Science and Research Committee on Feb. 8th, 2024

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you for that.

I'd like to ask each witness questions, so I'll go to Dr. Lévesque now.

From your research and collaboration with indigenous communities, what key principles would you recommend for the successful integration of indigenous knowledge into governmental policy development?

[Carole Lévesque]

Picking up on what my colleague just said, if you stopped referring to integration and referred instead to recognizing knowledge systems, how they are learned and what indigenous peoples, groups and bodies put in place, you'd then be able to create spaces where Canadian and indigenous societies could connect. You mustn't view this as an integration, but rather as a recognition of different knowledge systems.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

To follow up on that, have you found some better methodology for recognition and for how we can utilize that better?

[Carole Lévesque]

Yes, we've established projects with Quebec Anishinabe and Innu communities. Those projects have had an impact on teaching and on the primary and secondary curriculum, for example, and have concerned the transmission of knowledge to young generations. As I said earlier in my remarks, those projects concern issues that are just as sensitive as homelessness.

We've included some potential solutions in briefs to federal and provincial parliamentary committees. Those solutions would involve bringing together various types of knowledge in order to develop policies that recognize the existence of knowledge systems and do them justice. They also include ways to address those types of knowledge in an indigenous context.

We are obviously in favour of these converging knowledge sets for spaces where it's possible to interact rather than merely see the indigenous world on the one hand and the non-indigenous world on the other. For the benefit of indigenous populations, we need to create meeting spaces, interfaces for addressing common concerns. That requires policies and programs, including health and social services programs. You have to consider indigenous expectations and perspectives.

This is where we're seeing genuine results in Quebec, and we're seeing them in many sectors, including accommodation, housing, the new buildings being developed by the Regroupement des centres d'amitié autochtones du Québec. These are living environments that are restoring indigenous values, principles and knowledge, in addition to making it possible to welcome a population of future indigenous students across the province who will move into those buildings as members of families, in many instances for generations to come. In some cases, precedents have already been established in Quebec, often as a result of the work we've done together.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you. That's very good. Thank you for the fulsome answer.

Thank you, Mr. Soroka, for the questions.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

We can't be out of time yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Six minutes go quickly.

Now it's over to Ms. Bradford for six minutes, please.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much to our witnesses who are here with us today in person and virtually. I sincerely hope that we're going to be able to get Madame Tshernish online with us.

First of all, I would like to start with Dr. Lévesque.

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

I have a point of order. The translation is reversed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Maybe we can flip around the English and the French channels.

I've paused your time. Could you ask something else so we can make sure that we're on the right translation?

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Hello. Is that better?

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

We have it; it's all good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Okay, we're good now.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

That's good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Please continue.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Cannings.

Dr. Lévesque, I am very interested in your work with Dialog, which you founded in 2001, the Indigenous Peoples Research and Knowledge Network, which, I understand, has connected students, researchers and indigenous partners since 2001. That's quite a long history.

What lessons can be drawn from the exchanges the Dialog network has facilitated over more than two decades?

[Carole Lévesque]

Thank you for your question.

We're actually seeing results in the examples just cited a moment ago. In our work, and in ongoing joint building efforts, we have managed to show that the integration theme doesn't enable us to achieve the objectives that we share with our non-indigenous colleagues. When we refer to integrating indigenous knowledge in science, we risk trivializing the value and robustness of those knowledge systems. Instead we need to go to something that enables connection and interaction. So it can't just be about integration. From the moment you refer to integration, you downplay the role of knowledge and the entire structure of knowledge systems. By not referring to integration, we've managed to update practices, skills and competencies that otherwise wouldn't have been considered.

When you talk about integrating knowledge and science, you reduce indigenous knowledge to information, to specific data points. That doesn't mean it isn't important; it simply means we're losing sight of the entire social and community system that forms the basis of indigenous knowledge. It means that no consideration is being given to what accompanies that information, whereas we very well know that science isn't just a about data. It's about protocols, methodological procedures, inquiries and competencies that scientists and researchers develop.

