Host:
This is a Canada Foundation for Innovation podcast.
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Hello and welcome to 10,000 ways. This is a podcast about curious researchers, leading edge science and the joy of discovery.
Our podcast gets it’s name from Thomas Edison who said, “I have not failed. I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”
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Kelsey Leonard:
Aquay, wunne kesuk. Hello. Good day. It's wonderful to be with you. I am Dr. Kelsey Leonard. I'm an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Waters, Climate and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo and I'm enrolled citizen of the Shinnecock Nation. Our traditional territory is the east end of Long Island.
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Host:
The Canada Foundation for Innovation is a Canadian research funding organization. The University of Waterloo is a CFI funding recipient and Waterloo researcher Kelsey Leonard is a legal scholar and water scientist. Kelsey founded and now directs the Wampum Lab at the University of Waterloo, an Indigenous science lab that delves into ocean, water and climate justice. Which is fitting... because well before she called Canada home, home was the Atlantic-facing, stony shores, of New York’s Long Island.
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Leonard:
Our current territory is situated right next to the Atlantic Ocean, so we live on a peninsula that is surrounded by water. We’re bay people. We’re fishers. We’re well known historically for being some of the most world-renowned whalers and mariners.
In our language, Shinnecock actually means “People of the stony shore” and so I think our ancestors had a key vision for what calling ourselves that meant
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in terms of being shore protectors, in terms of protecting water, in terms of understanding the privilege we have to be coastal peoples and that with that privilege comes duties and responsibilities for care and stewardship and living with responsibility
and so...
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a lot of folks will often ask me as a water scientist, so did you did you know when you were really young that you wanted to study water or that you wanted to do this work? I think I've always been a water person. Was born into a watery place and community. But I don't think I knew early on, you know, if you'd asked me 15 years ago, are you going to be a water scientist in academia that I would have said that. Actually very firmly I remember a memory in undergrad being like, I'm not going to be one of those people that just stays in academia and is so out of touch. I've stayed in academia, but hopefully I, my younger self, wouldn't find me out of touch.
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Host:
As an undergraduate attending Harvard University, Kelsey travelled to a tiny volcanic island halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand to feed her growing interest and curiosity in indigenous water rights.
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Leonard:
You know, I was really focused on protection of Indigenous rights, and it really came to a unique moment in my undergrad experience where I was studying abroad
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in Samoa, in the South Pacific, and I was living in a village community where they had to cycle water. So they didn't have water for a certain week as it was cycled to other parts of the island and it just struck me so poignantly that this was the same experience that I faced on my own reservation. Some families on my reservation faced where they didn't have access to sufficient quantity and quality of water to meet daily livelihood needs and I said, well, what's the common denominator here? Being 30,000 miles away from home? What do we share that makes it so that we're facing these same insecurities and struggles and it really came down to our shared experiences. I came back to the mainland after that experience and I started to ask questions about the history of water law, the history of water governance, colonialism and that led me on the path that I am now.
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Host:
Kelsey’s increasing passion for the science and societal issues involving water stewardship returned her back across the Pacific Ocean and then all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to arguably the best university in the world.
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Leonard:
When I was finishing my undergrad, I started to look for graduate programs that would allow for me to have some bolstering of some of the scientific and ecology and hydrology components and so there was not a lot of graduate programs that specialized in water and one of the top programs at the time was at the University of Oxford.
So that program in particular, it allowed for a specialization in water science policy and management. So, you really were going to get some of the law and policy side of things, you were going to get the hydrology and the science components and then you also were going to have some economics and management components and so to me that really was an exciting program to set me on what I thought would be a good foundation for diving into these topics further.
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Host:
Oxford University has been ranked as the top university in the world since 2017. Foreign students like Kelsey make up about 46% of the total student body and these students come from over 160 countries and territories. While at Oxford, Kelsey found herself surrounded and immersed by like-minded individuals all of whom had a passionate interest in global water justice.
Leonard:
The University of Oxford itself brings together students from all around the world, and so there were students from broader Europe, students from the UK and students from other parts of the world as well. Just getting to learn about all of their different experiences of water governance was really impactful. So it became very apparent through that program, as most water scientists will articulate to you today, is that water problems are very what they like to call “wicked problems.” They're very complex, they're very nuanced, and they're very interconnected.
Host:
The Clean Water Act of the United States is the principal law governing pollution control and water quality of the nation's waterways which in the past, have been interpreted as including streams, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and coastal waters.
Leonard:
During that time at Oxford, I did my master’s thesis on the Clean Water Act and provisions within that act that apply to tribal nations.
I found through doing that research that there were legal loopholes and gaps, and so that transitioned to me pursuing law school after my master’s and so I went and completed a juris doctorate with a focus in environmental law where I did work related to the Clean Water Act.
