[MUSIC] >> Through out this video, we will discuss different approaches to acquiring knowledge. Specifically, we will be discussing the importance of knowledge gained by experience and holistic observations which is the basis of indigenous wisdom. We will compare and contrast the approach of indigenous wisdom to that of scientists in their quest for knowledge. Fortunately, we will learn that there are intersections between the knowledge gained from science and from experience. And our knowledge is greatly expanding with increased communications between scientists and indigenous knowledge keepers. >> In the early 2018, I helped produce Quirks & Quarks. And I came across this story of a woman in the US who was researching crop distributions, ancient crops. And she found that there's these ancient crops and stories in the local tribes that were there. And she found all this incredible knowledge about how and where you like, because corn is an indigenous crop, maize, all these kinds of things. And she was researching one of the wild crops that had been domesticated. And so it was a science news. I covered it, but I thought, you know what? There's a lot more going on in this field. There's a lot more people who are really caring about that intersectional knowledge. And so that kind of spurred this knowledge keepers. And so I started looking at other places where there's just science being done ecological or traditional knowledge, or ecological knowledge, or medicinal knowledge that is now overlapping. So we covered a researcher from the University of Montreal who's looking at diabetes treatments that have been used in their local indigenous populations forever. And it turns out some of these medicinal herbs not all of them, but some of them work pretty well and he's looking for new drugs to help treat diabetes which is also overrepresented in the indigenous population. So it was just really fascinating to look through that. So I did an hour and I had way more than an hour's worth of things to talk about, but it did an hour national special in 2018. >> Yes, I will have a lot of young people that will come up to me and ask me, so has this changed has something changed around the ceremony or with the teachings Has anything changed? And because it varies from elder to elder, it varies from tribe to tribe from nation to nation. They're in search of knowledge themselves, so they will come and ask. And a lot of them will do a lot of comparing from this elder to that elder or this ceremony to that ceremony and they get confused, and they don't know which one is the right one. With us, our knowledge that we share the teachings, there is no wrong way of teaching. There's no wrong way of doing a ceremony, unless you're doing it to honor the dark side. >> Based on my experience, experiential learning and teaching is the best way to go out and actually do it rather than textbook learning. Sitting in the classroom and reading about it and hearing the lecture about it, but not having that experience. Unlike, for example, living on here the way I do, there's nothing that's going to replace this experience. You're here to birching, it probably captured on the camera as well. There's so much going on here that missing from the city girl like urban living or classroom learning. So I've always said experiences the best teacher. You got to come in live with it in order to get it. >> When you think about it, we are all related. We are all human beings. We all shed the same color blood and we breathe the same air. We are related to the trees, the animals, the water, the fire, the rocks. We are related to everything. And if people could understand that, I think they might start to learn how to respect our Mother Earth and respect each other a little bit more. >> I think I was surprised by how much overlap there is. I wasn't surprised by how much knowledge there is in those two what I thought were silos, right? The academic scientific method experimental kind of data and the more historical knowledge that we have in the indigenous population. So I don't think I was surprised by the fact that there is tonnes of knowledge on either side, but I think how much they actually overlap and how much scientists are now tapping into. And certainly a lot of the elders and the knowledge keepers as they're called knowledge keepers are reaching out now to share that knowledge. A lot of it was lost, because certainly in Canada with residential school legacy. I think people now are reaching across the aisle and I think that's really valuable to everybody, because we cank. Knowledge and is knowledge and certainly ecological knowledge, and traditional ecological knowledge is still just ecological knowledge. It's just how the world works. And if you could do field research to reproduce what the indigenous stories have been telling you forever, it's a waste of time and money. Just ask the elders. >> Luckily, every day, new scientific findings and observations are published. As a critical thinker and an avid consumer of science, I'm constantly updating my understanding based off of new evidence. >> As scientists, we are trained to make use of evidence that was collected systematically to build theories, knowledge or understanding. But are we overlooking the value of shared observations that were not empirically collected? >> Back in the day prior to European contact, we had our own teachers. We had our own calendar. We had our own weatherman. The Sun was our clock. Well, that told us what time of the day it was. The Moon was our calendar. And so as for teachers like we didn't go to a classroom and sit at a desk and get paper and pencils, the elders, the grandmothers, the grandfathers, the aunties and the uncles. They were the ones that were our teachers. The animals were our teachers. The water was our teachers. The wind was our teacher. The stars, the grandmother Moon was our teachers. So that is how we did our teachings and we had our own way of keeping track of things like where we write in a journal today back then, we had our own way of keeping track of what do you call those markings on the stones in that and pictures and that. When a warrior earned his warrior shirt, the story that told up all his accomplishments in life and what he had gone through will his life story will be written on that Warrior shirt. So yes, we had our own way of educating our kids and our family members. And I always say, the kids are always our best teachers. [LAUGH] >> What you call traditional knowledge, I call indigenous knowledge or indigenous science in the belief is that's the only valid methodology. There's very little room for like traditional knowledge there has been very little room. But now it's becoming more and more accepted, especially indigenous science. It has many more components, because we also measure too. But it's based on relationships more than anything. That's the underpinning and you can see it here. I mean, all these different species of trees and insects, birds are all living in a relationship in a balance with this land. I think the big difficulty for me was science is that it's all about measurement. We want to measure things to the nanosecond whereas indigenous knowledge or indigenous science is about relationships and why? Science is about measurement and how, how does that work versus why and whats the relationship?
