[Witness spoke in Plains Cree, interpreted as follows:]

Greetings to my elected leaders, family and relations. I greet all of you. The Creator gifts us another day to speak on another important topic. Integrating indigenous knowledge and science in policy development couldn't come any sooner.

I bring greetings and acknowledgement of indigenous territories, nahkowê-iyiniwak, the Algonquin and Odawa territory.

One thing we have in mind that we wanted to come and speak about on behalf of our elders and our people is defining indigenous traditional knowledge, ITK. We need to explain indigenous traditional knowledge. The way we see it from the elders, it is the accumulated knowledge and practices developed by indigenous communities over generations.

It is just like the birch tree example. This tree can feed us. We can drink from this tree, and we can travel with canoes and we can create baskets to gather and harvest plants and medicines. It is also the strong emphasis on ITK's holistic and interconnected nature in biology, which is considered wâhkôhtowin, and the earth walk, which is askiy pimohtêwin.

The importance of ITK, from the elders' point of view, is highlighting the value of ITK in environmental management, sustainability and cultural preservation. The other thing we have to mention is how ITK contributes to resilience and adaptability in the face of climate change.

We know we have seen climate change already. There was a flood story and there were ice age stories. We sing about these times. We remember these through our storytelling ceremonies and ways of remembering. We recognize the gap here; there's a lot that western knowledge does not understand about ITK.

It is nice that we are also acknowledging the historical exclusion of ITK in government policies and decisions. We need the integration of ITK with western science to have the benefits of integration. Here, we have to discuss how integration enhances policy effectiveness and relevance, and we also have to emphasize the potential for innovative and holistic solutions. This is what we call political science.

The other things we wanted to showcase are the studies or examples of ITK and science being effectively integrated into government policies. We've been operating for over 21 years at kâniyâsihk Culture Camps, and we gathered four times in the past four years, talking about water and women, which is biology, wâhkôhtowin; water and medicine, which is chemistry; water and knowledge keepers, which is ethics and laws; and water and research, which is nitawahtâwin.

The other thing about our research on was that we landed the SSHRC grant—the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant—for integrating indigenous science in education, language and land management resources. That highlighted positive outcomes and community involvement when we had these research people who were helping the elders.

Then what I wanted to do was say that if you have any questions, feel free to ask them.

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