Project Team
Principal Investigator: Dr. Heather Castleden, Queen’s University.
Organization Investigator: Pauline Gerrard, Experimental Lakes Area
Organization Investigator: Matt McCandless, Experimental Lakes Area
Trainee: Elissa Bozhkov, Bachelor’s Candidate, Queen’s University
—
About
Dr. Heather Castleden, (Queen’s University), Pauline Gerrard (IISD-ELA), and Matt McCandless (IISD-ELA) are recruiting graduate student trainees to contribute to the development and implementation of our research project that is seeking to assess the International Institute for Sustainable Development – Experimental Lakes Area’s (IISD-ELA) institutional readiness and capacity for reconciliation with local First Nations peoples and communities.
The IISD-ELA is a unique aquatic research site for the natural sciences, located near the western border of Ontario. For over 50 years, researchers have relied exclusively on the natural sciences and Western knowledge systems to manipulate and examine changes in the freshwater lakes of this region, with little to no interaction with the Indigenous communities in the area – or their extensive body of local knowledge. In 2014, when the IISD officially took over responsibility of the ELA from the Federal government of Canada and Provincial governments of Ontario and Manitoba, a concerted effort was made to implement local and Indigenous knowledge alongside Western knowledge to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the changes that occur in this ecosystem.
Given this institutional objective and synergies with the objectives of A SHARED Future, we will co-lead a project with the IISD-ELA to provide a historical and real-time critical program analysis of the efforts made to engage with local Indigenous communities, and to implement Indigenous and Western knowledge in IISD-ELA research. The goal of this project is to better engage with the Indigenous communities in the area that have historically been excluded from the entirety of the research processes at the ELA. Through established partnerships with Whitefish Bay, Eagle Lake, and Shoal Lake 40 First Nations, the A SHARED Future team and ELA will examine previous efforts at Indigenous and Western knowledge implementation, meet with IISD-ELA staff to determine institutional readiness and capacity for such implementation, and design a research program that can guide future research efforts to be meaningful and beneficial for all parties. With this proposed project, we have an opportunity to potentially support reconciliation between governments, industry, and Indigenous communities through a collaborative research effort and shared design of a research future.
If this project aligns with your research interests and/or expertise, please contact A SHARED Future program coordinator, Robert Stefanelli ([email protected]). In your email, please provide a current CV, and cite the project title in the subject line.