Drawing on current Canadian impact assessment examples, this Solution Room explores practitioner, project, and regulatory barriers to Indigenous Knowledge integration and practical solutions.
Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is increasingly recognized as essential to impact assessments. Yet, meaningful integration of IK remains challenging. Drawing on current impact assessment examples from across Canada, this solution-oriented workshop will explore three interconnected levels of barriers and practical approaches to addressing them.At the practitioner level, Western scientific perspectives can shape how technical experts understand, value, and use IK. Practitioners may lack an appreciation of how IK can strengthen their own disciplines, or the skills to appropriately weave IK into technical reports, analysis, and conclusions. A proposed solution is regionally specific practitioner training that builds both cultural understanding and discipline-specific capacity to work with IK. At the project level, organizational and disciplinary silos can prevent IK from informing assessment work across disciplines. Because IK is inherently cross-cutting, it should not be treated as a parallel workstream. An alternative organizational model is to position the IK lead as an integrated member of the project team, with responsibility and influence extending across technical disciplines and assessment stages. At the regulatory and political level, pressure to accelerate development and assessment timelines can conflict with the time required for communities to build relationships, gather, validate, and share IK. Early and sustained engagement with regulators and political decision-makers can help build understanding and align with community timelines.
Christine has 15+ years of social performance and program management experience, including infrastructure impact assessments, consultation, and public affairs work with Indigenous Nations.