In an indigenous context, if you merely integrate information and science, you lose sight of the ways in which knowledge is learned and transmitted. You lose sight of the intergenerational significance of that knowledge. This is how we've made progress and how that progress has had a knock‑on effect in many projects and fields.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

I think you've just articulated the challenges of bringing two solitudes together. The scientific method is all based on quantifiable data, and indigenous knowledge is based on lived experience over generations—literally, in-the-field observation and things like that.

I can understand that there probably are challenges and misunderstandings that have arisen over the 20 years that Dialog has been operational. Can you elaborate a little bit more on how you overcome this and make sure that the indigenous knowledge is treated equally and is not overwhelmed by the scientific approach?

[Carole Lévesque]

I would say that indigenous knowledge isn't merely qualitative in nature. Some indigenous knowledge is highly standardized and yields results that could be characterized as quantitative. The idea that indigenous knowledge is merely qualitative is a preconceived notion. There are standards and ways of doing things. Science is also highly standardized and codified, but we mustn't lose sight of the fact that science isn't just environmental science, natural science or physical science. It also embraces the social sciences and humanities.

As we address the matter of indigenous knowledge, we exceed the boundaries that we've established in our scientific systems. People in the social sciences don't often work with others in the natural sciences. We at the Dialog network have worked with many disciplines in an attempt to see how they correspond with each other, because indigenous knowledge systems can't be understood as so many separate disciplines. They must be viewed as a way of understanding the world.

By working in an interdisciplinary, even transdisciplinary, manner, we can acquire the necessary perception and lessons to address and define indigenous knowledge systems, which aren't siloed.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I just wanted to clarify that I do appreciate that the indigenous people also have been very helpful to governments over the years in quantifying endangered species.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to the witnesses who have joined us today.

Mrs. Lévesque, I listened closely to your opening remarks. I want to draw on your extensive experience as an anthropologist to try to demystify things. Many witnesses have appeared before us during this study, and we don't all agree on the same things.

Is there a clear definition of western science?

At what point in human history did science acquire an ethnic or national character?

[Carole Lévesque]

You're raising an extremely complex issue, and I don't think I can give you an answer.

I would say that science has developed over hundreds, even thousands, of years from elements that have constituted the modern sciences. The same is true in the indigenous context.

There isn't one science, but rather many sciences. Science makes it possible to understand social and environmental realities and phenomena in a host of fields. That enables us to create common knowledge. Science operates at the collective level, whereas we previously tended to view it as highly individualistic.

The same is true in an indigenous context: knowledge is kept collectively. When you acquire a piece of information from an individual person, what you get is only a very small part of the knowledge system.

As for the characteristics of science in general, I can't name them for you, except to say that, based on my experience as an anthropologist, there are various sciences and practices, but the idea is always to create knowledge that is validated by peers and placed in a collective context, unlike an opinion. An opinion isn't knowledge; an opinion is an individual point of view. Knowledge, on the other hand, is validated information that, once contextualized, studied and explained, becomes part of a common body of knowledge. And that's where the problem often arises.

So when we want to contact people to elicit their knowledge, they can give each of us information as individuals, but we must understand the system in the same way as we understand science. We must view, as a whole, scientific systems and knowledge systems that have developed in medicine, health and education at the societal level.

Science isn't transmitted by one single person.

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

Mrs. Lévesque, I'm going to continue on the matter of how to view it all.

Is there a universal definition of science or indigenous knowledge?

[Carole Lévesque]

No, just as there isn't an exclusively universal definition of scientific knowledge. The social sciences, the humanities, which generate meaning, the physical sciences, the natural sciences and the technological sciences are based on cumulative knowledge and can thus support universal claims. The social sciences, on the other hand, aren't based on cumulative knowledge, but rather explanatory knowledge. They are forms of knowledge that derive from an understanding of societies and their manifestations.

Indigenous knowledge systems have a universal quality in that they are everywhere. The social sciences also have a universal quality in that social sciences are practised differently in Africa, South America and Canada. There are specific characteristics associated with the societal aspect, and that's also true in the indigenous context.

We would like science to be universal—that's one of the claims it makes for itself—but to what extent is science universal, and what scientific disciplines afford us truly universal understanding?