Transforming Restoration Science: Multiple Knowledges and Community Research Cogeneration in the Klamath and Duwamish...

AbstractRacism and colonialism within restoration science continue to perpetuate exclusionary and oppressive paradigms in ecosystem restoration and in wider societal contexts, from setting scientific agendas to translating findings into policy. These paradigms impair progress and cause harm by (1) tokenizing epistemic diversity, (2) perpetuating injustice in frontline communities by ignoring power dynamics and other local contexts, and (3) rejecting "unconventional" methods for connecting knowledge to action. To challenge exclusion, biological scientists must listen to path-making conversations in Native American and Indigenous studies on grounded normativity, an ethical framework informed by place-based practices that make respectful, nonexploitative coexistence between human and nonhuman communities possible. Rather than treat Western science as the objective arbiter of truth, Indigenous and feminist science approaches can draw on multiple sciences to design restoration interventions and unsettle power dynamics and historical legacies in the biological sciences. We put these approaches into practice and discuss the methodologies and outcomes of two restoration projects, one on the Duwamish River and one on the Klamath River. We use the lessons learned to discuss how scientists in all biological fields can prevent harmful inequities in restoration work while building capacity in and supporting crucial work by frontline communities.