Larissa Heron says her interest in science, and ultimately, health, has always been connected to her family’s Métis traditional plant use. So, in 2017, when she was a first-year Bachelor of Science student taking introductory biology courses, it felt like something was missing.

“We were getting all of the fundamental scientific information, of course, but as I started spending time with kihêw waciston and attending interdisciplinary sessions like the Spirit Bear Dialogues that looked at Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing in academia, I wondered why I wasn’t seeing it in my classes,” she says. 

Today, Heron (Bachelor of Science ’23) is part of a team working to change that for the next generation of students. Now a relative-in-residence with kihêw waciston, she is working alongside biological sciences lab instructor Tara Androschuk and education developer Serei Jeppesen to weave Indigenous content into the same two introductory biological sciences courses she took as a MacEwan student. 

“There’s a Venn diagram in one of Tara’s classes that speaks really beautifully to what I was feeling back then. It’s a Mi’kmaq concept called two-eyed seeing – being able to hold two things at the same time and see how they can complement one another,” says Heron.

Androschuk says she has long felt that the connectedness of the natural world lends itself to exploration through both scientific and Indigenous ways of knowing. The only thing holding her back from doing so in her courses? Making sure it was holistic, respectful and authentic.

“I wanted to be able to hold scientific and Indigenous ways of knowing together and consider where they complement, challenge or deepen one another, but I knew I couldn’t do that on my own,” she says.

Enter Jeppesen from the university’s Centre for Teaching and Learning, who is shaping an entire learning community around weaving Indigenous content into MacEwan courses. She connected Androschuk with Heron and MacEwan Indigenous Knowledge Keeper Tom Snow to explore ways to incorporate Indigenous perspectives into BIOL 108: Introduction to Evolution and BIOL 208: Principles of Ecology. 

Beyond berries: Asking new questions in the lab

This term, after Androschuk’s BIOL 108 students complete labs centred on identifying different types of plants and animals using a step-by-step classification tool, Androschuk plans to introduce ideas that extend learning beyond what they’re looking at to why it’s important. 

One way to do that, she says, is to share place-based and relational examples from Indigenous culture. The activity takes on new meaning, says Androschuk, when identification is the starting point of learning rather than the endpoint. 

After the students use a dichotomous key to identify a variety of plants and animals in the lab, Androschuk will invite them to consider the identification of four types of wild berries, encouraging them to discuss and ask new questions: Are they edible or poisonous? What is their range? Their seasonality? When can they be harvested?  

That approach, explains Jeppesen, is rooted in Indigenous generational wisdom. “It’s also an opportunity to highlight how Indigenous people have known about scientific principles for a really long time – and how learning is centred on living with the land, through the land and how we understand land as a relative.”

The berry lab is just one starting point. Androschuk plans to introduce other teachings from Snow, including the hawk moon and its connection to migration, as well as relationships between caribou and lichen.

She hopes her students leave with a broader perspective and acceptance of different types of knowledge. Jeppesen hopes the work will inspire more faculty to find ways to engage with and weave Indigenous knowledge and ways of being into their own courses. 

“Indigenous knowledge isn’t discipline-specific,” she says. “It can influence both the content –  what is taught – and pedagogy – how it’s taught.”

For Heron, the hope is that future students – particularly Indigenous students – see that their ways of knowing belong in academic spaces.

“If I were a student now seeing this approach, it would make me think that my ways of knowing matter here, that I could see myself in these spaces. And that I am welcome here.”