Canada is rapidly abandoning a principle that has shaped western democracies since the Enlightenment: the idea that no person or group has privileged access to sacred or divine knowledge unavailable to everyone else.

Now, this principle is being threatened by Canada’s increasing embrace of “Indigenous Knowledge”— whereby knowledge is treated as collectively owned and restricted by ancestry rather than something open to examination and shared across society.

The governments of British Columbia and Canada — both of which have formally adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) — endorse “Indigenous Knowledge” as inherited, rooted in ancestral relationships to the land, and encompassing spiritual, cultural and metaphysical dimensions passed down through generations.

Remarkably, the defining quality to possess this knowledge is not study, training, time spent on the land, or lived experience by any individual alive today. Instead, it’s lineage itself.

That’s a paradigm shift. When knowledge is said to be possessed by birth rather than learned, its universality is replaced with mysticism and its value diminished.

This comes with real-world consequences: ancestry-based considerations are reshaping how public land and resources are managed on Canadians’ behalf.

In British Columbia, newly proposed changes to hunting and wildlife regulations are described as being informed by “the best available science and Indigenous Knowledge.” In practice, this means “Indigenous Knowledge” is being used to design a regulatory regime that falls almost entirely on non-Indigenous users. That’s because Indigenous harvesting rights are recognized under Section 35 of the Constitution, not bound by the same hunting seasons, bag limits, gear restrictions, or limited-entry systems that apply to the broader public.

Read the full article: Indigenous ways of knowing? You wouldn’t understand

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