Living With Water: Integrative Indigenous and Western Knowledge Approaches to Transform Water Research and Management
Heather Castleden, Canada Research Chair in Reconciling Relations for Health, Environments, and Communities, Queen's University
Water-related problems that disproportionately impact many Indigenous communities across Canada are often a matter of environmental injustice and the failings of colonial structures and policies. Western science and technology have been applied to these water issues in attempts to rectify them, but these fixes are not working. Integrative approaches that attempt to implement Indigenous and Western knowledge systems together while attributing equal value to both hold promise. However, there has been neither a systematic review of integrative work that had taken place to date nor an examination of what has worked or why.
This project sought to identify, synthesize and evaluate work that has attempted to use Indigenous and Western knowledges in integrative ways in the context of water management and research in Canada.
