##  [Learning Across Indigenous and Western Knowledge Systems and Intersectionality: Reconciling Social Science Research Approaches](/resource/learning-across-indigenous-and-western-knowledge-systems-and-intersectionality-reconciling) 

Organization

[University of Guelph (UofG)](/organization/university-guelph-uofg)

 

 

Resource Type

[Report](/taxonomy/term/38)

 

 

Author(s)

Leah Levac

Lisa McMurtry

Deborah Stienstra

Gail Balkie

Cindy Hanson

Devi Mucina

 

 

Original Authors

Leah Levac

Lisa McMurtry

Deborah Stienstra

Gail Balkie

Cindy Hanson

Devi Mucina

 

 

Resource Date:

2018

 

Page Length

48

 

 

Pressing socioeconomic, political, and ecological challenges demand new approaches to creating and acting on research. Finding new approaches to knowledge creation requires turning to previously excluded understandings of the world, including Indigenous ways of knowing. Canada’s growing acknowledgment of the persistence of colonization includes a realization that the attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and knowledge systems has resulted in missed opportunities for creativity and innovation in pursuit of research that advances equality and sustainability. Some knowledges have long been marginalized within Western scientific traditions as well. The knowledges of women, queer, disabled, and racialized knowledge holders are examples. One of the responses to this exclusion is the theoretical idea and practice of intersectionality, which contends that varying forms of oppression are interrelated, interactive, and co-constitutive. This knowledge synthesis report contributes to Canada’s commitment to truth and reconciliation by offering ideas for how to do research that is intentional about learning from Indigenous and Western ways of knowing, and about incorporating marginalized voices from within multiple knowledge systems.