Building bridges between Indigenous and Western freshwater knowledge, research, and management

September 30 was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. The day is in recognition of the past and ongoing harm of residential schools.

In recognition of the day and to make sure reconciliation is an action I’m aiming to find research this month that features Indigenous knowledges and was carried out by Indigenous scholars. For today, I searched research that Dr. Myrle Ballard, the head of the Indigenous Science Division (ISD) at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). Dr. Ballard is an Anishinaabe scholar who works at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Ballard is not the lead author of this article but the article itself is a review of freshwater research that aims to bridge Indigenous and Western sciences.

The research, led by Alexander and colleagues (2021), reviewed more than 5,000 studies, finding 72 articles to include. These revealed some specific trends that are of interest.

• Not surprisingly, there is still a clear struggle for developing and implementing inclusive approaches. While governmental commitments exist to do so, implementing approaches has been more abstract and inconsistent. Over half of the studies have been published in the past decade, and more than 94% have been published since 2000. This illustrates that this is still a relatively new effort.
• Representation from Indigenous authors or authors representing Indigenous communities, organizations, and/or governments was only present in 32 of the studies. This is obviously problematic as it is hard to be truly inclusive without also 1) recognizing other ways of communicating and 2) ensuring that inclusion happens at every level of research.
• Most of the published studies have been done in BC and Northwest Territories. The maritime provinces, in particular, lack studies in this area. But across the rest of the provinces and territories there is significant room for improvement.
• There is little information about the demographics, such as gender and age of Indigenous knowledge holders. What does exist indicates that freshwater knowledge has more equal gender distribution in Indigenous communities. This is interesting and potentially representative of cultural norms within the different Indigenous communities. This should be, at minimum, recorded.
• Across all the studies, there were 78 distinct Indigenous knowledge systems. This is important because it shows how local the practices and knowledge can be. This illustrates that blanket approaches and solutions are likely not going to be effective.

The concept of terra nullius (which said that people lived on the land, but they weren’t the master and therefore, it was unowned land) and the Doctrine of Discovery (a framework for Christian explorers to name Indigenous Peoples as non-human because they were not Christian and therefore declare the land as terra nullius and claim it) were used to dismiss Indigenous populations’ management of land and steal the land from those populations. This interpretation of Indigenous land management is far from the truth. Indigenous Peoples have managed land for time immemorial in ways that supported natural ecosystems. As Western approaches have clearly not been good for land or water in most historical and current cases, the land and water need us to work together. Research such as this, which identifies approaches to bridge the chasm and identify ways to work side-by-side, is so important and needs more attention.