Community-based Indigenous knowledge
At FACETS, our vision is to advance science by publishing high-quality, open access research that represents a multifaceted global community of researchers and offers choice to our authors. So, when the authors of a perspective article for the special collection on “Conservation in Canada: Identifying and Overcoming Barriers” asked to have M’sɨt No’kmaq—Mi’kmaw for “all my relations”—as the lead author, we were open to hearing and respecting their rationale:
Consistent with Indigenous worldviews, all people, language, and knowledge come from the land and are inseparable from the land. In storytelling and story listening, people are just the conduit. We would similarly like to acknowledge and honour the “collective” source of knowledge. It also helps to break down the hierarchies, dichotomies, and privilege that are encountered in lead and co-author listings. It helps with the decolonization process. It is also entirely consistent with the main messages of our paper, the title of which is “Awakening the sleeping giant: ‘re-Indigenization’ principles for transforming biodiversity conservation and Indigenous resurgence in Canada” (Karen Beazley, personal communication, 2021).
Over the last two decades there has been a growing call for participatory research that includes Indigenous ways of knowing for research that affects Indigenous Peoples (e.g., Cochran et al. 2008; Government of Canada 2020; Wong et al. 2020). Once that research is ready to be published, the question of authorship—and how to respectfully recognize Indigenous ways of knowing—comes in to play, and precedents are being set (e.g., Bawaka Country et al. 2016; RiverofLife 2020). The idea of community collectives and more-than-human actors (such as the land) being the authoritative source of knowledge is an Indigenous concept that differs from Western science approaches to authorship and contributorship.
In Canada, there are well-established principles on the rights of First Nations to own, control, access, and possess their data and information. These principles, known as OCAP®1 (Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession) assert that First Nations have the right to control all aspects of their cultural knowledge, data, and information, including how it is collected and how it can be used (The First Nations Information Governance Centre 2014). It only makes sense that determining how to attribute authorship of Indigenous knowledge should flow from their rights to own and control their cultural knowledge, data, and information.
Canadian Science Publishing is proud to support the OCAP® principles and to honour Indigenous knowledge by publishing this perspective article under the authors’ preferred authorship, with M’sɨt No’kmaq as lead author.2 We invite you to read the perspective by M’sɨt No’kmaq et al. (2021) as well as the special collection that it is part of on the FACETS website.
We welcome your input and comments on this special collection and on the authorship of community-based Indigenous cultural knowledge, data, and information. Please send your feedback to us at [email protected].
1
OCAP® is a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC). Learn more about OCAP® and FNIGC at fnigc.ca/ocap-training/.
2
The corresponding author assumes responsibility for the article’s content as is the case for all Canadian Science Publishing journals.
References
Bawaka Country, Wright S, Suchet-Pearson S, Lloyd K, Burarrwanga L, Ganambarr R, et al. 2016. Co-becoming Bawaka: towards a relational understanding of place/space. Progress in Human Geography, 40(4): 455–475.
Cochran PAL, Marshall CA, Garcia-Downing C, Kendall E, Cook D, McCubbin L, et al. 2008. Indigenous ways of knowing: implications for participatory research and community. American Journal of Public Health, 98(1): 22–27.
Government of Canada. 2020. Setting new directions to support Indigenous research and research training in Canada 2019–2022 [online]: Available from canada.ca/en/research-coordinating-committee/priorities/indigenous-research/strategic-plan-2019-2022.html.
M’sɨt No’kmaq, Marshall EA, Beazley KF, Hum J, joudry s, Papadopoulos A, et al. 2021. “Awakening the sleeping giant”: re-Indigenization principles for transforming biodiversity conservation in Canada and beyond. FACETS, 6: 839–869.
RiverofLife M, Poelina A, Alexandra J, and Samnakay N. 2020. A conservation and management plan for the National Heritage listed Fitzroy River Catchment Estate (No. 1). Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council, Nulungu Research Institute, The University of Notre Dame Australia.
The First Nations Information Governance Centre. 2014. Ownership, control, access and possession (OCAP®): the path to First Nations Information Governance. The First Nations Information Governance Centre, Ottawa, Ontario [online]: Available from achh.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/OCAP_FNIGC.pdf.
Wong C, Ballegooyen K, Ignace L, Johnson MJ(G), and Swanson H. 2020. Towards reconciliation: 10 Calls to Action to natural scientists working in Canada. FACETS, 5(1): 769–783.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
FACETS
Volume 6 • Number 1 • January 2021
Pages: 837 - 838
History
Received: 27 April 2021
Accepted: 27 April 2021
Version of record online: 27 May 2021
Copyright
© 2021 Germida et al. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Competing Interests
JJG is Executive Editor-in-Chief at Canadian Science Publishing; JMB is Editor-in-Chief of FACETS; SK is Publisher and CEO at Canadian Science Publishing; JB is Director, Publishing Operations, at Canadian Science Publishing.
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James J. Germida, Jules M. Blais, Suzanne Kettley, and Judy Busnarda. 2021. Community-based Indigenous knowledge. FACETS.
6(): 837-838. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2021-0043
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1. The first five years of FACETS: Canada’s multidisciplinary open access academy journal
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