Speaking Across Knowledge Systems: An Educator’s Guide

This educator’s guide was produced by fourth-year undergraduate students as part of a Community Engaged Learning component of a Sociology and Anthropology course taught at the University of Guelph. The guide is meant to support the mobilization of the Speaking Across Knowledge Systems podcast.

Speaking Across Knowledge Systems is a series of conversations with Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental science scholars and practitioners about how they approach, understand, and engage with diverse knowledge systems in their work.

The podcast is a collaborative project of the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership (CRP): an Indigenous-led network that brings together a diverse range of partners to advance Indigenous-led conservation, including Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), and to transform the conservation sector in Canada.

This network included Indigenous leadership, environmental conservation organizations, academic institutions, scholars and researchers, and communities who are acting on and building from the recommendations set out by the Indigenous Circle of Expert’s report, “We Rise Together.”

The Speaking Across Knowledge Systems podcast delves into the different paths to acquiring, respecting, and sharing knowledge, and how to move beyond a singular focus on Western ways of thinking and doing to achieve conservation goals.

Indigenous knowledge systems are rich, diverse, and often place-based. This series of conversations offers insights and guidance for holding space and respect for Indigenous knowledges, practices, and relationships. This podcast series is about being open and respectful with how diverse knowledge systems can contribute to our collective goal of environmental sustainability. It is an auditory resource, and we ask that you, as a listener, take the time to pause, slow down, and listen openly to each episode.

People convey knowledge that is based on their training, education, and experience. Within these conversations, we bring people together of various backgrounds and experience to share how they engage with different knowledge systems in their work. Each episode is centred around a theme that emerged from conversations with guest experts.

We are grateful to the two reviewers from the CRP, Allison Bishop, Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership Manager and Dr. Soudeh Jamshidian, Director of Education and International Relations, IISAAK OLAM Foundation, for their thought-provoking, critical, and helpful comments that were used to revise an earlier draft of the Educator’s Guide. We also express gratitude to the Stream members who offered suggestions on the final draft and Kristy Tomkinson for coordinating reviews and taking the time to make additional edits and consistent formatting.

The content of this course was situated within the context of the part of Turtle Island, also known as Canada. As such, we wish to acknowledge the land for which we learn on, with, and from. We extend our gratitude to the land and acknowledge that the University of Guelph resides on the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit (Treaty 3).

We jointly consider the significance of the Dish with One Spoon Covenant with this land and offer our respect to our Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Métis neighbours as we strive to strengthen Indigenous-Settler relationships and our relations with our beyond human kin through our active engagement in this course and beyond.

We also want to acknowledge the contributions of the land and the more-than-human beings to this educator’s guide through our engagement with land-based pedagogies. We encourage all those who engage with this guide to reflect on the lands on which you reside and on your responsibilities to the territory.