The Sun Sets on Science in Canada

Confusing Conceit With Knowledge Production

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

This post is by regular Woke Watch Canada contributor Michael Melanson.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has recently announced a new Indigenous Science division and has appointed Dr. Myrle Ballard as its first director.  ECCC says it has created the new division to advance reconciliation in its science and research activities.  However much reconciliation might be the current zeitgeist in Canada, it is a political objective and its application to science is as bizarre as it is forced.

Dr. Ballard sees her role as changing mindsets, “I want to create awareness at the department that there is another knowledge system out there that can be equally as effective as Western knowledge.”  Right away she is declaring her mission is ideological.

"Changing mindsets will be an indicator of success as she guides the department in understanding Indigenous Science as a distinct, time-tested and methodological knowledge system that will enhance and complement Western science."

What has any of that got to do with studying the environment and climate change?  Did the ECCC establish the new Indigenous Science division to actually do science or is the whole point to validate this bundle of conceits?  

Science is science because it can be tested by anyone, anywhere at any time; results don't vary according to the scientist's ethnicity, religion or nationality.  The notion of 'Indigenous science' is a bastardization of science.  Aboriginal people can't do science any differently than anyone else or else what they are doing isn't science.  Qualifying science as 'western' is a misnomer.  While it might be fair to say that western civilization formalized science, science is an aggregation of many experiments by many people over many years: science is tacitly universal.

Just how is indigenous science distinct, then?  Is it a science where it matters if the scientist is indigenous?  While 'indigenous science' is definitely a neologism, how is it time-tested and how can those tests be independently examined and verified?  How can there be a methodological knowledge system when for most of their history, aboriginal people had no form of literacy?  

But, really, considering how well science works now all over the world, what is the point of introducing a competitive science and 'knowledge system' and what qualifies this knowledge as a system anyway?  

“Indigenous Science is about the knowledge of the environment and knowledge of the ecosystem that Indigenous Peoples have,” she explains. “It is the knowledge of survival since time immemorial and includes knowledge of plants, the weather, animal behavior and patterns, birds and water – that is how they survived.”

Dr. Ballard makes it sound like there is an innate body of knowledge that comes with being born with aboriginal ancestry.  She doesn't define who exactly is indigenous here but it's clear that she believes aboriginal people know things about the natural world that non-aboriginal people don't which makes this esoteric knowledge for those to the manor born, so to speak.  Knowing what plants are edible, what plants have medicinal value. which birds migrate, how bears behave in the Spring etc. is all just observation and memorization anecdotally accrued over many generations.  It's a remarkable cultural achievement given the Paleolithic milieu but it's not science.  They don't know why willow bark relieves pain or why robins fly South every year.

"While with ECCC on a one-year work term through the Interchange program, Dr. Ballard plans to apply the concept of EDI, or Equity Diversity and Inclusion that is usually associated with hiring practices, to the knowledge systems so that both Indigenous Science and Western science are respected equally."

Apparently she plans to populate her division with hires that will support her chauvinism.  If indigenous science doesn't include the scientific method, how can it be respected equally with western science except by pretending they are comparable?

"Dr. Ballard is a professor at the University of Manitoba where her research focuses on Three-Eyed Seeing and using Indigenous language as a baseline indicator of changes in the ecosystem."

'Three-eyed seeing' sounds like a New Age appropriation and what is the point of using obscure language that requires translation for the majority of scientists who don't speak that language?  Is she putting her personal identity ahead of the scientific community at large?

"Standing up this permanent division at ECCC is part of Canada’s commitment to reconciliation and follows the call to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that Indigenous ways of knowing be included in both government and academia. 'Having Dr. Ballard with us goes beyond simply meeting the Government of Canada’s reconciliation mandate: Indigenous Peoples are our natural partners on the environment. They have a lot of knowledge to bring to our science and research activities as we work together on environmental and wildlife protection, conservation and climate change,' says Marc D’Iorio, Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Technology Branch."

What's Anishinaabe for 'climate'?  The new directorship and division are strictly political.  The reference to 'our natural partners' hints at the operative stereotype: aboriginal people are natural stewards of the environment.  Dr. Ballard can't objectively show that indigenous science can even do the same things as science but she can present it as something distinct from ordinary science with jargon from the aboriginal identity lexicon.

It's the choice of the federal government to dignify her conceits.  This mind-numbing exercise in aboriginal identity politics will likely cause a lot of in-house friction at the ECCC.  And the rot is likely to spread to other departments. 

Racializing even one branch of science is risking the whole of science.  This matters because science, in its virtue as being universal, has been a boon to humankind.  Racializing science is an attack on humanity.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author - 'Settler', the Negative Canadian Identity (substack.com)