Every process – every idea – should be questioned and debated and evolved. Every process – every idea – can be improved.

How?

We so often assume science will help us innovate and do better. And it might. However, for science to help us better understand the problems we face, it’s possible we need to innovate the scientific process of inquiry – and not necessarily by finding new models of inquiry.

“The people of this land have understood this place for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, for time immemorial. And because of that, we can now look to those ways of knowing to start looking at how to solve some of the problems we’re currently facing as well.”

Kelly King is an Indigenous traditional knowledge advocates and helped build the TRACKS program – an Indigenous-led education project that aims to help a new generation learn from traditional ways of knowing. 

“Indigenous knowledge was the first science of this land, and of all land really. It is Indigenous science that has had the deepest understanding of this place.”

And maybe that surprises you and maybe it doesn’t, but here’s the thing: Kelly believes we need to complement our understanding of western science with a better understanding of Indigenous traditional knowledge.

“I think it creates space to think of the land and how we’re connected to it in ways that western science doesn’t allow us to. When we’re thinking about western science, we’re thinking of how we’re separate from (the land), and how what we’re studying can kind of sit in a box that sits separate from ourselves.”

Kelly continues, “When we’re thinking of traditional ecological knowledge, we’re thinking of how we are related to (the land) at every step of the way, and how what we’re studying we’re in a relationship with – and (that what we’re studying) is in relationship to each other without us being connected to them.”

Why does that matter? Kelly explains traditional knowledge helps “expand our thinking to look at the interdependence of species. So, we’re not looking at things in boxes. It gives us a toolkit to start seeing how things are related in more intimate ways than we might realize when only using a western science lens.”

It’s what’s known as a two-eyed approach.

“We ask people to hold up a triangle (with our fingers) in front of their faces and to close one eye at a time. Now observe: What are you seeing when just your right eye is open? And what are you seeing when just your left eye is open? And, then, what do you see when both of your eyes are open? You’re seeing blurred edges around the corners of your triangle, but you are seeing both sides. That kind of way of looking at the world with two eyes is so important moving forward, and that can be related to any kind of multiple knowledge systems.”

Dr. Leroy Little Bear says think about traditional knowledge this way:

“The measurement approach to science, I think, has served a very good purpose. But I also think we need to complement that with a relational approach to it, to make it much more of a complete science. Because as of the moment, when you really dig in to things like wildlife management, we’ve tried to cover it with notions of a scientific approach. But in reality, the approaches we’ve been taking to wildlife management have been more about people.”

Leroy is an educator, having launched at Harvard University the first Indigenous studies program. He’s also a lawyer, having helped inspire the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But that’s not all. Leroy is a scientist and believes by incorporating Indigenous traditional knowledge into the western science process of inquiry, we’ll uncover new ways of knowing and doing.

“Dig a little bit deeper to find a relational approach to science.”

That’s needed, Kelly King argues, because “we know that there have been challenges when we haven’t listened to the land. And we’re simply not listening to the land right now as a greater society.”

Shianne McKay is Ojibwe and is a community builder, having helped First Nation communities across the country use traditional knowledge to make better decisions for people and nature.

Shianne explains why listening to the land matters – why a relational approach to science matters.

“Indigenous traditional knowledge is obtained through lived experiences and observations. It’s more of a holistic approach to learning. It’s the emotional, physical, spiritual, and cultural wisdom that is shared from our elders and traditional knowledge holders. Western science, on the other hand, is the study of the physical, chemical and biological composition of living and non-living things. Traditional knowledge, it bridges the understanding that all living and non-living things matter; that everything has a spirit and everything deserves to be respected and cared for; that it’s humanity’s responsibility to protect and conserve the environment.”

In western science, that might be an opinion, but in traditional knowledge, it’s fact. Dr. Leroy Little Bear explains that this difference stems from perceptions of reality and time.

“The native world really is about that search for reality. It’s not a stagnant world. In the western world, we tend to approach things from that stagnant world perspective. In other words, we say, ‘this is the way God made it’. But in the native world, things are forever changing, there’s some flux to it. The whole notion is to see if we can find what I refer to as regular patterns in that flux. We know that things will eventually change because of the flux, but at least we can (find) a temporary reference point. And, so, that notion of science in the native world is almost exactly like Einstein was defining it: It’s trying to find that reality through those regular patterns.”

