The history of scientists in Indigenous communities is fraught. There’s even a joke about it among Inuit: “How many people in an Inuit family? Five: a mother, a father, two kids and an anthropologist.”

Scientists have a habit of parachuting into communities, gathering what information they can from the people, the land or the wildlife, then vanishing without a trace — taking what is to them “data” but to the people who live there is millennia of accumulated traditional knowledge.

“We’ve been studied to death,” says Heiltsuk First Nation council member Jess Housty, quoting elders in her community.

That’s changing thanks to a few scientists and Indigenous communities who have struck a new mutual understanding. The result is changing how science is done.

“It’s finding the questions that you have in common,” says Aerin Jacob, a conservation scientist with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. “Where’s the overlap between [questions] communities want to have answered and what is your expertise?”

But doing research this way opens up all kinds of ethical and intellectual questions: how can science remain independent? Where does science cross into advocacy? And what are Indigenous communities getting out of the bargain?

Check out Jimmy Thomson’s new piece, and learn — as these scientists have — about a new kind of caribou, whales that offer themselves to the whalers and how bears and people live side-by-side.

Plus, keep scrolling for so much more this week!
 

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