Search Results (24)

A two-eyed seeing approach considered Indigenous knowledge and Western science towards eco–health, reconciliation and land back with Fort William First Nation (FWFN) in Ontario, Canada. To map traditional land use, occupancy, and ecological knowledge, we interviewed 49 FWFN members about their hunting, fishing, trapping, plant harvesting, cultural sites, and sacred gatherings on their ancestral land. Their traditional land use and occupancy includes more than 7.5 million ha of their ancestral land. The FWFN members reported many industrial impacts on their reserve and ancestral land. We analyzed the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) change over time on FWFN’s ancestral land and the Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper Mill (TBPP)’s National Pollutant Release Inventory data to investigate the FWFN members’ ecohealth concerns. The NDVI analysis revealed large tracts of degraded FWFN’s ancestral land due to logging areas, mining claims, settlements, and paper mills. Mining claims and greenstone belts occupy a quarter of the FWFN members’ ancestral land. The TBPP mill dumped pollution into the Kaministiquia River upstream and upwind of the FWFN community, exposing FWFN members to kilotons of cancerous and other toxic chemicals each year for over a century. Resource extraction and pollution in Northwestern Ontario negatively impacted the human health and ecosystem integrity of FWFN, requiring reconciliation by restoring damaged land and preventing pollution as the starting point for land back. The first step to land back is ending the environmental racism of the TBPP’s pollution directed downstream and downwind of FWFN and protecting ancestral land against logging, mining, and other extractive industries. Full article

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore Sámi healthcare staff experiences in encounters with Sámi patients and their expectations for non-Sámi healthcare staff. Methods: Focus groups and individual interviews with 14 participants were conducted, and the participants’ experiences were subjected to a thematic analysis approach. Results: The findings show that the Sámi healthcare staff expect non-Sámi healthcare staff to enhance their knowledge about Sámi language and culture. The Sámi healthcare staff also expect non-Sámi healthcare staff to gain knowledge of diversities within the Sámi cultures. Additionally, the results show that the participants felt that the encounters were more authentic when the patients had the same background as themselves. Conclusion: These results were also based on the participants’ experience of resistance from non-Sámi healthcare staff, which can be addressed by the non-Sámi healthcare staff and healthcare institutions enhancing their knowledge of Sámi history, culture, and language. This can be conducted by making efforts to meet the participants’ expectations and experiences, enhancing their knowledge of Sámi history, culture, and language, and showing respect to provide culturally safe care. Further, tacit knowledge and what can be seen as “two-eyed seeing”, as demonstrated by the participants, are not necessarily transferable to non-Sámi healthcare staff. Despite this, all healthcare staff, through experience, recognition, and reflections on encounters with Sámi patients and Sámi healthcare staff, can develop awareness in what is addressed as “two-eyed seeing” by the participants in this study. Full article

Indigenous traditional land uses, including hunting, fishing, sacred activities, and land-based education at the Red Sucker Lake First Nation (RSLFN) in Manitoba, Canada, are impacted by mining. The Red Sucker Lake First Nation (RSLFN) people want their territories’ land and water to be protected for traditional uses, culture, and ecological integrity. Towards this goal, their Island Lake Tribal Council sought support for an Indigenous-protected and conserved area (IPCA) in their territory, outside of existing mining claims, but without success. The two-eyed seeing approach was adopted in this study. Traditional land use mapping and interviews were undertaken with 21 Indigenous people from the RSLFN, showing that many traditional land uses are concentrated on greenstone belts. The interviews revealed that mining exploration has resulted in large petroleum spills, noise distress, private property destruction, wildlife die-offs, and animal population declines. These issues negatively impact RSLFN’s traditional land use practices, ecosystem integrity, and community health. Governments need to partner with Indigenous communities to reach their biodiversity targets, particularly considering northern Canada’s peatlands, including those in the RSLFN territory, surpassing Amazon forests for carbon storage. The role of critical minerals in renewable energy and geopolitics has colonial governments undermining Indigenous rights, climate stabilization, and biodiversity to prioritize extractivism. Mining at the RSLFN has environmental impacts from exploration to decommissioning and after, as well as the massive infrastructure required that includes roads, hydro, and massive energy supplies, with a proposed multimedia national Northern Corridor to export RSLFN’s resources and other resources to six ports. Full article

