Claire Kemp

8 people wearing masks, and a service dog, all posed for a picture in an office space while organizing the virtual Magnetawan First Nation Lands, Resources & Environment conference.

Four people and a service dog all wearing helmets and raingear sitting in a side-by-side 4-wheeler to go out for field work.

Back seat of a car filled with snacks and food for youth engagement session and birthday party. Stack of pizzas from Dominos, a birthday cake that reads "happy birthday Allen", bananas, blueberries, and 5 bottles of pop all spread out.

So awesome to think back to where I started at the beginning of my MSc - during a global pandemic, no less - to how things have grown, both personally and professionally. Chi-miigwech, huge thanks, to our amazing team and the many community members in Mag who made this work possible and so, so fun!

Figure 1 from paper "Weaving ways of knowing in practice: a collaborative approach to prioritizing community knowledge and values in wildlife camera monitoring with Magnetawan First Nation" as published in FACETS journal. Caption says: "Community-identified priorities for doing environmental research and monitoring in a good way. At the center of our research, is the idea of doing work “in a good way” through the process of weaving knowledges—represented by the braided circle. Integral to weaving in a good way are community-specific values—respect, reciprocity, interconnection, relationship, and collaboration—each of which exists within the circle and expands outwards through various parts of research. Each extension of the circle represents examples of how values were applied in practice through the monitoring process. Collaboration requires all parties to show up and be present across all stages, placing community at the forefront. Respect pertains to the Land, People, and Knowledges. Reciprocity can be enacted in various ways—from picking up garbage to creating a community mural—finding creative ways to ensure research benefits community. Interconnection is expressed through more holistic methods, applying a landscape level approach to monitoring biodiversity. Relationships are foundational and need to be given the time and effort required to flourish and grow within partnership. Photos credited to Claire Kemp and Kathryn Yarchuk." Figure shows a braided circle which says "Doing environmental research in a good way" in the center, along with 5 values: respect, reciprocity, interconnection, relationship, and collaboration. Each of the values corresponds to a section of the page outside of the circle, highlighting examples of how that value was represented or reflected upon within this research.

You may have heard of 'weaving ways of knowing'...but it can be hard to figure out what it looks like in practice when it's mostly discussed on a theoretical level. Through this work, we share our journey of weaving in practice in the context of wildlife monitoring, putting values at the forefront.

Weaving ways of knowing in practice: a collaborative approach to prioritizing community knowledge and values in wildlife camera monitoring with Magnetawan First Nation There is not one singular way to weave together Indigenous and Western knowledges; creating meaningful cross-cultural collaborations requires a foundation of relationships rooted in the context of spe...

Very happy to share our new paper (also my 1st, first-author pub!), which is the result of several years of relationship building, planning, adapting, learning, and reflecting amongst an incredible collaborative team. So awesome to see it out in the world! www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/...