In other words, by incorporating more reference points or datasets, passed forward through story across the generations, Indigenous traditional knowledge accounts for more context across a longer arc of time. In the doing, Leroy says, we can see how our reference points fit into the larger picture. And when we do that? We can also clearly see the interconnectedness between all life.

“If you can begin to realize what that foundation is all about, then you can see where that worldview is taking you. That’s the importance of interpreting data – the data being taken in (should be) through all our sensory perception.”

Leroy adds, “Traditional knowledge, it used to be that most people said, ‘oh, what’s that about? It’s all a myth and so on’. Well, the thing is, there is lots of knowledge (behind it), there is lots of science behind it.”

Indeed, traditional knowledge advocate Kelly King tells us society increasingly agrees with Leroy.

“More and more, traditional ecological knowledge is being not only accepted, but embraced and leaned on by western scientific worldviews.”

After all, Kelly says, “Indigenous knowledge is rigorous, it’s complete, it’s complex, it’s diverse, it’s credible.”

Stephanie Leonard of the Indigenous-led Caribou Patrol agrees, pointing out that it was traditional knowledge that first sounded the alarm about the decline of the caribou, decades before western science realized there was a problem.

“Aseniwuche Winewak Nation noticed the decline in the 70s and they voluntarily stopped hunting the caribou in their backyard at that time. Western science comes and they say, ‘hey, yeah, we’ve noticed this’. Yeah, my grandfather noticed that.”

Kelly King argues that it’s for this reason we need to realize “traditional ecological knowledge isn’t stuck in the past. It’s constantly evolving. And it’s something that we can be creating right now. It’s something that we can be creating into the future. It is a continuation of that way of knowing, that way of being on the land.”

Community builder Myia Antone adds that doesn’t mean one way of scientific knowing is better than another.

“One of them isn’t better than the other one. But (we need to see) how they can work together in collaboration and how they complement each other.”

As Myia continues, “Our knowledge of this land comes from being here for thousands of years, and it comes from observation and living with the land. And when you think of what I was taught in school – the scientific method of research and data collection that comes from observation as well – you see these ties between both knowledge systems.

“But for me”, Myia adds, “traditional knowledge is so important because it comes from a place of love and it comes from a place of respect. And I want everyone to love the land as much as I love it because I think for a sustainable future – the one that I picture and the one that I dream of – is very much a world of everyone working together and loving the land and making every decision from a place of hope and respect. And not just for us as human beings, but also for our relatives – the plants and the animals in the spirit world – because a lot of the time decisions are made without their consent. So, how can we get consent from the land? How do you listen to the land for consent? How do you listen to the stories that this land holds? Because we come from a storytelling tradition and storytelling is so, so important. The land holds its own stories, but it’s become hard for us to really listen when we have so many other things going on in our world. We need to return back to the land and listen to the stories that are there. They will teach us where we should be going.”

Now, traditional knowledge advocate Kelly King acknowledges “disagreement has to happen. There’s no way we can move into this (two-eyed approach to science) without there being disagreement, especially when we’re looking at different knowledge systems. There are certain ways where they can overlap and they can connect, but there will always be some disagreements, even within a knowledge system. Of course, that’s going to happen amongst people as well, but it doesn’t mean we can’t work together either.”

And that’s the most important point of all.

When we make room for multiple approaches – multiple ways of knowing – we all learn. That doesn’t just make for more robust science or better decision-making, but as Kelly says, it also helps us heal as a society.

“There’s very quickly a jump to reconciliation with a lot of people because it’s more of a comfortable place to be, rather than to speak to the truth. But truth does need to come first before we can start thinking about how we can rebuild, or build from the very ground up our relationships to each other. We need to learn how to listen within that framework (of traditional knowledge) and then hopefully we get to a place where relationships can be built. But first we need to think about what is the truth of the land and what is the natural law that we’re living within.”

In other words, understanding traditional knowledge is one more step towards truth and reconciliation in Canada – it’s one more step in the process of reconciling people and nature, a fundamental part of achieving meaningful truth and reconciliation.

“We are going to get to a point very soon, if not now, when we have to listen to the land”, Kelly argues. “We are completely dependent on (the earth). We are dependent on everything that she provides us. We can’t live here without everything she provides us. So, we’re going get to a point where we have to have hope in this kind of way of being, this kind of way of seeing the world.”

By integrating traditional knowledge and western science – by taking a two-eyed approach to the challenges we face – we might uncover better processes of scientific inquiry, helping us truly balance the needs of people and nature for generations to come.