Revitalizing Traditional Knowledge

Use of Traditional Knowledge in Teaching Science and Mathematics: A Holistic Approach

Dr. Arzu Sardarli, First Nations University of Canada

My presentation presents the concept of holism in science education and argues for the integration of diverse knowledge systems that extend beyond the traditional scientific methodologies, which have come to dominate educational systems over the past two centuries. The analysis questions the rationale of limiting knowledge acquisition to empirical observation and systematic experimentation while excluding other ways of knowing, such as religious and Indigenous perspectives. Examples from embryology and water quality assessment methods used by Indigenous peoples illustrate how these diverse epistemologies can complement and enrich scientific understanding.

The presentation proposes a holistic approach to science education that fosters a more comprehensive and culturally sensitive understanding of the natural world, thereby preparing students to address complex, interdisciplinary challenges in an increasingly interconnected global society. This framework promotes inclusivity and acknowledges the validity of multiple perspectives in the pursuit of knowledge. Such an approach is particularly timely in the current era, as education is increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, which operates beyond the constraints of our formal curricula by utilizing diverse resources, including non-scientific ones.

Night skies, living stories: Indigenous language, art, and astronomy in planetarium shows

Tom Deer, David Moses, Rick Monture, Sarah Symons, Robert Cockcroft (Six Nations of the Grand River, McMaster University's Indigenous Studies Department and McCallion Planetarium)

This session describes a collaborative, community-engaged process that has resulted in two planetarium shows that blend local culture, history, and modern-day astronomy, co-produced by members of the Six Nations of the Grand River and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, alongside McMaster University’s Indigenous Studies and Physics and Astronomy departments.  Representatives from each Indigenous community and academic unit will reflect together in this panel discussion.  The project exemplifies a practical based approach to integrating Indigenous knowledge systems within science education and public outreach, aligning with broader scholarly work on Indigenous science, decolonizing STEM, and culturally responsive pedagogy.

The Celestial Bear: The Six Nations’ Night Sky and Onekwá:tara – the Seven Dancers of the Pleiades planetarium shows provide context, in-depth knowledge, and artwork of Haudenosaunee night-sky stories, with narration by a live astronomer and pre-recorded excerpts in English, Mohawk, and Cayuga.  They also respond to share goals across partners: sharing Six Nations’ sky lore and language with the public and students; strengthening relations with Six Nations communities, including school groups; providing a variety of planetarium show programming adaptable to different audiences, and; offering a different perspective of the celestial sphere that challenge dominant Western narratives.

Panelists will reflect on how Indigenous science both engages with and transforms fields such as astronomy, science in general, education, and scientific literacy and communication.  The session will conclude with a discussion of future directions.

From Exclusion to Belonging: Transforming STEM for Indigenous Learners

Genievieve C. Borg, Wiikwemkoong First Nation, University of Guelph

Despite ongoing institutional commitments to equity, diversity, and inclusion, Indigenous peoples remain profoundly underrepresented across STEM disciplines. This presentation begins by asking a central question: why does this gap persist? While historical and ongoing colonialism provides important context, representation cannot be fully understood without examining how Indigenous students experience belonging in STEM, how identity is negotiated, and which ways of knowing are allowed to matter. Indigenous science has always existed yet often remains unrecognized because it does not conform to what Western academia has narrowly prescribed as “real” science or legitimate research. Indigenous Ways of Knowing are inherently interdisciplinary, relational, and grounded in responsibility to community, land, and future generations. However, dominant STEM institutions continue to privilege narrow definitions of rigor, creating learning environments where Indigenous students are still forced to assimilate in order to learn science and belong.

Deadly Dads’ Support Society: Supporting Nêhiyaw men through a strength-based, community-led initiative 

Patrick Lightning Jr. (Ermineskin Cree Nation), Juliette R. Bedard, Richard T. Oster, Rhonda C. Bell

This session explores the Deadly Dads’ Support Society (DDSS), a community-led initiative designed to support nâpêw (Cree men) in fulfilling their role as nôhtâwimawak (Cree fathers) in Maskwacîs, Alberta. The DDSS emerged from the Wâhkôhtowin Research Group, a reciprocal partnership between the University of Alberta and Maskwacîs community members that has been active since 2013. By centering deep relationality and community-identified needs, including peer support, mentorship, and cultural connection, the DDSS provides a healthy space for men to break intergenerational cycles and improve outcomes for their children.

This work is a vital component of the national Indigenous Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative, strategically informing how Indigenous knowledge can revitalize family and community systems. Community-based participatory research approaches were adapted to honour Cree ways of knowing. We also integrate developmental origins of health and disease literature with traditional knowledge systems, moving beyond deficit-based models toward a strengths-based framework of resilience.

