NNSL (June 2/97) - Last November, the public policy journal, Policy Options, published an article by Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard attacking the use of traditional knowledge (TK) by the GNWT in BHP diamond mine environmental assessment panel.

The article started a heated debate. Widdowson, then a policy analyst with the GNWT, was suspended with pay, and she and Howard later left the North. Widdowson also filed a complaint with the GNWT's Fair Practices Office, claiming the policy forced her to adopt a religious belief.

Fair practices officer Shirley Johnson dismissed the claim May 7, ruling that requiring an employee to promote the policy is not the same as forcing an employee to adopt a belief system.

In a recent issue, Policy Options published a rebuttal to the original article. The author is Marc Stevenson, the co-ordinator of the traditional knowledge component of the BHP panel's assessment and a consultant with the Canadian Circumpolar Institute in Edmonton. Following is an excerpt:

The erosion of traditional lifestyles, the imposition of non-native ways of knowing and doing, growing dissatisfaction with southern scientists and their inappropriate research agencies, increasing recognition of the limits of conventional science in solving ecological problems ... all these and more provided the rationale for including this controversial directive in the panel's guidelines for the BHP diamond mine....

Instead of recognizing these challenges and offering creative solutions, Howard and Widdowson chose to invoke a very narrow definition of TK and tenuous train of thought to vent and focus their frustration. However, their tantrum served no one's interests, especially no industry's, who they most clearly side with. Rather, Howard and Widdowson's mean-spirited and incredibly naive attack only serves to drive a wedge between government, industry and aboriginal groups, while undermining the latter's efforts to become independent, self-determining peoples in the context of Northern development.

Howard and Widdowson's claims that government imposed "religion" and "specific religious beliefs" on Canadian citizens when BHP was directed to consider TK in assessing the impacts of its diamond mine is a "stretch" that few people aware of the issues would make. The definition for TK they cite, which includes references to "spiritual teachings," is only one of many used by aboriginal people, government and researchers. Neither the panel nor the proponent explicitly defined what it understood TK to mean, and rightfully so; this is best left to the aboriginal groups involved as Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus and other aboriginal leaders reminded us.