Blog #13: Communicating Technical Information to Indigenous Communities

I was asked what to consider when communicating technical knowledge to Indigenous community members. I remind you that I am not an expert and that what I share was taught to me by my First Nations mentors living in Ontario’s far north remote communities.

Communicating technical information to a non-technical audience is difficult. Communicating technical information to a non-technical Indigenous audience is even more complex and requires an approach that considers three factors: 1) awareness of Indigenous cultural norms, processes and practices, and knowledge systems; 2) appropriate communication instruments and approaches; and 3) collaboration with community members, such as an interpreter. Your approach may also be guided by a set of principles.

Questions: Consider the following questions to help guide the joint preparation and design of an Indigenous communication process.

a) Has a jointly designed engagement process been established?

Photo 1: One sign that the engagement process is established and is working well is the signing of other collaboration agreements. Andy Fyon (Ontario Geological Survey) and Chief Charlie Okeese (RIP; Eabametoong First Nation) sign a collaborative communication agreement in the community of Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, Sept 25, 2002.

b) Has the engagement process reached a stage where it is time to share technical information?

c) Have you asked the community what communication style they prefer (PowerPoint presentation, posters, exclusively verbal presentation with no visual supports, office, meeting room, classroom or land-based session)?

d) Will an interpreter, using the local Indigenous dialect, be involved in explaining your presentation to the community participants?

Photo 2: Involving a community-based interpreter is important to ensure your presentation is communicated to an Indigenous community in their local Indigenous dialect, because English is not the first language of many remote Indigenous communities. Note the simplicity of the technical poster located on the extreme right. Poster design is an important step to ensure your technical presentation is understood by both the interpreter and the non-technical Indigenous audience. Left: Andy Yesno (RIP; Eabametoong First Nation). Right (Sara Buse, former geologist, Ontario Geological Survey). Photo composed in Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, February 3, 2011.

e) Does the interpreter understand your explanations and have the conceptual knowledge to communicate them to the community? Be aware that most Indigenous languages are descriptive, i.e. different from English.

f) Does the community have the appropriate language to understand what you are communicating? If not, do you need to collaborate with the community to create a technical glossary in their Indigenous dialect?

g) Will you describe the technology, proposed activities, anticipated results, or the application of those results?

Principles to help guide the communication process:

- Engage, don’t just inform;

- Listen, don’t talk all the time;

- Take time to lead and time to stand back and allow the community to lead;

Photo 3 Chief Charlie Okeese (RIP; Eabametoong First Nation) takes the lead to describe some land-related technical features at an information meeting with Elders. The red coloured text is the feature description, but in the local Ojibwe dialect. That red text is the result of a concurrent language lesson, directed at Andy Fyon (not visible in the image; Director, Ontario Geological Survey). Concurrent language lessons given by the Elders is a way to show your respect for the Elders, enables the Elders to share their traditional knowledge in a safe way, and opens a door for you to learn more about the Indigenous culture. Photo composed in the remote Indigenous community of Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, March 17. 2009.

- Collaborate with a community mentor and the community audience to exchange information and test if the information was understood. Maybe more time is required to digest the information shared;

- Know your audience. You are addressing a non-technical audience; this is not a national meeting of topic-area experts;

- Be careful when using certain words. For example, consider the word “opportunity.” Your project may be your opportunity to achieve a desired result, but it may be perceived as a threat to the community. Only the community can decide if they share your enthusiasm for your perceived opportunity;

- Be flexible. You may need to change the meeting approach mid-stream.

Part A: Awareness of Indigenous cultural norms, practices and knowledge systems

- Do you and your staff need corporate training related to cultural sensitivity and Indigenous knowledge systems?

- Will the meeting be part of a feast? If so, are there cultural practices you should be aware of and be prepared to participate in?

- Is this an information meeting or a decision-making meeting?

- Is a single meeting on this topic sufficient?

- Have you built in time for community members to ask questions during the meeting?

- Are you seeking insight into Indigenous knowledge of the community’s homeland, sometimes called traditional ecological knowledge? If the community shares that insight with you, what will you do with it?

Part B: Appropriate communication instruments, practices and processes

- Community Mentor: seek out a community mentor to guide you and to jointly design the communication approach, related instruments, and processes that work for the community;

- Instruments: what works best for the community? Posters or PowerPoint slides?

- Images: incorporate many images relevant to the community into the communication instruments;

- Words: minimize the number of words used on the poster and avoid techno-jargon;

- Local dialect: where you use English words on presentation material, will you convert the English words and phrases into the local Indigenous dialect using syllabics or phonetic words?

Photo 4: Ask you community contact person if the English words on your presentation material should be interpreted into the local Indigenous dialect, especially in a community where English is not their first language. The English language on this slide was converted into phonetics using a James Bay Cree dialect. Communities located very close to each other likely have different dialects and will require different interpretations.

- Take-away meeting materials: will you attend the meeting with take-away materials or have a means to produce such materials to ensure people leave with a copy of the presentation to reflect on, discuss among themselves and develop questions from to ask at a future meeting, following traditional community practices?

