Science and Research Committee on Feb. 6th, 2024

[Lindsay Heller]

I think Monnica brought up, importantly, that there are not enough indigenous scientists and people like me doing this work. I think it's about support through curriculum, through removing barriers in educational systems and through allowing indigenous people to see themselves at the front of the classroom and in the curriculum. It's about looking at assessment differently and to really decolonize education so that indigenous people can bring the gifts they receive through knowledge from our ancestors, through ceremony and through our language and weave that together with the really important things we learn in those institutions to become chemists and biologists.

Additionally, I think it's about having respect and collaboration at the forefront of all of these projects. That's why I decided to take my short amount of time to position indigenous knowledge as sound, intelligent and reliable, because that's often not done. I think it's about going into these partnerships and taking the time to listen—listening to hear instead of listening to respond—and getting to know the people you're working with. Get to understand what language and ceremony mean to us. Then, based on those respectful relationships, move on in a collaborative, relational way.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that response building on the concept of respect and reciprocity, which I think you mentioned in your opening remarks as well and seems to be so foundational in this conversation.

One things that's interesting to me is that when I think about that, I think about it as standing on mountaintops. There's western science and individuals with that way of knowing standing on a mountaintop. Then there are indigenous knowledge-keepers standing on a mountaintop. We both need to be looking across and looking up to each other, in a way. To me, it is a sign of respect and reciprocity when we can each recognize the unique value in each other's way of knowing.

Sometimes in our conversations I feel like we're still treating western science as having primacy and thinking about how indigenous traditional knowledge can add on to western science or complement it. What if we flipped it the other way around? I think it would look very different.

I wonder if any of the panellists today could talk about this. If we were to give indigenous traditional knowledge primacy, which I think it deserves, how would western science complement it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

We have about 45 seconds.

Ms. Heller, if you can, move your microphone up a bit for the interpreters.

Who is going to start on this one?

[Lindsay Heller]

I can take 30 seconds.

In my very last statement, I talked about how indigenous world views aren't what got us into this in the first place. I think it's about taking the time to really understand what an indigenous world view is and what it means to be relational with all living things.

We're not standing on top of the mountain. We're standing beside the mountain. We're standing with the mountain. We're standing with all the living things. We're going into ceremony to remember who we are and to remember the responsibility that we have to all living things. If government officials and western scientists can take a bit of a pause and reorient their axis to understand that we are all part of a complex web of connections, then I think we can move forward in a good way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you. That was a great question and a great answer.

Now we'll have Maxime Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My first questions are for Dr. Dyck.

Dr. Dyck, you are a history professor and hold a tier 1 Canada research chair in the history of health and social justice. According to my limited readings and various discussions with a number of professors, science ought to be universal, and free of ethnic or national considerations.

What I've seen today is a discussion about western knowledge and indigenous knowledge. Could you tell us how, throughout history, science may have been classified on the basis of its ethnic or national nature? For example, we don't currently refer to algebra as Arabic science, even though it was invented by Arabs.

I'd like you to explain to me how a branch of science can be described today as being ethnic or national.

[Dr. Erika Dyck]

That's a very difficult question.

I think there are two things. One is the funding bodies that give priority to and sometimes create particular kinds of steps in the definitions of how we identify science and how it's funded and, therefore, some of the projects that can go forward. Those, of course, give a kind of national presence to it, and they create a different set of priorities. That undergirds some of the ideas about the national containers that science exists in.

If we think about this in the context of indigenous knowledge, though, to Lindsay's point, I think reordering and imagining different priorities and different aspects of science that we don't necessarily consider within the western frame of science, such as spirituality, for example.... If we come back to those veterans, some of what is being treated here is a spiritual set of disorders that has not, for the last 75 years, fit neatly into our western biomedical ideas. I'm saying western, not national.

By rearranging that and reimagining those priorities, I think we can imagine a different way of integrating indigenous knowledge or other ways of seeing and prioritizing into health needs, and the relationship to the earth is part of that.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Dr. Dyck.

So what you're saying is that indigenous knowledge ought to be incorporated into western science.

How can that be done? For example, for something to be considered knowledge, it must have been verified. That means that it can't be an opinion, a hypothesis or a belief.

How then do we go about incorporating this knowledge into science and separating what's true from what's false?

[Dr. Erika Dyck]

My work with indigenous communities—albeit limited, as I am a settler myself—suggests to me that we have to ask different questions. We have to let other people lead. We have to take cues in other ways.

The question about psychedelics, for example, is an instructive one. Asking about psychedelics doesn't actually get to priority questions within the indigenous communities that I've worked in. The questions are about safe access to housing, to water and food systems, and to education systems for their children. Psychedelics are not really the priority, yet psychedelics are part of the world we live in and sometimes part of the ceremonies that indigenous people are participating in.

It's really a reimagining of the health priorities that sometimes don't necessarily fit into a neat category that we think of as science per se.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Okay.

Dr. Dyck, I just want to understand your comments.

You're saying that a different way of asking questions and of understanding things is needed. Do you mean that the scientific method has to be reviewed when we're talking about indigenous knowledge?

[Dr. Erika Dyck]

I don't know that we need to re-examine the entire scientific process, but I think there are aspects that warrant a revisiting.

Take, for example, randomized controlled trials. When we think about that in the context of psychedelics, they are measuring a very specific pharmacological action. What they don't measure are all of the kinds of interactions with the environment and all of the kinds of personal and emotional interactions that occur when someone consumes psychedelics.

