SCIENCE AS PRIORITY DUBBED ‘OFFENSIVE’
Debate over Indigenous knowledge
MONTREAL • The letter, sent last month from a Quebec environment official to one of his federal counterparts, does not seem all that inflammatory. The Quebec official notes that proposed federal legislation requiring that traditional Indigenous knowledge be taken into account when assessing environmental impacts permits a “very broad” definition of such knowledge.
And, he adds, the bill should be clearer about how traditional knowledge is to be weighed against scientific data when deciding whether a project should proceed.
But when the letter recently became public, it provoked an outraged reaction from Quebec Indigenous leaders, an apology from two Quebec cabinet ministers and, this week, an accusation of racism from a University of Ottawa law professor.
In a letter published Monday in Le Devoir, Thomas Burelli and seven of his colleagues at the university said it was “offensive” of Quebec to attempt to favour science in a “hierarchy of knowledges.”
Burelli said in an interview Tuesday that the Feb. 6 letter from Quebec deputy minister Patrick Beauchesne reflects a “racism of intelligence. It is saying we think there is a form of intelligence that is superior, that of science. They are methods developed by the West and so they must take precedence over Indigenous knowledge.”
The same day Radio-Canada first reported on the Beauchesne letter, Quebec Environment Minister Isabelle Melançon and Native Affairs Minister Geoffrey Kelley wrote to apologize to Ghislain Picard, Quebec regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
They said they were “aware and sorry” that Beauchesne’s letter had “raised, as written, many questions among the Aboriginal population.”
The ministers stressed that “Quebec recognizes Aboriginal traditional knowledge” and invited Picard to meet to discuss collaboration on “new ways of doing things.”
The same day, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna declared her intention to push ahead with the legislative changes. “We will advance our commitment to reconciliation, and get to better project decisions by recognizing Indigenous rights, and working in partnership from the start,” she tweeted. “We will make it mandatory to consider Indigenous traditional knowledge alongside science and other evidence.”
Quebec’s Innu chiefs accused Quebec of making “insulting remarks on the value and relevance of First Nations’ traditional knowledge” and of seeking “to limit the role of First Nations in projects.” In an interview this week, Picard rejected the provincial ministers’ offer of a meeting and said their apology was not enough to assuage Indigenous anger.
“We’re still very much upset,” Picard said. “There’s no need to meet. Traditional Indigenous knowledge is already a recognized fact. ... Quebec has isolated itself from a notion that has been widely recognized, nationally and even internationally.”
The letter that prompted the uproar was written in the context of federal-provincial consultations on changes to the federal environmental assessment regime.
Bill C-69, which received first reading in the House of Commons on Feb. 8, would require that before a project subject to a federal assessment is approved, “traditional knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of Canada provided with respect to the project” be taken into account — though it provides no definition of “traditional knowledge.” The bill further states that when traditional knowledge is provided in confidence, it “is confidential and must not knowingly be, or be permitted to be, disclosed without written consent.”
Beauchesne wrote that Ottawa’s intention to systematically place Indigenous knowledge on equal footing with scientific data “could prove problematic in cases where Indigenous knowledge and science are found to be in contradiction.” He said criteria should be established to evaluate the accuracy of the traditional knowledge.
Yves Gingras, Canada research chair in the history and sociology of science at the Université du Québec à Montréal, said the questions raised by Beauchesne were legitimate.
He said the bill as written requires traditional knowledge to be taken at face value. “It’s seen as lacking sensitivity to question it,” Gingras said. “No. Science puts everything into question.”