Early Relational Health (ERH) is the foundation for infant and child emotional and social wellbeing. ERH is a quality of relationships co-created by infants, caregivers, and other members of their families and communities from pregnancy through childhood. Relationships themselves are not ERH; rather, ERH can be a feature of relationships. Those that are characterized by positive, shared emotionality become contexts within which members co-develop mutual capacities that enable them to prevail and flourish. This essay offers a synthesis of current knowledge about ERH in the US and begins to integrate Indigenous and non-Indigenous research and knowledge about ERH in the hope that readers will embrace “Etuaptmumk”—“Two-Eyed Seeing”. The authors maintain that systems of care for infants, families, and their communities must first and foremost attend to revitalization, cultural context, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Authors discuss key concepts in ERH; Indigenous and non-Indigenous research that inform ERH; structural and systemic factors in the US that affect ERH ecosystems; the critical intersections of culture, diversity, equity; the broader concept of village support for fostering ERH; and efforts to revitalize ERH discourse, practices, and policies. The authors advocate for a holistic approach to ERH and suggest future directions for research and advocacy. Full article

This paper presents a synoptic (“Two-Eyed Seeing”) approach to science transfer in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), based on an ontological framework inspired by two related concepts from Western philosophy (Sellars’ synoptic view) and indigenous wisdom (Two-Eyed Seeing). It was tested and further developed in a participatory research process with first year student science teachers. The results show that this model can support a balanced approach between a scientific and a holistic perspective at each stage of the teaching process—preparation, implementation and assessment—and help to integrate sustainability issues consistently into science lessons. In the course of the research process, the model has developed into a viable educational tool that distinguishes between a person-oriented lifeworld image and a things-oriented scientific image and guides the systematic transfer between the two images. It promotes students’ reasoning and scientific practice as well as their identity formation and community interaction, two equally important issues in ESD of today. The pre-service teachers were careful to close the loop, as they put it, between the two images. They saw health and environmental issues as particularly helpful in realising scientific holism. The pre-service teachers interpreted the role of the teacher as a facilitator or mediator between the two images rather than as an expert and advocate of a one-sided scientific image of the world. The model may be of general interest to teachers and researchers who design, implement, evaluate and investigate ESD activities. The potential use of the scientific holism framework and the synoptic (“Two-Eyed Seeing”) tool for science transfer in public and political sustainability discourse is also discussed. Full article

Concerns about the dangers of social comparison emerge in multiples places in Kierkegaard’s authorship. I argue that these concerns—and his critique of the role of “the public”—take on a new relevance in the digital age. In this article, I focus on one area where concerns about the risks of social comparison are paramount: the contemporary debate about moral grandstanding or “virtue-signaling”. Neil Levy and Evan Westra have recently attempted to defend virtue-signaling against Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke’s critique. I argue that these defences fail and that a consideration of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers is critical to seeing why. The over-confidence to which they give rise exacerbates certain vices with the potential to do moral, social and epistemic harm: I focus in particular on self-righteousness (complementing Kierkegaard’s discussion of envy). I then argue that Kierkegaard’s contrast between the religious category of the “single individual”—the genuine person of “character”—and the person who effectively appeals to the authority of some version of “the public” deepens our understanding of why we should reject defences of virtue-signaling. It helps us to distinguish between two kinds of virtue-signaler (“superficial enthusiasts” and “clear-eyed cynics”), both of whom contribute, in different ways, to the negative impacts of the vice of self-righteousness. Contrary to Levy’s claim that virtue-signaling is virtuous, I conclude that typically it is closer to vice than to virtue. Full article

Although Indigenous food systems are sustainable in nature, many of these systems have been forcibly altered among Indigenous communities within Canada, as a consequence of colonization. Indigenous Food Sovereignty (IFS) movements work to counteract the dismantling of Indigenous food systems as well as the negative health impacts of environmental dispossession experienced by Indigenous communities. Through community-based participatory research methodologies and the utilization of Etuaptmumk, or two-eyed seeing, this research project explored community perspectives of IFS in Western Canada. Reflexive thematic analysis of qualitative data collected during a sharing circle held with community members identified the influence of Indigenous Knowledge and community support on three main aspects of Indigenous food sovereignty, including (1) environmental concerns, (2) sustainable practices and (3) a strong relationship with the land and waters. Through the sharing of stories and memories related to traditional foods and current sovereignty projects, community members identified concerns for their local ecosystem as well as a desire to preserve its natural state for generations to come. The strengthening of IFS movements is critical to the overall wellbeing of Indigenous communities within Canada. Support is needed for movements that honour relationships with traditional foods and recognize traditional lands and waters as necessary for healing and sustaining the health of Indigenous communities. Full article

