and being able to maintain that connection over time.

It's also social and cultural in many ways. It's an opportunity for communities to build, teach and create learning opportunities for youth. There are guardians programs as well that have an educational focus aimed at the public. The guardians program led by Iris Catholique in Łutsel K'e Dene First Nation, for example, tied to Thaidene Nëné National Park, is also aimed at educating non-indigenous people in the region about Dene culture.

It has many different dimensions, and I think it's that holistic approach that makes it so successful.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Has it been funded through the federal government, then?

[Dr. Brenda Parlee]

There are commitments from the federal government already to the indigenous guardians program, but these are drops in the bucket when you think about the need and the extensive opportunity there to learn from indigenous people.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

You would recommend expanding those programs.

[Dr. Brenda Parlee]

Exactly.