232807

Canada  

Science meets native lore

The berries tasted different. The blueberries and cranberries didn't look the same either.

When elders from Fort McKay near Alberta's oilsands went to their traditional picking areas, things just didn't feel right. They knew something was off. But what?

The First Nation's questions eventually grew into a collaboration with university-based researchers that brought botanists out on traditional berry-picking trips in an attempt to use western science to investigate community concerns.

Sure enough, the elders were right. Berries closer to the oilsands were different.

That effort to unite the white coats and the bush jackets was so successful that the Alberta government is extending the model into fish and wetland projects.

"We have a lot of scientists working in the area, but they don't always get to meet the elders and learn from them," said Jenelle Baker, a botanist who helped direct the research. "A lot of the scientists that are doing that are having some pretty big, almost life-changing moments."

Reconciliation between Canada and First Nations is playing out not only in legislatures and courtrooms but in labs across the country. Research grant applications often require provision for what is called traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous communities have a growing influence on what questions are explored.

It isn't always easy. Differences between science rooted in European ideas and the conceptual tools of Indigenous people are real and both parties still sometimes struggle for common ground.

"Anything science can't measure on the x and y axis, they tend to disregard," said Elmer Ghostkeeper, an engineer, anthropologist and member of the Alberta government's Indigenous Wisdom Advisory Panel — a group charged with bringing Indigenous perspectives to environmental monitoring.

"Everything is about measurement and anything you can't measure is not scientific," said Leroy Little Bear, a University of Lethbridge professor and another panel member.

On the other hand, individual experience and oral history isn't always enough, said Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta polar bear biologist with extensive field experience.

"There's been a push to try to move the traditional ecological knowledge into the science and that has not worked very well. They are two very different entities.

"Traditional ecological knowledge isn't feeding directly into the scientific questions that we have anymore."

Science isolates a variable, notes its behaviour under controlled conditions and extrapolates that into a general rule. The scientist stands apart, neutrally observing.

Indigenous people have been more interested in relationships between many things at once as they interact in the real world. That real world includes the observer.

"I am nature," said Ghostkeeper. "I am the environment."

That perspective inevitably includes feelings and values — love for a place, for example.

"Science can't measure love," Ghostkeeper said.



More Canada News



232391