We present findings from an ongoing mixed-methods research study, integrating data gathered from two wisdom circles and post-session surveys. Content analysis was utilized to analyze the qualitative data, and descriptive statistics were drawn from survey data. Data generation focused on the impact of relational mentorship and the comfortability found within the DDSS, as well as how community-led feedback loops refine programming to meet the evolving needs of nêhiyaw families.

Hishuk-ish Tsawalk (everything is one, everything is connected): Supporting Nêhiyaw Women through a Culturally Responsive, Elder and Community-led program

Luwana Listener (Ermineskin Cree Nation), Juliette R. Bedard, Richard T. Oster, Rhonda C. Bell

This session explores the Moms’ Support and Healing Circle (MSHC), a community-led research initiative designed to support holistic wellbeing of nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) mothers in Maskwacîs, Alberta. The MSHC provides connection to Elders, culture, language, and ceremony through Elder-led cultural activities and mother-led sharing circles tailored to the wants and needs of the Maskwacîs community. By centring nêhiyaw concepts of pimatisiwin mamahtâwan (life is sacred) and awâsisak ehawîhikawiyahk (our children are loaned to us), the MSHC creates sustainable pathways for health that are culturally rooted and empowering.

This research study emerged from a long-term partnership between researchers at the University of Alberta and members of Maskwacîs that began in 2013, uniting as the Wâhkôhtowin Research Group. This work is a vital component of the national Indigenous Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative, strategically informing how Indigenous knowledge can revitalize family and community systems. We integrate developmental origins of health and disease literature and community-based participatory research with traditional knowledge systems, focusing on a strengths-based framework of resilience.

We present findings from qualitative content analysis using a narrative approach. Data were gathered from two wisdom circles held in 2025, focusing on MSHC participant experiences and the application of teachings within family units. We also utilize descriptive statistics from post-session surveys to demonstrate how community-led feedback refines programming to meet the evolving needs of nêhiyaw families. 

Shifting the Paradigm in Post-Secondary Science Classrooms: An Illustration of how Indigenous Science Meets Western Science at Carleton University 

Kahente Horn-Miller and Rowan M. Thompson, Carleton University

In 2021, the Collaborative Indigenous Learning Bundle Indigenous

Sciences | Shifting the Paradigm in Western Science was created to address the recognized need for teaching about other perspectives on science. As a collaboration between the Faculty of Science and the Office of the Associate Vice President (Indigenous Teaching, Learning, and Research), this presentation on this Bundle engages with Stream two, Knowledge Sovereignty and Research Ethics. The Bundles is a resource for instructors and a learning tool for students, providing a factual and theoretical basis for understanding Indigenous Science.

The Bundle emphasizes the importance of how Indigenous Science and Traditional Knowledge relates to our understanding of the world around us. It enables the educator to move beyond the western paradigm in science education by fostering learning opportunities focused on critical thinking, self-awareness, and flexible mindsets with respect to scientific understanding and advancement. It is designed to offer valuable teachings and reflections for any student who aspires to lead, change, or contribute to their scientific community in the future. This presentation will discuss what underscored the collaboration, how the Bundle was developed and how it is used in classrooms.

Finding Good PATHS: Building Relationships to Support Teaching/Learning Activities in the Engineering Classroom 

Naomi Paul and Mary Robinson, University of Waterloo

Through this session, participants will learn about the efforts being made across Canada to change how engineers are educated and incorporate traditional ways of knowing in a good way through PATHS (Preservation of Ancestral Technological Heritage and Science). By participating in one of the activities developed for the engineering classroom, session participants will experience the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues and share their perspectives.

Reclaiming Ancestral Systems of Educating & Wholistic Wellbeing

Amanda Fraser

Indigenous Elders are researchers who have learned through a lifelong study of land, Creation, wholism, and relationality. Elders are guided by all their relations who have walked before them. Indigenous systems of traditional knowledge transference occur through intergenerational learning from Elders, Knowledge Carriers, and within the community. Stories and teachings passed down by Elders and Knowledge Carriers are one of the oldest educational systems, alongside learning from the land and Creation. Listening to the wisdom, teachings, and stories of one Elder is listening to many generations of Indigenous Knowledge Carriers. Intergenerational learning plays a vital role in nurturing, developing, and bringing depth to the wholistic aspects of self (spirit, heart, mind, and body) across succeeding generations. Indigenous traditional systems of knowledge transference flourished for hundreds of years until the disruption of colonialism, racism, and deliberate attempts at cultural genocide. The literature reveals that cultural approaches to learning and healing are more effective for Indigenous people than colonial methods. Intergenerational and experiential learning is essential for Indigenous people's spiritual, emotional, cognitive, sociocultural wellbeing, and overall health. Indigenous people have the inherent right to continue natural ways of educating those who walk with and ahead of them to ensure the identity and wellbeing of current and future generations. Nêhiyaw scholar Amanda Fraser will present autoethnographic research on ancestral knowledge through stories told by nimosôm (my grandfather) from the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation. This research uplifts reclaiming traditional practices of educating that have occurred since time immemorial.

