Our Work with the TEK Expert Group
Working with experts in traditional environmental practices from across North America has had an invaluable impact on our work. When considered alongside science, traditional knowledge contributes to an improved understanding of ecological processes and ultimately to better results for the environment.
This initiative recognizes the importance of preserving the traditional knowledge and practices of local and indigenous communities in order to help address the effects of climate change. This knowledge also contributes to the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources and to the protection of biological diversity.
The TEK Expert Group is the first traditional ecological knowledge panel to contribute to an intergovernmental organization like ours. The appointments stem from a commitment made by the Council at the 2014 Council Session in Yellowknife. It aims to work effectively with local and indigenous communities across North America to enhance our shared understanding of the environment and to help us make more effective environmental decisions.
Terms of OperationLatest Advice
Advice from the TEKEG to the CEC's governing Council
North American TEK Guiding Principles 25-01
TEKEG Advice to Council 24-01 — June 26, 2024
Browse all AdvicesOur Work on Local and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge
We also have a body of work surrounding traditional ecological knowledge.
Members
Kathy Hodgson-Smith
Kathy Hodgson-Smith
Kathy L. Hodgson-Smith is a Saskatoon lawyer who practices criminal and Aboriginal law, as well as on behalf of the Métis Legal Research Education Foundation. She has litigated in all levels of court including the Provincial Court and Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatchewan, the Courts of Appeal in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Federal Court of Appeal, and as co-counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada.
She has worked on various national policy initiatives for the Métis National Council (MNC), including the Aboriginal Human Resources Development Agreement Strategy, Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtables, the Kelowna Accord, and Post-Powley. She has also given evidence at the Canadian Aboriginal Affairs Standing Committee on the effects of McIvor decision on the Métis. She has researched and presented on Métis Aboriginal rights law and traditional knowledge at local, provincial, national, and international forums and conducted research for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Canadian Education Association and the Canada Council on Learning and conducts traditional land-use studies for the Métis.
Internationally, she also represents the MNC on the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Committee on the Protection of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Genetic Resources, and on the Canadian Delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
She has chaired a number of committees, including the MNC National Research Strategy and Urban Aboriginal Strategy committee, National Environment Committee, in addition to the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee, which established a national standard for the operation of Mètis Nation Registries.
María del Pilar García Hernández
María del Pilar García Hernández
With a Bachelor of Law degree from Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), María del Pilar García Hernández holds a certification in capacity building from the National Forestry Commission (Comisión Nacional Forestal—Conafor). Previously, she chaired the communal farm board of Tepatlaxco de Hidalgo, Puebla from 2011 to 2014, and from 2008 to 2011 she advised the Puebla State Congress through the Indigenous Affairs Commission.
She currently acts as general manager of Artemali Ocoxal, a communal farm community enterprise that manufactures and markets pine needle crafts. For several years, García Hernández has devoted herself to fostering women’s empowerment through production training, management and development processes. She is also a litigator in agrarian matters and advises communal farms and communities in her region, in addition to her ongoing involvement in forums and seminars on intercultural affairs, rural development financing and woodland ecosystems.
Amelia Reyna Monteros Guijón
Amelia Reyna Monteros Guijón
In addition to her training as a programming analyst and her practice of traditional and herbal medicine in her community, Amelia Reyna Monteros Guijón has a solid career in community organization, leadership, gender issues, human rights and indigenous peoples, as well as the protection of traditional knowledge. She was a founding member of the Original Peoples and Barrios Council in 2007. As a representative of the Advisory Board of the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous (Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas—CDI), in 2013 she was part of the Mexican delegation to the negotiation of the international legal instrument for the protection of traditional knowledge with the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (ICG) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland. She is currently an advisor to the Department of Rural Development and Community Equity, representing Nahua migrants in Mexico City, and a CDI advisory board member for the 2015-2018 period. She also chairs the organization Ac-Yacto (“he who helps us”). She speaks Spanish and Nahuatl, and also understands Zapotec and Mazahua.
Sarah James
Sarah James
Sarah James is a native of the Gwich’in Nation, which is the northernmost Indian Nation, scattered across a vast area from northeast Alaska in the United States to the northern Yukon and Northwest Territories in Canada. She has traveled extensively and has received numerous awards for her leadership and activism for the rights of indigenous peoples, for human rights, and for environmental issues. Ms James is chairperson of the Gwich’in Steering Committee.
Dr. Henrietta Mann
Dr. Henrietta Mann
Dr. Mann is a Cheyenne and a founding president of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College in Weatherford, Oklahoma. She has been a professor and administrator at numerous colleges and universities and has received accolades for her leadership in education. She received degrees from Southwestern Oklahoma State University (BA 1954), Oklahoma State University (MA 1970), and PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico (1982).
Gail Small
Gail Small
Professor of Native American studies, director of Native Action
Gail Small, a trained sociologist and attorney, has held awards and positions, including as honoree of 1995 Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year award. She was a 1997 appointee to the Federal Reserve Board’s consumer advocacy panel, a 2015 Leopold Leadership Fellow, director of the grassroots nonprofit Native Action, and a long-term, stalwart protector of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation’s sovereignty, culture, religion and environment—which are pillars of the tribal way of life. Small began her career with the California Indian Legal Services doing fishing rights, Indian religious freedom work, and adjunct teaching at Humboldt State University. She returned to Montana and the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in 1984 as part of a team of Cheyenne leaders helping to form Native Action. In spite of her people’s challenges of a colonial-induced legacy of immense poverty and continued high rates of unemployment, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, violence, school drop-outs, apathy, and a sense of powerlessness, Small has championed their rights to education, health and prosperity on the reservation. Small’s students, Native and non-native, learn about mining in a historical and present context, as she teaches how Native environmentalists are always working to ward off reservations becoming areas of national sacrifice.