About Us

Braiding Knowledges Canada (BKC) is a not-for-profit corporation established in 2019 continuing the ground-breaking work of the Canadian Mountain Network (CMN) (2019-2024) while broadening its impact beyond mountain landscapes in Canada.

The corporation is supported by a five-year grant from the Government of Canada’s Strategic Science Fund Program (2024-2029).

BKC is dedicated to Reconciliation through Research, focusing on understanding and monitoring environmental change to inform conservation, restoration, and adaptation strategies. This is all in pursuit of our shared goal, enhancing the well-being of our environment and its people.

BKC is committed to cultivating trusting, authentic and reciprocal relationships, while promoting inclusive, decolonizing practices through place-based, community-driven environmental research. This commitment enables us to deliver and mobilize more relevant, representative research, essential for advancing Reconciliation through Research, training the next generations of leaders, and informing federal policy and practice in Canada.

Our Goal

Braiding Knowledges Canada advances Reconciliation through Research by enhancing the influence of self-determined, place-based, and co-produced knowledge within Canada’s science culture such that, over time and on a path towards reconciliation, Indigenous and local knowledge approaches equitably contribute to public policy, decision-making, and the advancement of federal science priorities.

This goal will be achieved in 3 phases:

Our Values

BKC’s core value is “All Our Relations.” This recognizes that we are all connected to, dependent on, and responsible for each other and for the land, water, ice, air, plants, and animals that sustain us.

Mutual Respect and Positive Reciprocity

We recognize that there are different ways of knowing, doing, and being. We acknowledge, promote, protect, and respect this diversity and the sharing and exchange of knowledges. We are committed to building trusting, authentic relationships based on truth and inclusive, decolonizing practices so that we can learn and grow together on the path of reconciliation.

We commit to shared governance and will ensure representation of Indigenous individuals in our governance and management. We will hold ourselves mutually accountable to actively ensure that decision-making and actions at all levels are informed by both Indigenous and Western ways of knowing in service to All Our Relations.

Relevance and Impact

Our solutions-oriented approach will improve Canada’s understanding of urgent challenges and opportunities by advancing and requiring collaborative, respectful, rights-based research approaches that value and centre local knowledge and wisdom, grow community skills and capacity, and contribute to Indigenous self-determination.

Focus, Collaboration and Innovation

We will focus our resources on strategies and activities that are developed collaboratively and informed by both Indigenous and Western ways of knowing and doing. We will question assumptions, learn from mistakes and with experience, and aim for continuous improvement.

Our Objectives

Achieving these objectives requires the braiding of Western and Indigenous knowledges supported by BKC’s core value, All Our Relations, which recognizes that we are connected to, dependent on, and responsible for each other and for the land, water, plants, and animals that sustain us.

All Our Relations refers to everything within the universe, including the universe itself. It is often spoken from the perspective of those relations closest to you outward, and it changes depending on the teaching and the context.

Lawrence Ignace, Vice Chair of BKC’s Board of Directors and Indigenous Circle of Advisors

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About Us

Our Goal

This goal will be achieved in 3 phases:

Phase 1

Building

Phase 2

Impact & Growth

Phase 3

DRIVING CHANGE