The Longhouse hosts more than people; it extends to shelter our communities and cultures.

Gregory Brais Sioui

Indigenous architecture is a culturally embedded built environment and, as such, it is increasingly being used as a tool in decolonisation efforts. This lecture stems from my doctoral research at TU Delft on the Iroquoian architectural decolonial paradigms and their role in the decolonisation process. Grounded in case studies, using autoethnography and oral transmission methods, I explore the potential of Indigenous architecture to act as a critical tool for healing intergenerational trauma, fostering cultural resurgence, and balancing power dynamics within post-colonial frameworks. In an effort to decolonize architecture, some Indigenous architects propose unlearning Eurocentric assumptions and embedding culturally relevant architecture into the built environment. While I postulate that translating traditional forms in contemporary expression is no longer sufficient to actively contribute to decolonisation and healing processes, the aim here is to understand the meaning contained in our built world, enabling our traditional teaching to evolve and inform tomorrow’s architectural practice and expression.

Drawn on Amos Rapoport's (1990, 2005) foundational theories of environmental meaning alongside our teachings and stories, my presentation focuses on the precolonial Iroquoian architecture, the longhouse. Among others, Kanien'kehá:ka Elder Tom Porter (2008), points out that the Longhouse is the physical support of the beliefs, values, and political systems of Iroquoian communities, as well as their societal system, which, in turn, supports the social one (Fenton, 1998; Thomas & Boyle, 1994; Williams, 2018). The longhouse thus serves as a vehicle for in-depth exploration of architecture, as well as of its role in supporting processes and protocols, our relationship to the land, cosmology and spirituality, our narratives and stories, and community life and identity. My goal is to shed light on the intricacies interwoven between traditional Iroquoian structures – social, societal, of governance, of identity, and cultural – and systems – of values and of beliefs – with the built environment.

Harley's Course: Integrating Teachings From Western and Indigenous Sciences in an Undergraduate Biology Course

Carol Armstrong

What is science? Whose knowledge do you value and why? These are core questions in the third-year Biology course officially titled Common Ground: Learning from the Land, and commonly referred to as "Harley's course". Co-developed with Piikani Knowledge Holder Harley Bastien, this course is run as a two-week block course at the end of the summer. The purpose of the course is to expose students to difference scientific perspectives and encourage them to challenge their beliefs about what science is and who is a scientist, what it means to ‘think scientifically’, how to listen and observe and the validity of the immeasurable. The opportunity to experience land-based learning, and to have the flexibility and freedom to discuss and reflect on perspectives that are different than their own has a remarkable impact on the students.

This presentation will include lessons learned from the first four cohorts of students who have participated in Harley's course and discuss challenges inherent in decolonizing the western science curriculum and creating space for Indigenous ways of knowing.

Ǫgyǫhsraniyǫ́hsdǫh: Growing Partnerships for Food Sovereignty and Sustainability in Six Nations

Six Nations Department of Wellbeing: Sara Montour, Kaya Hill, and Avery McCorkell

This session highlights a two-year community-led project focused on Haudenosaunee food sovereignty and sustainability, directly linking to the conference theme of equitable and culturally grounded food systems. Ǫgyǫhsraniyǫ́hsdǫh (“it strengthens our breathing”) was initiated by the Six Nations Department of Well-Being in response to community-identified needs to reconnect with traditional foods. Food is central to health, identity, and well-being, and this project sought to strengthen community resilience while embedding Haudenosaunee values into organizational practice.

The project draws on community-based participatory research, Indigenous food sovereignty theory, and relational accountability. Methodologically, it employed qualitative, community-led approaches, including community engagement events, producer gatherings, staff workshops, and resident taste-testing activities. These methods generated both actionable knowledge and cultural learning, ensuring programs reflected community priorities. Five interconnected pillars guided the work: Food Strategy, Produce, Distribute, Consume, and Sustainability. Initiatives included developing a Haudenosaunee Food Definition, strengthening local food networks, investing in preservation infrastructure, piloting culturally inspired menus, and reducing food waste through composting.

Participants in this interactive session will learn how to operationalize Indigenous food sovereignty principles, build cross-sector partnerships rooted in trust and shared leadership, and implement small, tangible actions that support systemic change. Key takeaways highlight how community-led definitions of food strengthen programs, how small, culturally grounded actions can create lasting change, and how partnerships built on trust and shared leadership support sustainable outcomes.

