Tier II Nomination in Indigenous and Environmental Health Governance

About the Project

The Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Health Governance research program responds to the urgent requests from Indigenous communities to build on the doctoral research undertaken by Dr. Lewis with Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN) and to develop an Indigenous environmental health risk assessment approach which reflects how communities are impacted by resource extraction and/or potential exposures to contaminants. Through a collaborative and transformative One Health approach, the program will achieve the following objectives:

Stream 1: Establish the data landscape in Indigenous environmental health assessment.

Developing a culturally relevant framework that will guide academic and community researchers in the gathering of baseline data within individual Indigenous communities is a major objective of the proposed CRC.

Stream 2: Share stories of Indigenous environmental health governance.

Dr. Lewis and her research team will develop a process to adapt the cultural framework developed for PLFN to be flexible enough to reflect the Creation Story and Indigenous worldview in the local context of individual communities.

Stream 3: Build a cadre of practitioners in Indigenous environmental health governance.

Dr. Lewis will develop a cadre of trainees in quantitative skills to analyze data using statistical analysis software such as Stata/SE 16.0, qualitative skills using qualitative software such as NVivo 1.0, and Indigenous methodologies/methods using, for example, land-based learning techniques or talking circles.

Stream 4: Implement Indigenous environmental health governance in policy.

Indigenous environmental health governance – What does this mean in practice? This research program is intended to make a meaningful contribution to the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty over the health of Indigenous community members and their lands and environment, by providing communities with the data that is required to make informed decisions, by mobilizing their knowledge in meaningful ways, and by working together to influence policy in environment and health.