Part C: Collaboration with community members, such as an interpreter

- If possible, in advance of the meeting, review with the interpreter what you intend to share to identify any comprehension issues;

- Speak slowly, simply, clearly and use short sentences to ensure you don’t get too far ahead of the interpreter;

- Watch the interpreter for comprehension clues;

- Be patient: a meeting involving an interpreter may take two to three times longer than a business meeting in your world;

- Be respectful: never interrupt an Elder who chooses to share their experiences;

- Be aware: there may be no questions from the community – that may be an important sign that the interpreter might disclose;

- Do not be dismissive: you may receive many questions from the community that seem simple to you, but they are important to the community;

- Multi-purpose questions: questions may be asked to get additional information or clarify what you said. In addition, questions may be asked to probe your integrity.

Part D: Process

Step 1: Engagement: Research and understand the community

This step should have been established prior to the sharing of technical information, but sometimes sharing of technical information starts concurrently with the initiation of engagement:

- Do your research and learn about the Indigenous community you’re engaging with, including their history, values, language, governance and issues;

- Build relationships and trust by working with community members, leaders, Elders, students, portfolio holders, such as the councillor responsible for lands and resources, and the trappers’ committee;

- Recognize, acknowledge and respect traditional knowledge as equal to your own technical knowledge;

- What’s in it for the community? Be sure that community interests are incorporated into the project;

- Does the community implicitly or explicitly follow OCAP principles (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession of First Nations’ information; https://fnigc.ca/ocap-training/)? If so, have you determined how the community implements OCAP principles and how that affects your project, specifically ownership, control, access, possession and, ultimately, publication of First Nations’ data and information?

Step 2: Outreach

- Reach out to the entire community, including Elders, students, political leaders, portfolio holders, the trappers’ committee;

- Collaborate with a community mentor to design the ideal types of communication meetings that work for the community;

- Collaborate with a community interpreter during the meeting to assist in reaching the entire community where English is not their first language and where Elders are present. This will enhance the building of the relationship;

- Explain what your interests are and how the information will be used, and seek to understand the community interests before you start a project.

Step 3: Indigenous language

- Are there community members, like Elders, whose Indigenous language is their primary means of communication?

- Does the community need to create a new Indigenous language and a glossary in the community dialect to describe the technical features you will share?

- Is the technical communication part of a consultation process?

Photo 5: Sketches created by school children to illustrate what the English word for “vegetation” meant to them. In addition to English, the word “vegetation” is presented in sylabics and phonetics, both in the local Ojibwe dialect. This image is part of a glossary created by Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, to facilitate communication between the community and non-Indigenous technical people. The children attended the John C Yesno Education Centre, in the First Nations community of Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, 2004.

Step 4: Communication style

- Engage, don’t just inform;

- Avoid technical jargon and use clear, plain language;

- Collaborate with and involve local knowledge holders because they can help frame your ideas into a community context consistent with their history, values, culture and practices;

- Use analogies to make your point. Example 1: geologists take and analyze water or soil samples to characterize and monitor the health of a lake or the environment. By analogy, medical doctors take and analyze blood samples to characterize and monitor the health of a human body. Example 2: geologists search for minerals by hunting for a particular type of rock that may contain the mineral. By analogy, community hunters search for habitats where ducks or moose may occur;

- Describe the technical features and patterns using an analogy that is familiar to the community. Geological examples include “money rock” (greenstone or komatiite, or rhyolite), “knife rock” (chert or rhyolite), “groundwater bucket” (esker), “animal den sand” (raised-beach sand deposits) and “monkey’s airplane” (satellite);

- Engage the meeting participants to help you develop analogies, thereby demonstrating that you are committed to working together to learn. Each community is different, so an analogy developed for one community may not work for a neighbouring community;

- Don’t just present project data and results. Link the data and results to the community’s priorities and interests, such as land-use planning, health and safety, health of the environment, all-season or winter road infrastructure, monitoring changes to the land as a result of changing climate or other issues. Of course, you have learned about the community interests through earlier engagement steps.

Step 5: Communication instruments and approaches

- Follow the guidance of your community mentor to determine what venue works best for the audience (office, school classroom, band hall, classroom or land-based site) and what communication instruments work best for the audience (lecture style using PowerPoint, prepared posters, satellite images, geology maps, drawings created on display paper or white board, or workshops using hands-on materials, or classroom- style training on a topic);

- Will you add syllabics and phonetics to your material? If yes, who will you collaborate with to do that (Photo 5)?

- Try to incorporate a language lesson to engage the community members because it is fun, lightens the mood, breaks down barriers, is a form of collaboration, engages the participants, builds your understanding of the community and their culture and history, and transfers language to you to use in the next meeting.

Step 6: Respect protocols and ethics

- Will the community ask to review your data, results and reports, and allow the publication of the data?

- How and where will the data be stored?

- Who will have access to the data?

- Aspire to earn social license and, ideally, consent, while balancing your legal and policy obligations, within your scope of authority;

- Do what you commit to do;

- What’s in it for the community? Be sure community interests are incorporated into the project;

- Does the community have processes that implicitly or explicitly follow OCAP principles (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession of First Nations’ information; https://fnigc.ca/ocap-training/)?

- Are there communication processes you need to follow during the course of the engagement and any project implemented?

- Are there cultural or spiritual processes you should follow during the course of your project, such as acknowledging where your walked over the area, the location and types of samples collected, if any, or places where you made observations using only your eyes?

- Recognize there are internal communication processes within a community. You may or may not be involved in those processes. Be aware that they take time so be prepared to invest the time and potential resources to enable the community to run its internal processes.