Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Bruce Maclean.

I'm certainly very grateful for the opportunity to share some of my practical experiences with respect to these important questions in front of the committee.

I have spent approximately 20 years working with indigenous people and scientists on these very questions with a specific lens of environmental monitoring and management.

I have been leading development of indigenous community-based monitoring programs. These are designed using indigenous knowledge and elders' knowledge with science to understand impacts in the region. I work in bitumen exploitation, hydroelectric development and climate change.

I'm currently helping build what we're calling the Nipîy Tu Research & Knowledge Centre. It's a not-for-profit. It links Cree, Dene and Métis knowledge and people of Fort Chipewyan in Alberta with Parks Canada, and it's in the Wood Buffalo National Park area, which is also a UNESCO world heritage site.

The Nipîy Tu Research & Knowledge Centre is one of the first ventures that's going to co-manage a national park, applying what we're calling an integrated research and monitoring program. It employs indigenous and elders' knowledge together with science to inform park management. That is a unique approach.

I'd like to focus specifically on question number one in front of the committee, the use and integration of ITK into policy.

Because most of Canada's policies were intentionally or systematically designed, really, to exclude indigenous people from decision-making spaces, and now we're asking to acquire it for use, we need some extra steps to make up for that.

I have been employing something since about 2006. I call it a basic framework that looks at.... We're trying to build a foundation for meaningful involvement of indigenous people, not just their knowledge. I'm sure you've heard that already in front of the committee.

Capacity is at the heart of the issue. If you want to integrate ITK into policy, you somewhat need to invest in it at a reasonable level, at least somewhat towards what you do for science and technology.

What I'm saying is that building this capacity means having indigenous people existing in spaces to do this work and with the means to do the work. This implies training, core staff capacity, salaried people, honoraria of dollars to meet with elders, infrastructure and equipment, and data and data support.

A really good example of this would be the broad support for the first nations national guardians network. In the case of my work with Parks Canada, they've provided dollars for indigenous knowledge coordinator positions and direct contribution agreements, again for involvement, for people to exist in those spaces.

If you have capacity, then you need to work towards broad participation and open, transparent and effective communication. We're looking at, again, access to information, data, procedures and some plain language summaries. We're looking at protection of ITK and rules around its use as well as some kind of mediation process as you're getting started.

This is really the relationship phase. You need to be flexible in approach. You have to work at trust and building the rules so that you can explore the ITK collection and share. In the case of Parks Canada, with the nations, they developed an indigenous knowledge use and ownership agreement that was signed. There was support for task teams and working groups. This is building the bridge.

When you get to the point where you have people to do the work and the trust is built, this is when we do the collection and sharing of ITK. This brings up indigenous values and community sustainability. Going back to what I said earlier, the policies need to meet the nations' own vision for themselves. It's not just Crown and government. It's not industry. This looks at considering the unique needs of the indigenous communities and their values. We mentioned section 35 rights, or treaty and aboriginal rights where there are treaties.

Rather than integrating ITK, we're looking at a co-development of policy. In our case, the Nipîy Tu with Parks Canada are co-developing the monitoring programs: where to look, what to look for, when to look for it, how to manage data, how to assess findings and how to communicate findings. It's a braided approach.

With that foundation, once the homework is done, I strongly believe that indigenous groups will be able to be meaningfully involved in that policy co-development using their own knowledge.

To conclude, in the case of the work I've been doing with Nipîy Tu and Parks Canada, early capacity was given to communities and commitments were made up front to work on co-management. That means that the work was able to unfold.

Nations don't just share their ITK for someone else to use and interpret; their traditional knowledge becomes part of that meaningful process of self-determination. That's what I came here to share with you today.

Thank you very much for the time.

Transcript

Discussions (0)