Historically, goose harvesting provided a source of culturally significant, safe, and nutritious food for the Omushkego Cree of subarctic Ontario, Canada. Disruptions stemming from colonization and climate change have led to a decrease in harvesting, resulting in higher rates of food insecurity. The aim of the Niska program was to reconnect Elders and youth to revitalize goose harvesting activities and associated Indigenous knowledge within the community. The program and evaluation were built using a two-eyed seeing (Etuaptmumk) and community-based participatory research approach. Salivary cortisol, a biomedical measure of stress, was collected before (n = 13) and after (n = 13) participation in the spring harvest. Likewise, cortisol samples were collected before (n = 12) and after (n = 12) the summer harvest. Photovoice and semi-directed interviews were employed after the spring (n = 13) and summer (n = 12) harvests to identify key elements of well-being from an Indigenous perspective. The changes observed in cortisol levels for the spring (p = 0.782) and summer (p = 0.395) harvests were not statistically significant. However, there was a noteworthy increase in the subjective well-being observed through the qualitative measures (semi-directed interviews and photovoice), highlighting the importance of using multiple perspectives when assessing well-being, especially in Indigenous peoples. Future programs should incorporate multiple perspectives when addressing complex environmental and health issues, such as food security and environmental conservation, especially in Indigenous homelands worldwide. Full article

GABA_A receptor-positive modulators are well-known to induce sedation, sleep, and general anesthesia. Conversely, GABA_A receptor negative allosteric modulators (GABA_ARNAMs) can increase arousal and induce seizures. Motivated by our studies with patients with hypersomnia, and our discovery that two GABA_ARNAMs can restore the Excitation/Inhibition (E/I) balance in vitro and arousal in vivo, we chose to screen 11 compounds that have been reported to modulate arousal, to see if they shared a GABA-related mechanism. We determined modulation with both conventional and microfluidic patch clamp methods. We found that receptor activation was variably modulated by all 11 compounds: Rifampicin (RIF), Metronidazole (MET), Minocycline (MIN), Erythromycin (ERY), Ofloxacin (OFX), Chloroquine (CQ), Hydroxychloroquine sulfate (HCQ), Flumazenil (FLZ), Pentylenetetrazol (PTZ), (-)-Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG), and clarithromycin (CLR). The computational modeling of modulator–receptor interactions predicted drug action at canonical binding sites and novel orphan sites on the receptor. Our findings suggest that multiple avenues of investigation are now open to investigate large and brain-penetrant molecules for the treatment of patients with diminished CNS E/I balance. Full article

Given colonial genocide, Indigenous peoples are rightfully reticent to disclose their experiences of family violence to practitioners working within mainstream health care and social services. Health care and social service providers (HSSPs) have varied formal education on providing trauma-and-violence informed care to Indigenous and non-Indigenous families affected by family violence, including intimate partner violence and child maltreatment. The purpose of this study is to understand and describe the perspectives of Six Nations of the Grand River community members on the relevance of an education module to support HSSPs to provide physically and emotionally safe care to Indigenous families affected by family violence. Two-Eyed Seeing and Two Row Wampum approaches guided our qualitative study. Twenty-one (66.7% women) Indigenous HSSPs completed a semi-structured interview; 15 identified as a regulated HSSP, nine as a Knowledge Keeper/Cultural Holder, and three as a HSSP trainees. Conventional content analysis guided the development of codes and categories. The Violence, Evidence, Guidance, Action (VEGA)—Creating Safety education module was described as having elements consistent with Indigenous experiences and values, and supportive of Indigenous peoples seeking care from HSSPs for family violence related concerns. Participants described several suggestions to better adapt and align the module content with the diversity of values and beliefs of different Indigenous Nations. Collectively, the Creating Safety module may be used as an educational adjunct to Indigenous-focused, cultural safety training that can support HSSPs to provide physically, emotionally, and psychologically safe care to Indigenous peoples who have experienced family violence. Future work needs to consider the perspectives of other Indigenous communities and Nations. Full article

