“Two-Eyed Seeing” - An Indigenous framework to transform fisheries research and management

Oct 2, 2020  

Event URL:  https://www.facebook.com/events/794134364738707/
Hosted by: UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries

Speaker: Dr. Andrea Reid

Increasingly, fisheries researchers and managers seek or are compelled to “bridge” Indigenous knowledge systems with Western scientific approaches to understanding and governing fisheries. Here, we will move beyond the all-too-common narrative about integrating or incorporating (too often used as euphemisms for assimilating) other knowledge systems into Western science, instead building an ethic of knowledge coexistence and complementarity in knowledge generation using Two-Eyed Seeing as a guiding framework. Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk in Mi’kmaw) embraces “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing, and to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all”, as envisaged by Mi’kmaw Elder Dr. Albert Marshall. In this talk, we will examine the notion of knowledge dichotomies as well as imperatives for knowledge coexistence and draw parallels between Two-Eyed Seeing and other analogous Indigenous frameworks from around the world. We will explore its operationalization through Canadian-based aquatic and fisheries case studies that co-develop questions, document and mobilize multiple knowledges, and co-produce insights and decisions. In sum, we will see how Two-Eyed Seeing creates a pathway to a plural coexistence, where time-tested Indigenous knowledge systems can be paired with, not subsumed by, Western scientific insights for an equitable and sustainable future.