As part of our involvement in the USGS Biodiversity and Climate Change Assessment Guidance Committee, Gwen and James have been contributing to USGS Guiding Principles for the Consideration of Indigenous Knowledge Inclusion, recently attending the all-authors meeting from late April to early May. The Indigenous team of the Transboundary Policy Options chapter developed guiding principles to help understand and guide practitioners’ journeys to apply Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
Through our work there, we demonstrated another deeply held Indigenous law and value: responsibility. We all took responsibility to share and teach about our cultural ways and knowledge to support others and to work together to deepen our collective understanding of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. We’re excited about the high-impact potential of this work and, as practitioners ourselves, are thrilled when we get to bring our hands-on experience to peers like you through our IEI retreat and capacity building initiatives.