Host:
Equipped with this legal training, along with her water studies, Kelsey returned to the States to better understand the application of the Clean Water Act as it applied to indigenous water law.
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Leonard:
What I found through my law education is that most cases for issues related to indigenous water law in the United States are cases of first impression, which means that when the justices look to make a decision for an argument brought before their court, they aren’t able to look to precedent or to look to past law to inform a decision, because it's a case that an argument that hasn't been brought before the court before.
So their clerks, not usually them, but their clerks, will look to secondary literature and to inform the decision and so I recognized that, okay, well, where's the literature that these clerks are going to be looking to on our indigenous water law and there just wasn't really much literature at that time and so I said, “Well, probably seems like I need to go to do a Ph.D.” because those are the people that write the literature that the justices would look to.
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Host:
When Kelsey began to explore PhD opportunities, a Canadian university piqued her curiosity. She was especially attracted to the work of Professor Dustin Garrick who had been a research fellow at, no surprise, Oxford. Eventually, he too crossed the pond to Canada, to become a professor in water policy and research at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Leonard:
I was looking at a few programs that really specialized in water at the time, at a PhD level, and I was particularly interested in the program available through McMaster that a professor, Dustin Garrick, had created so it was a really innovative program where I thought I would also get a transboundary experience between the U.S. and Canada in the context of the Great Lakes, as well as some of our other transboundary waters and so the program just really drew me in. It just was a great place for me to start my PhD.
Host:
Following her PhD, Kelsey founded the Wampum Lab. Kelsey’s lab explores water security in a time of climate change and sea level rise…
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and in particular, it is an Indigenous science lab that focuses on how these global challenges are confronting Indigenous and other marginalized communities.
Leonard:
We work generally within three pillars: ocean justice, climate justice and water justice. Those are often as well linked to what we know more commonly around sustainable development goals. Those have been consistent threads throughout my research career and endeavors and so it was just a natural transition to have those be the pillars of the lab and the work that we continue to do.
We also, in the climate space, really work to study climate adaptation science. We work to look at how communities adapt, particularly Indigenous communities, and amplify their voices in terms of how they're building solutions, but also work to answer and explore questions. Sometimes we hope we get the answers, sometimes we may not, but we work to explore questions alongside them through their leadership around climate change and some of the lived impacts that we're seeing right now today.
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Host:
Some might describe these "lived impacts" as a crisis. If we consult the Oxford Dictionary,
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“crisis” is defined as
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“A situation or period characterized by intense difficulty, insecurity, or danger..." Kelsey fears that the word "crisis" itself, is in danger of losing its relevance and meaning.
Leonard:
I struggle with the language of crisis. I think other climate adaptation scientists probably struggle with that language as well now, because it feels like we're screaming into a black box and no one can hear us. You know, the World Wildlife Fund, in their 2020 report, saw that we have lost more than two thirds of the world's biodiversity and that the most dramatic decline occurred in freshwater ecosystems and so do we have a water crisis for those beings who depend on that freshwater ecosystem? Yes. Do we have a water crisis for human security? Yes.
When we have so many of the world's population unable to access a sufficient quantity and quality of water to meet their daily livelihood needs… That's not you being able to do your laundry at home and take a shower as many times a day as you want. It’s basic necessities of handwashing, hygiene and that might not even be a daily need. It might be something that we're just trying to have people meet, you know, a few days a week, let alone on a daily basis.
Host:
The investigators at the Wampum Lab take an Indigenous approach to studying these issues. In the past, Indigenous research has been dismissed in favor of Western scientific methodologies. But today, many in the research community are attempting to bridge, braid and weave together a variety of knowledge traditions in order to help solve complex research problems in a collaborative and complementary manner.
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Leonard:
I try and draw from both the Indigenous scientific practice that I am knowledgeable of and also have been instructed in, and also these other forms of scientific traditions which may include western science, which may include other scientific traditions from other communities around the world.
I think often our science and particularly our scientific practice is imbued with those lenses. For me, it’s not necessarily trying to straddle competing viewpoints between the two. It's really trying to find the nested nexus of everything so that when I put forward a solution or I work with others, we’re drawing on all of that beautiful diversity and tapestry of our work and our worldviews to come together for a scientific solution that is embracing and respectful of all those different traditions.
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Host:
Kelsey believes that one of the solutions to water injustice is to grant water legal personhood. She wants to use Earth Law to provide rights to water, much like the legal rights afforded to corporations in the eyes of the courts.
Leonard:
I like to think of Earth law as a tree. So on this tree of Earth law, there are all of these branches. One of those branches is called Rights of Nature and what rights of nature says is that natural entities have a right to exist, flourish, thrive and naturally evolve and the idea behind this argument is that we already have instances within Western common law systems where we recognize the legal personality of nonhumans such as corporations.
