Science divided
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PURSUING ‘INDIGENOUS SCIENCE’ VS. ‘WESTERN SCIENCE’
Does science allow for the discovery of objective facts, or is it merely another front for cultural expression that differs by civilization? In September, the House of Commons science committee seemed to have ruled in favour of the latter by investigating “how best to integrate Indigenous traditional knowledge and science into government policy development,” and how to resolve any conflicts with “western” science.
The committee isn’t debating whether a two-tiered system of knowledge based on ethnicity should exist — most of its members, Conservatives included, don’t question that premise. Instead, they’re asking how to better deploy such a system in Canadian government.
Indigenous science, perhaps intentionally, is a difficult concept to pin down. Advocates can’t define it in any consistent way, and frequently confuse science conducted by Indigenous people (i.e., longterm observational evidence on phenomena like caribou migration patterns), with non-scientific cultural beliefs that are somehow upheld as equivalent to the scientific method. There’s often a political, anti-colonial element to “Indigenous science.”
One explanation was given by Myrle Ballard, Environment Canada’s chief Indigenous science advisor, who told the committee on Nov. 6 that, “Western science is a domineering science” that colonized its Indigenous cousin.
“What we have to do is understand why that happened and bring it to the forefront to understand that both sciences are really important,” Ballard explained.
“Indigenous and western science are both sciences. It’s just that western science is used more in labs and experiments, etc., but Indigenous science is like that too, when we go to the land for the experiments that we do.”
Ballard added that traditional medicine-makers experimented with plants, made recipes for them and attempted to guard them from human contamination — which, in her view, was the equivalent of scientific lab work. She believes that Indigenous science should be factored into the “entire spectrum of science practice within the federal government.”
An assistant deputy minister at Environment Canada, Marc D’iorio, was more concise, explaining to committee that Indigenous science is a matter of “longterm observations of our physical and natural environment,” with a value-based (what values, he didn’t say), interdisciplinary approach.
Another witness, psychedelics researcher and ethnobotanist Joseph Mays, offered his own understanding of Indigenous science values: “What often sets Indigenous knowledge apart is an emphasis on relationality and reciprocity, an understanding that our existence relies on the gifts of other beings.”
The sentiment was echoed by the president of Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization, Laurie Swami, who testified that Indigenous knowledge is relevant to nuclear waste storage because, in part, it offers a perspective “in which humans are part of a greater relationship with the environment.”
Some “Indigenous science” advocates place a strong emphasis on the identity of each system’s founders. Even though the peer-review system used to vet classical science respects scholarship from any national identity, it’s still a product of Europe and therefore incomplete.
“Just as evidence becomes legitimate through peer review in Eurocentric knowledge systems like the one I operate in, Indigenous knowledge also is developed and governed through nation-specific protocols,” explained Simon Fraser University Prof. Anne Salomon on Nov. 29.
Presumably, there’s also Chinese science (which has the same formula for gravity as European science but is somehow culturally distinct) and traditional Roman science (which, I guess, would include the study of astrology and organ-reading, because any cultural tradition can be science now).
In reality, the scientific method is just a way of testing hypotheses about the world to determine what corresponds to reality and what does not. The truth is not dependent on ethnicity. If a plant has medical benefits, it ultimately doesn’t matter whether they were discovered in a lab or by the people who have used it for thousands of years. All that matters is that it works.
In addition to the above, many of these committee witnesses seem to want the government to place greater emphasis on collectivism and Indigenous spirituality when making “evidence-based” policy. They’ve figured out that it’s possible to build a backdoor to more Indigenous consultation by invoking cold-hard science.
Advocates will say that considering Indigenous knowledge is not the same as consultation, but they struggle to explain why.
Ballard told the committee that consultation is “when we’re talking to you regarding a specific issue,” but Indigenous knowledge involves going to “knowledge holders for them to share what they know about the environment, what they know about climate change and what they know about changes within species in real time.” These sound about the same.
Many attempts have been made in the judicial arena to bind the government to Indigenous consultation — which, in practice, would amount to an Indigenous veto. This has succeeded in the case of land use, which now requires the federal government to carry out a duty to consult.
However, on broader issues, including general lawmaking, the Supreme Court explicitly held in 2018 that the federal government does not have a duty to consult with Indigenous people. It seems the better, more direct route was to go straight to the executive branch of government itself.
Unfortunately, few hard questions are being asked at this committee. Conservatives, for the most part, have effectively nodded along, asking questions about what the government can do better on the Indigenous science front. Perhaps they are ill-prepared; perhaps they fear repercussions for questioning anything with “Indigenous” in the title. Perhaps they’re on board. Who knows.
Either way, the task of accountability has seemingly fallen to Bloc Québécois MP Maxime Blanchette-joncas, who has made a point of asking anyone testifying at committee to resolve conflicts between “western science” and “Indigenous science.” In other words, he’s the only one really trying to parse out what exactly the government is committing to.
His results have been limited. Usually, Indigenous science advocates give the awfully convenient answer that their craft simply does not conflict with formal science, and then run out the clock before any meaningful follow-ups can be asked. Still, one wonders what this committee would look like if the official Opposition cared to tack on a few hard questions, too.
THE TRUTH IS NOT DEPENDENT ON ETHNICITY.