Two-Eyed Seeing in Indigenous Addiction Research and Treatment

Abstract

Laura Hall is of Haudenosaunee/English-Canadian descent and is currently working toward a PhD in Environmental Studies on the importance of Indigenous gendered and temporal understandings within movements and studies of sustainable community development. Hall is part of a research team for a study entitled “Honouring Our Strengths: Indigenous Culture as Intervention in Addiction Treatment.” The project is examining the use of cultural interventions to support healing within addictions treatment for Indigenous people. Its aim is to develop a wellness instrument to measure the impact of culturally based addictions treatment services on client wellness. The project uses a range of methods for ensuring that Indigenous ways of knowing involving community-based wisdom are central to the study, including focus groups with Indigenous staff at 12 community treatment centers from across Canada. The team has used a Two-Eyed Seeing Indigenous-centered guiding lens in the course of evidence gathering and assessment. Two-Eyed Seeing integrates and connects the best of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems, even though they are founded on different values and sources, by reflexively weaving back and forth. This approach originated with Mi’kmaq Elders Murdena and Albert Marshall in their development of an integrative science curriculum for post-secondary education. In this conversation with Nancy Poole and Lorraine Greaves, Hall discusses her understanding of transdisciplinarity, and its relationship to Indigenous ways of knowing and Two-Eyed Seeing approaches to conducting addictions research, which involve Indigenous peoples.