Suchergebnisse

To what extent are non-Indigenous researchers invited to engage the knowledges of Indigenous peoples? For those working within a western paradigm, what is an ethical approach to traditional knowledge (TK) research? While these questions are not openly addressed in the burgeoning literature on TK, scholarship on Indigenous research methodologies provides guidance. Reflexive self-study - what Margaret Kovach calls researcher preparation - subtends an ethical approach. It makes relational, contextual, and mutually beneficial research possible. In my work on contested fisheries knowledge and decision-making systems in Ontario, Canada, a treaty perspective orients my mixed methodological approach. It reflects my relationships to Indigenous lands, peoples, and histories, and enables an ethical space of engagement through which relational accountability and respect for epistemic difference can be realized.

This paper presents Indigenous community-led, collaborative, and community-engaged water governance research with a First Nations community in the Georgian Bay and Lake Huron region in northeastern Ontario, Canada. The methodology draws on Indigenous approaches to understanding and developing knowledge and is designed to build community capacity in research and in water protection and governance. This approach recognizes existing community strengths, including traditional knowledge, experiences, perspectives, and associated cultural perspectives and values, laws, responsibilities and lived experience in relation to water. Results identify and contextualize community-held responsibilities and legal principles pertaining to water that support culturally relevant water governance and strategic planning. By synthesizing and extending previous water protection initiatives, this research meaningfully supports the community's position and leadership on water security and governance. This, in turn, strengthens Indigenous water governance and sustainable water governance broadly as Indigenous understandings and approaches to water are holistic and concern relationships with and responsibilities to all of Creation.