Dawn Martin-Hill (2022). Knowledge Mobilization Through Haudenosaunee Pedagogies. Proceedings of the GWF Annual Open Science Meeting, May 16-18, 2022.

Two projects funded by Global Water Futures, Co-Creation of Indigenous Water Quality Tools and Ohneganos – Indigenous Ecological Knowledge…, involve harmonizing Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science for the purposes of co-creating water management, monitoring, & mitigation tools. Branded as 'Ohneganos', these projects are led by and based out of Six Nations of the Grand River (SN). As a Haudenosaunee community, SN has relied on their TEK and local expertise to inform all aspects of Ohneganos – from conceptual design to implementation & dissemination. A holistic assessment of water has required interdisciplinarity as well as autonomy; to advance self-determination in water governance & achieving UN SDG 6.

A major focus of Ohneganos has been working with community partners to Indigenize aspects of the research process, including knowledge mobilization (KM). As a community-led research program, KM is of critical importance to disseminating Ohneganos research findings to community & maintaining a continuous level of community engagement. One effective KM strategy has been through the creation of a vodcast called Ohneganos: Let’s Talk Water (LTW). Led by Ohneganos youth lead from SN, Makasa Looking Horse, LTW invites Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members, researchers, artists, and knowledge holders from SN and beyond to engage with research and share stories, ideas, and knowledge about water. Adopting this Haudenosaunee-led approach to KM has also facilitated knowledge sharing and been an effective strategy for engaging in knowledge co-production.

Another key element of KM that Ohneganos has pursued has involved situating the research within a Haudenosaunee conceptual framework. Since Ohneganos is a large research program, it can be difficult to follow the various interconnections between research activities while retaining a broad and holistic understanding over the main goals of the research. Haudenosaunee values and pedagogies understand and embrace holistic perspectives with creativity, elegance, and a deep understanding. Therefore, Ohneganos has developed a Haudenosaunee framework to present and understand the interlinkages between elements of the Ohneganos research program. Presented on the back of the culturally significant turtle, the Haudenosaunee framework that has been developed by Ohneganos will be the focus of this talk. Such research frameworks and KM strategies are an effective way of communicating research activities to community partners and articulating the interlinkages between research fields, breaking down academic silos. Rooting research in Indigenous culture also invokes Indigenous Knowledge that helps understand holistic connections between elements, can help further drive research questions and goals, and makes space for important new perspectives.

First Author: Dawn Martin-Hill (Principal Investigator), Associate Professor, McMaster University
Additional Authors: N/A