Canada is 'weaving' Indigenous science into environmental policy-making
- Media Manager
- Oct 20, 2022
- 2 min read
CBC News
Published: October 21st, 2022
Research shows that Indigenous communities in Canada are at higher risk from climate-related disasters such as flooding. Myrle Ballard is setting out to make sure Indigenous people are also part of the solution to climate change.
Ballard is the first director of Environment and Climate Change Canada's new division of Indigenous Science, a role in which she's tasked with raising awareness of Indigenous science within the department and helping the government find ways to integrate it into its policies.
"Indigenous science is … a science of the way of knowing the land. It's a way of knowing the water, the air, everything about the Earth. Their knowledge of the weather patterns, their knowledge of how species migrate," Ballard said in an interview with What On Earth. "It's this knowledge that has enabled them to survive."
Ballard, an assistant professor in the faculty of science at the University of Manitoba, is Anishinaabe from Lake St. Martin First Nation. Some of her own research looks at what Indigenous languages reveal about local ecosystems. She said her own first language, Anishinaabemowin, has a scientific management tool embedded within it.
"We have words for various spaces and places right across the country that are very significant to the natural state of the ecosystem," she said.
The names of streams, for example, reveal details about the natural way water flows. Other words contain information about when fish start to spawn, said Ballard.
"We have words like that that are very significant as a biological monitor throughout our language," said Ballard. "They're the indicators of the state of the ecosystem and the way it was before, to the present."
Ballard, who was hired in July to lead the new permanent division, is using a process she calls "bridging, braiding and weaving." Bridging means raising awareness about Indigenous science within the government, while braiding is when Western scientists work together on research with Indigenous peoples on the land.
"The weaving process will be when the government, when the department ECCC, starts weaving Indigenous and Western science for better-informed decision-making," she said.