Indigenous ceremonies don't treat psychedelics like a randomized controlled trial. That completely reorients the interaction and the experience. I think listening and learning about why those ceremonies exist and what functions they serve could be very instructive for imagining what meaning we are trying to extract from that pharmacological reaction.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

To conclude, given that time is short, I'm going to ask you a question that I've previously asked other witnesses: How do you distinguish a belief or a tradition from knowledge?

That's what I'd like to know.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have 30 seconds.

[Dr. Erika Dyck]

I think this is also very difficult. Right now, knowledge for me as a professor counts when I publish things in peer-reviewed literature. Beliefs don't necessarily get me points on my CV.

I think sometimes the systematic ways of giving credit or cultural value to knowledge and belief.... Sorry, belief doesn't get that same kind of cultural credit, and I think that's something our funding systems reinforce.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That was a great discussion. Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today.

I'm going to start with Dr. Heller.

We're in a study about somehow bringing together science—as we normally think of it in western settler societies—and indigenous knowledge. We've heard a number of witnesses use words like “to weave”, “to braid”. I think you mentioned the word “weave”.

Could you expand on how you see these two ways of seeing the world and how we can use both of them in informing government policy?

[Lindsay Heller]

I think it's important that you raised this. I'm uncomfortable with the word “integration”; it can often be seen as consuming one into the other. Weaving or braiding is taking the strengths of each knowledge system and putting them together to create something even stronger.

Coming back to what I have talked about in a couple of my comments, it is about an indigenous world view. We see the forest as a “them” as opposed to an “it”. You're much less likely to raze that forest to the ground when you see it as a relative as opposed to seeing it as something there for you to consume and benefit from.

I'm going to leave it at that.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'm going to dive down into a more detailed example.

Dr. Heller, you mentioned the Species at Risk Act as one example where this process happens. In my previous life, I was on the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. It was, I think, one of the first government agencies, or government-adjacent agencies, that brought indigenous knowledge and indigenous knowledge-keepers into its membership. Certainly in those early days it was a bit of a struggle even finding who should sit on there to represent indigenous knowledge. Considering all the things the government needed to be careful about was a difficult matter.

Using that example, I'm wondering how indigenous knowledge has been used in the Species at Risk Act, if you're familiar with it, and perhaps how you think it should be used if you think there are better ways.

[Lindsay Heller]

I think when you're talking about particular species and the land protections that are going to come along with SARA, the Species at Risk Act, it's about understanding the populations of the animal before contact. It's about taking into consideration the cultural uses for that animal, thinking about the different land uses that come into play for that particular animal and having somebody, a community, that has a deep knowledge of that land. A land-based perspective is critical, as opposed to officials or scientists who may parachute in and use sound data. Weave together those two approaches to data collection to make decisions about this animal.

I think it's also critical to consider what that community will be facing in the aftermath of coming in and putting in land protections, because oftentimes an indigenous community can be blamed for land use restrictions. The harms they can face when that comes into play are often not considered and must be considered.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll continue with talking about some of the issues I've encountered in this space.

For some indigenous knowledge-keepers—perhaps you mentioned this—there's a consideration that in some cases, or many cases, knowledge is considered proprietary to a person or family, and they're unwilling to share it with government policy-makers. Can you perhaps comment on that and on how we can move forward in situations like that?

[Lindsay Heller]

I did mention this. There is an inherent distrust because of theft of knowledge. That's why taking the time to establish a relationship with these individuals so you can build that trust.... Why would they want to share that knowledge with you if they feel that it might not be used in a good way that's going to benefit not only them, but their community and all the living beings around there?

Take the time to get to know these individuals, to get to know the historical aspects of what that community has faced and is facing, and go into that relationship to build trust and really establish a basis for doing this work together. If there's a willingness to learn, a willingness to hear the answer “no, that is not our priority”, I think that positions this kind of work in a different way. Indigenous communities and knowledge-keepers are much more likely to want to participate when things are done a bit differently.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you. I apologize for having to be the timekeeper on this discussion.

In the next round, we'll have to do some trimming to get us to the top of the hour. We're going to do rounds of three and a half, three and a half, one and a half and one and a half minutes for our questions.

Starting with three and a half minutes, we have Michelle Rempel Garner.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'll direct my questions to Dr. Dyck and Dr. Heller.

Michael Pollan is an American author and journalist and a professor in the practice of non-fiction at Harvard University. In 2020, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

If you look at some of the book reviews for his very famous book, How to Change your Mind, which talked about the use of psychedelics, they were glowing. “Gripping and surprising.... Makes losing your mind sound like the sanest thing a person could do”, said New York Times Book Review. “Astounding”, said New York Magazine.

It's been amusing to me.... Perhaps that's not the right word. It's been amusing and disappointing to watch the world all of a sudden say that psychedelics could be used for mental health work after Michael Pollan's book. I think this is a perfect example of some of the things you were speaking about, Dr. Williams.

Was there anything fundamentally transformational in Michael Pollan's book or is it just basically a collection of indigenous knowledge? Why does it still take a Michael Pollan to get indigenous traditional knowledge accepted as mainstream practice?

[Monnica Williams]

This is true and unfortunate. Almost everything we know about psychedelic-assisted therapy has come from indigenous practices that have been westernized and appropriated with little credit, recognition, glory or money going back to the original sources of this knowledge and these techniques.

If you read the book, which I have read, it reads like a pantheon of white men getting the credit for all of the psychedelic research that's been done in the last century. Unfortunately, this is often how we determine what's important: Did white men discover it and are they talking about it and publicizing it? That's exactly what we see with Michael Pollan's book.

To your point, he is not an expert in psychedelics. He's not a clinician. He doesn't have an MD or a Ph.D., but he gets a lot of attention because he wrote a best-selling book.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Go ahead, Dr. Dyck.