WC131 JulyAugust 2023 - Magazine - Page 34
INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES
Treading Water
What will it take for Canada to
include Indigenous perspectives
about water in a national innovation
agenda that serves all? BY KEYVAN MALEKI
Keyvan Maleki
Keyvan Maleki is the Executive
Director, RESEAU Centre for
Mobilizing Innovation.
34
WATER C AN ADA • JULY/AUGUS T 2023
HIS ARTICLE is about a single question: How can
we incorporate Indigenous peoples’ perspectives about
water within an objective pan-Canadian drinking and
wastewater ecosystem and strategy? Tracing this question
through the RESEAU Centre for Mobilizing Innovation’s 15-year journey, we hope to offer a way forward, even if a
fully unified viewpoint cannot be found.
Our journey began in December 2008, when more than
20 scientists specializing in a variety of disciplines related to
drinking water disinfection (chemical, biological, mechanical,
civil, environmental, life sciences, social sciences, technology
developers, and more) gathered to plan and launch a strategic
network primarily supported by a federal research grant. They
came from eight universities across Canada, were joined by
over 60 graduate students, and were united in the belief that
we are smart enough to solve drinking water issues in rural
and Indigenous communities objectively, collaboratively, and
holistically. After all, we had the tools, the talent, and now the
funding.
However, just a few months later we held a two-day launch
event in Toronto, for which we invited First Nations speakers.
Listening to them, we realized our research agenda as a whole
was failing in terms of objectivity, collaborative practice, and
holistic pragmatism. We recognized instantly something critical
that we had failed to do but should have done from the outset,
before a single word of a grant application was written: Engage
Indigenous communities, water operators, and knowledge
keepers in defining problems and envisioning solutions.
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"The success of our
Community Circle
model so far has been
the result of creating
neutral, non-politicized
spaces for interaction
of domain experts from
different knowledge
and value systems to
disperse their knowledge
among individuals and
organizations as widely
as possible, while
transferring values
and insights across
disciplines."
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