A corporation is not a human, and yet we have created a legal system in which we recognize a legal personality of that corporation so that it can have standing in a court of law and standing meaning you have the right for your grievance or claim to be heard before a court.
The rights of nature movement argues that in the same vein that we can recognize the legal personality of a corporation, we can recognize the legal personality of water, so that if that natural entity is harmed, it has standing before a court of law to have its argument, its grievance, heard.
Host:
Kelsey’s message about the rights of natural entities is of interest to many. So much so that her TED talk on water rights has attracted over 50,000 viewers on YouTube. While Kelsey might be seen as the only individual on the TEDWomen stage, she makes it quite clear, that she is not standing alone.
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Leonard:
I don't see this journey as my own journey of individualism. I am here because of so many people past, present and future and so that continues to be a way in which I orient my work and my thought about research as a form of service and responsibility and reciprocity and so for me, I mean, obviously there are folks who instilled those values in me, both the women across my family, from my great grandmother to my grandmother to my mother and sister and aunties and everyone who has been able to imbue those values within me from within my family and within my broader tribal nation and I definitely can pinpoint so many different mentors and guides throughout my life that have been instrumental to allowing me to be where I am today and I think, of Autumn Peltier and the work that she's doing as the youngest Chief Water commissioner of the Anishinabek Nation. I think in the academic spaces, someone I've always admired and looked up to and now call a colleague, is Dr. Deb MacGregor, and the work that she's done in really shaping the field of Indigenous water governance.
I also love the work of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer and also, I’m now fortunate to call her a colleague and get to work on some projects with her and so there's a lot of wonderful Indigenous people doing great work. Those are definitely a few that I just often think of and praise for the ground they've laid for all of us to be able to walk on.
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Host:
When Kelsey talks about the successful groundwork of others, it brings to mind a quote from Sir Isaac Newton, who said “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” In some research circles, this statement has come to represent scientific progress. Progress, however, does not happen without experimentation and persistence -- and occasionally failure. Kelsey has a unique perspective on failure.
Leonard:
I don't I don't think about instances of not reaching an objective or goal as failure. Failing is a natural part of life. We can’t appreciate our successes without failures and that can be from very minor or what might seem, as, you know, minor failures to very big experiences of those emotions and activities.
What others might see as failures is just an acknowledgment from everyone involved that you're not on the right path and so you should pivot or change or ask a different question. So I think when maybe I've been asking the wrong question, I don't see it as a failure, I see it as, okay, well, I didn't take the right approach here, so how else could I think about this or look at this form of inquiry?
Host:
The scientific method might be considered metaphorically as a pathway and occasionally, data will take a researcher on a journey where they didn’t intend to go. At that point in time, it can be good to pause and reflect and have a little break from the journey.
Kelsey often relies on the support of her community
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when she’s looking for a new direction.
Leonard:
I think for me, definitely having a good support network is important and that's what I also like to convey to students and to mentees. You have to have a network of folks who you can laugh with and share your challenges, but also successes with and who can allow you to find quiet space physically, emotionally, being able to kind of tune out some of the difficulties in our world so that you can have a bit of rest. Sometimes with the way the world is, how busy we are, we forget to just be… to listen, to rest, to find enjoyment in the fact that we are breathing and living on this planet and I'm not exactly sure how others deal with it. I think for me, what has been reassuring and comforting in recent years is to lean into the knowledge and cultural activities of my community.
You know, we've been here for thousands and thousands of years and so although the planet is going through a really difficult time right now, I know that in our stories and our songs, in our dances in laughter, we're able to have a place of respite and so that's where I go to.
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Host:
Kelsey’s Leonard’s Shinnecock Nation has been living on the stony shores of the Atlantic for millennia. While Kelsey draws strength from that community
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she also feels compelled to give back.
Leonard:
I think for me, I just try and be of service to community and to folks who feel in some form or fashion I can be of use to them.
It's trying to find ways to inspire people like the youth water and climate activists who keep us on our toes and constantly thinking about that current and future generation and the way that we leave a world for them that is livable — and not just livable, but healthy and thriving and exciting to exist within.
Bernard Shaw's quote I've carried with me for a long time, said that I hope to be fully used up by the time I leave this world.
I think my success is that if at the end of all of this, others speak highly of me and feel that we've built trusted relationships that have been service to their nations and communities and then we will have done an A-okay job.
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HOST:
10,000 ways is produced in the studios of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The CFI is a non-profit corporation that invests in research infrastructure at Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit research institutions.
If you’re curious to learn more about the CFI, then please visit innovation.ca. That’s innovation dot ca.
My name is Greg Pilsworth and thank you very much for listening. Bye bye.
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