Description
Ecological synthesis increasingly brings together diverse knowledge sources, yet synthesis can lose meaning when knowledge is separated from the contexts in which it is held, governed, and applied. This is especially important when Indigenous Knowledge is involved, where context also includes relationships to place, community priorities, consent, stewardship responsibilities, Indigenous Data Sovereignty, and decisions about what knowledge should be shared, represented, protected, or withheld.
This presentation asks how ecological synthesis can better account for these contexts. Drawing from examples of long-term environmental change across knowledge systems, I first consider how environmental observations become meaningful when linked to lived experience, reference points for environmental conditions over time, governance, and consequences for harvesting, access, safety, and stewardship. I then turn to early-stage PhD research being co-developed with Miawpukek First Nation at the Little River Estuary in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland, Canada).
Little River has been the focus of community-led Traditional Knowledge initiatives, including Traditional Use Study work, TEK mapping, marine inventory work, stewardship, and environmental monitoring. Building on this foundation, this presentation highlights the research design phase prior to data collection as an important part of how ecological synthesis is shaped. It considers how sedimentologic and environmental archives can be brought into conversation with Indigenous Knowledge and stewardship practices without treating community-held knowledge as extractable data.
By highlighting context before ecological synthesis, this presentation contributes to discussions in the broader literature on interdisciplinary environmental research and knowledge co-production about how multiple knowledge systems can be brought into conversation without collapsing distinct epistemologies into one another or treating one as validation for another.
| Topic | Topic 2: Possibilities for taking context into account in ecological synthesis |
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