Weaving dialogues through science education: Narrative across this Landscape

Karen West, Ph.D Candidate, University of Alberta; Simon Sylliboy, Ph.D Candidate, St. Francis Xavier University

Our panel session shares how we each are acknowledging the importance of learning spirit (Battiste, 2013) and centring and considering how our friend, scholar and fellow researcher positions Naskapi First (Robinson et al., 2023). This presentation is a reflective panel in how we each consider this in our spaces of pedagogical considerations across Turtle Island. What and how our pedagogical practices are informed by protecting Indigenous futurity (Tuck, Yang, 2012). Panel members are L’nu and nêhiyaw, we each will share how we center Msit No’kmaq and wâhkôtowin conceptual understandings in our specific landscapes inspiring Mi’kmaw First and nêhiyaw first in teaching science courses with Education Faculties. Navigating colonial structures within science education, requires considerations of Two-eyed seeing (Hatcher, et al., 2009) ethical space (Ermine, 2007), and healing (Gutiérrez, 2022). from past experiences moving towards Reconciliation.

In this session, we intend to dialogue our pedagogical practices and assessment tools that we use in our spaces of learning to ensure Indigenous knowledge systems are weaved into our teaching practices as foundations. Dynamically our insights of teaching in classrooms with Indigenous and non-Indigenous students builds understandings of relationships and importance of knowledge from place. We each draw from Storywork (Archibald, 2008), sharing experiences navigating and challenging colonial institutions.

The Little River Estuary as a Living Archive: Continuity and Revitalization of Traditional Knowledge Systems

Kian Drew, University of Waterloo, Miawpukek First Nation

At the Little River Estuary in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), Traditional Knowledge is sustained through continuity, including intergenerational learning, long-standing stewardship and monitoring practices, and ongoing relationships to land and water. Since the 1990s, Little River has been the focus of multiple community-led Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) revitalization initiatives, alongside ongoing Indigenous-led stewardship and monitoring by Miawpukek First Nation (MFN) and organizations such as MAMKA.

This presentation reflects on the continuity of community-led efforts to revitalize and engage with TEK at Little River, acknowledging earlier initiatives and noting contemporary stewardship practices shared during a preliminary field visit. These efforts have spanned multiple phases, from earlier initiatives to document and protect TEK to ongoing stewardship and monitoring activities. This trajectory continues through the co-development of early-stage PhD research with MFN, guided by community priorities. This session focuses on the early, relational phase of Indigenous-led research. It highlights how continuity in Traditional Knowledge revitalization is expressed through stewardship, observation, and monitoring practices, and how these practices shape ethical research design prior to data collection.

This presentation uses a place-based, continuity-focused approach grounded in Indigenous scholarship, community-authored guidance on Traditional Knowledge studies, and reflective observation from a preliminary, non-extractive field visit in 2025. Rather than focusing on data collection or interpretation, the methodology emphasizes consent, community priorities, and how ethical considerations shape research design in the early stages of an Indigenous-led project.

The Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Science Program: A tribute to Dr. Bill Woodworth, Dr. Pamela Colorado and Chief Jacob Thomas

Dr. Brian Rice

In 1993 I transferred from a doctoral program at McGill University to the Traditional Knowledge Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a doctoral program that came out of an Indigenous Science Focus. My reason for transferring was due to their being no Indigenous programming or faculty at McGill at that time. My presentation will focus on the positives and negatives of being in the program and how it has informed my teaching to this day. There will be an emphasis on Dr. Bill Woodworth as a fellow doctoral student, Dr. Pamela Colorado as the founder and director of our program and Chief Jacob Thomas who became a mentor to Bill and myself. Each of them had an impact on my studies and life.

On Indigenous Food, Medicine, and Allyship: Working with Indigenous Knowledges and Knowledge Keepers Towards Healing

Dr. Vincent Ziffle, First Nations University

Solutions to the effective treatment of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and advanced Candida albicans infections have been sought with the assistance of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge Keepers collaborating with chemists and biochemists across western Canada. MRSA wound biofilm infections and, currently, candidiasis fungal infections are now being thwarted thanks to treatments stemming from Indigenous Medicinal Plant Healing Traditions, changing attitudes about medicinal chemistry and who truly understands how to effectively fight disease. To arrive at this point, wayfinding with the help of many Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Traditional Healers was imperative, and part of a decade-long unlearning and learning process for a conventional-trained synthetic organic chemist. Their journey, beginning with unconventional classrooms, Land-based Learning, Protocol and Ceremony, Truth and Reconciliation, re-evaluation of research conventions and goals (and plenty of hard-won lessons), will be shared. Efforts toward development of successfully Indigenized chemistry courses (i.e., Chemistry of Food and Cooking), interdisciplinarity, and increased systems-thinking in lab and field helped shift paradigms to usher in better ways of conducting research (e.g., OCAP®) and working in a good way with a growing number of Elders, Indigenous Scientists and team members. We will ask if this is part of achieving “allyship” with Indigenous Peoples, or just the start of an ongoing process toward ethical research, teaching, and reciprocity through chemistry.