Transforming chemical management with the use of Indigenous expertise

Global chemical production is expected to double by 2030, and according to the United Nations , Indigenous Peoples in Canada are disproportionately affected by toxic waste. Previously, Indigenous expertise was not considered when evaluating chemical risk, but a new research initiative is proposing a more collaborative approach.

The Indigenous-led project “Towards Sustainable Futures: Transforming Chemical Risk Management with Indigenous Expertise” recently received $22 million in funding from the New Frontiers in Research Fund. The researchers plan to develop and expand existing chemical risk management processes using Indigenous data analysis, community consultations, Indigenous sustainability approaches and Indigenous life cycle research. The aim is to integrate Indigenous expertise with Canadian and international chemical risk management practices.

“Chemical risk management, as it currently exists, does not work,” says the project’s nominated principal investigator M. Murphy, a University of Toronto professor who co-directs the Technoscience Research Unit and is a member of the Red River Métis. “It’s not stopping climate change. It's not stopping the concentrated harms on particular communities and peoples. It's not working internationally and has patchwork of uneven regulation.”

The time is now

Murphy sees a “window of opportunity” to move the needle on chemical risk management thanks to the recent adoption of legislation like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

“There’s an opportunity to get the conventional places where chemical risk management is done—such as government and university research sites—to operate differently.”

Over the next six years, the transdisciplinary research team will adopt a collaborative approach to ensure Indigenous research methods, Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts, Elders, and government scientists are involved from the beginning of the chemical risk management process; they will also work to develop new protocols, tools and policies for chemical risk management.

“We are interested in being at the ground of the creation of these new assessment methodologies, as opposed to being at the end of the smokestack, which is usually where Indigenous folks are brought in,” Murphy says.

Listening to communities

Community consultations are a core part of the project and will be possible thanks to the long-standing relationships researchers have already established with First Nations communities. For example, Murphy collaborates with Aamjiwnaang First Nation in what’s known as “Chemical Valley” in and around Sarnia, Ontario, where several dozen petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants operate. While it’s still early days, some ideas that interest Aamjiwnaang First Nation include community-controlled and community-created chemical standards and ways of doing chemical risk notification.

“The most meaningful outcome at the end of this project would be to have community tools to help govern the question of chemical management. That’s the hope and the dream,” Murphy says.

Bringing together two systems

The project’s leadership team, which also includes co-principal investigators Sue Chiblow and Gunilla Öberg, would like to see Canada emerge as a leader when it comes to more collaborative approaches to chemical management.

Chiblow, an Anishinaabe environmental scientist at the University of Guelph, grew up in Garden River First Nation, where she is a member. She says a major challenge will be figuring out how to meaningfully include Indigenous expertise into current chemical risk processes.

“How do we engage with scientists who think that Indigenous science is ‘hocus-pocus’? How do we engage with them and bring them into our world, to understand how we see the issues, and then, determine how to collaborate?” Chiblow asks. “We can look back at so many different examples where Indigenous Peoples have said, ‘Stop doing this. This is causing this harm.’ Then western scientists come in, do all their scientific studies, and then they’re like, ‘Yeah, we need to stop doing this, because it’s causing harm.’ So how do we flip that narrative?”

The answer lies, in part, in training the next generation of chemical risk professionals to lead chemical risk assessments in a new way.

Öberg is a professor with the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at The University of British Columbia, and a recent settler from Sweden. She will co-lead the project’s curriculum development component. As a scientist, she has been on a journey herself, ever since she began to question why certain expertise is accepted in science, and why other expertise is excluded.

“I started thinking about how scientific knowledge is produced and how it is used, and how the questions we ask guide what we find, and how the questions we don’t ask guide what we don’t find, and how that is so dependent on the context, and it’s so dependent on the values of the people asking the questions,” she recalls.

The team’s curriculum will include teaching materials for students in relevant fields, such as toxicology, chemistry, and artificial intelligence / machine learning focused on chemical risk management practices that are ethical and informed by Indigenous Knowledge systems .

Chiblow is looking forward to bringing together the two knowledge sets.

“There are so many ways that people have talked about how they can work together, but this will be a real example, and it’s at a higher level. I think that’s going to be really interesting to see.”

Murphy agrees: “I’m also really excited to see the status of Indigenous science improve at universities. I think that would be a wonderful legacy to come out of projects like this one.”