Background: eMental health apps are increasingly being considered for use in health care with growing recognition of the importance of considering end-user preferences in their design and implementation. The key to the success of using apps with Indigenous youth is tailoring the design and content to include Indigenous perspectives. In this study we used a Two-Eyed Seeing perspective to integrate Indigenous and human computer interaction methodologies to identify end-user preferences for a tablet-based mental health screening app used in a primary care clinic serving Indigenous youth. Objective: The research objectives used a Two-Eyed Seeing approach to (i) collectively create stories about Indigenous youth lived experiences accessing integrated primary care for their mental health concerns; and (ii) engage Indigenous youth in Design Circles to determine their usability preferences for digital mental health screening tools. Method: Eight adolescents (n = 4 young women; n = 3 young men; and n = 1 Two Spirit) between 20 to 24 years old who self-identified as Indigenous participated. Indigenous youth joined Design Circles to co-create a story about accessing mental health care and their needs and preferences for an eMental Health app. Results: Findings highlighted the importance of collective Indigenous storytelling about accessing integrated primary care for mental health needs. Participants created three persona stories about their challenges accessing mental health care and the role of social support. Participants sorted their usability design preferences for an eMental Health app to be inclusive of Indigenous knowledges. Conclusions: A Two-Eyed Seeing perspective was useful to incorporate a design thinking approach as collective storytelling among Indigenous youth. This research may inform and shape the design of eMental health apps used in health clinics to better engage Indigenous youth. Full article

Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR), a molecular diagnostic technology, is spotlighted as one of the quickest and fastest diagnostic methods for the actual coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). However, the fluorescent label-based technology of the RT-PCR technique requires expensive equipment and a sample pretreatment process for analysis. Therefore, this paper proposes a biochip based on Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). In this paper, it was possible to see the change according to the concentration by measuring the impedance with a chip made of two electrodes with different shapes of sample DNA. Full article

In this paper, we explore Science|Environment|Health, One Health, Planetary Health, and Sustainability/Education for Sustainable Development in the context of the 2030 Agenda as four major frameworks that take a step toward investigating health from different angles to tackle the grand challenges that lie ahead of humanity. In most of these frameworks, the topic of health is no longer limited to the health of humans; it also encompasses the health of ecosystems and planetary systems. Therefore, our ways of teaching and discussing health in science education may need to be adjusted. To this aim, we first shortly characterize the four frameworks and then analyze the concepts of health, the contributing sciences, and the role of values in the frameworks. In our opinion, three main questions have to be settled: (1) Which concept of health lies at the root of each framework? (2) Which sciences should be considered when teaching about health, and what role will they take in an interdisciplinary, integrative approach and under complexity restraints? (3) What is the role of values in these frameworks, and how can the is–ought fallacy be avoided? We finally discuss our findings in light of the concept of two-eyed seeing in science education. This concept helps us disentangle and sharpen the three main questions and draw implications for teaching about health in school science. Full article

Research on physical interventions installed in outdoor environments and their impacts on children’s play and development is a growing area of study. This paper focuses on the design and installation of outdoor interventions at early childhood education centres in Vancouver, Canada and the impact that theses interventions had on play affordances. With the aim of intervening with inexpensive natural materials and loose parts, graduate students designed, built, and installed interventions and using the Seven Cs evaluation form they scored the play spaces pre- and post-installation. Design methods included the Seven Cs design guidelines and the Two-Eyed Seeing model. Students also sought the insights of Early Childhood Educators, maintenance staff, licensing officers, the British Columbia Cancer Agency, and an Indigenous herbalist/educator. They also examined and addressed solar modifications to create dappled light. To understand the impacts of the student interventions researchers compared the pre- and post-intervention Seven Cs scores, which increased by 20 to 30 points. Researchers seeking to replicate this type of project in their own institutions should carefully consider the impact of climate change on construction timing and material selection, and sensitivity to the diversity of socio-cultural values embedded in the community and within design decisions and the interventions themselves. Full article

We share our collective stories as instructors and graduate students with an interest in decolonial education on how we learned together in a course on Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS). The course occurred in the environmental studies department at a predominantly White graduate school in the Connecticut river basin in the area now known as the USA. The topic of IKS is steadily gaining interest in the environmental education (EE) field, as evidenced by an increase (albeit small) in the number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. At the same time, decolonial educators are looking for ways to teach IKS in an ethical and respectful manner. Our goal for this paper was to share how we grappled with questions around ethics and cultural appropriation. For instance, as decolonial educators who are not Indigenous to communities where we work and reside, can we facilitate lessons on IKS? If so, how can we do it in a manner that honors IKS and knowledge holders, is ethical, respectful and not appropriating? We learned that applying decolonization factors was crucial. Specifically, our work revealed four key decolonization factors: centering programs in Indigenous philosophies of education, privileging Indigenous voices and engaging Elders as experts, promoting Etuptmumk/two-eyed seeing, and employing Indigenous ways of teaching and learning. This paper makes contributions to the environmental education field, particularly decolonial educators who are seeking respectful and ethical ways to engage with Indigenous knowledge systems. Full article