Over the past two decades, indigenous communities have become more politically empowered and often play a substantial role
in negotiating complex co-management agreements. River restoration involves multiple jurisdictions and incites issues of
land ownership, and in these cases, possessing a stronger political voice has concomitantly empowered indigenous knowledge
and cultural values. In these contexts, indigenous empowerment opens the door for combining western European science and
indigenous knowledge-based approaches, which fosters the cross-cultural generation of knowledge and social learning, and
provides for new possibilities of sustainability.
The Indigenous Confluence project focuses on indigenous knowledge and its relationship to western European
scientific ways of thinking about the world. The researchers of this project ask the question:
“How does privileging indigenous knowledge and values affect the goals and outcomes of multi-party ecological restoration projects?”
This project works in partnership with three communities: the
Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians
in the United States,
Walpole Island First Nation
in southwestern Ontario, Canada, and the
Waikato-Tainui in New Zealand.
These three communities are all engaged in complex river restoration projects. The project investigates how prioritizing
indigenous values and knowledge in restoration partnerships influences outcomes such as process outcomes (team dynamics),
socio-cultural outcomes (community well-being), political outcomes (regional power dynamics), and ecological outcomes
(riparian ecosystems and associated biota).
The project’s core research question has both empirical (scientific) and philosophical dimensions. It seeks to understand
how indigenous knowledge and values are put into action — used as verbs rather than nouns — in cross-cultural ecological
stewardship projects. If indigenous knowledge tends to relationships rather than only describing them, then how ought we
understand it? More importantly, how can it be applied beyond indigenous homelands?
This project also draws on visual methodologies. Dale Turner explains that his role has been to observe, listen, and
reflect upon community understandings of indigenous knowledge and how it is used both within the community and in relation
to legal, political, and scientific dialogues with outsiders. Photography is used as a way of disclosing indigenous ways
of thinking, showing what cannot easily be said. For indigenous peoples, storytelling is a philosophical activity, and
photography can be a powerful form of storytelling.
