Dr. Merle Ballard (5:38)

Thank you for inviting me and I look forward to the interview.

Dr. Samantha Amin (5:42)

When a lot of people think about science, a lot of us picture labs, experiments, data on computers. But indigenous science has a distinct time tested methodological system. What does that look like in everyday practice?

Dr. Merle Ballard (5:58)

So there's different methods. Our history goes back thousands and thousands of years, since time immemorial. And this is because of oral history, storytelling, living on the land, experiential learning. And these are the methods of sharing the knowledge. And these are different from the traditional laboratory methods where you test, you're in a white lab coat, use microphones, a lot of beakers, et cetera. But at the same time, indigenous science too is uses testing. The outside lab, the experiential lab is about testing these plants, whatever form they have to be. Like for example, when preparing a traditional medicines, you have to gather a plant during the right time, it has to be the right season, it has to look a certain color, it has to be free from contamination to do the work, to be able to have the healing medicinal properties.

Dr. Samantha Amin (7:00)

You developed the concept of three eyed seeing for your research. And as I was reading about it, I saw that it combines indigenous science, western science and relations in the environment like flora and water. Those are the three different lenses. Can you walk us through how this approach works in practice and why it's so powerful?

Dr. Merle Ballard (7:21)

Yes. So indigenous people have that connection to the land where they understand the voice of our relations. And as indigenous people, we have natural law, language law, traditional law and creation law. And these are very important to understand when we work with the three eyed seeing. Because we need to recognize the way these laws work with one another and how we can respect the different lenses, the indigenous lands, the western lands and the lands of our relations. Because we have to work together to protect the environment around us, the land around us, the waters around us. We have to protect the species and we have to learn to hear their voices, to interpret what they're saying. For example, water, which is the area of research that I do, water. Growing up, my mother always told me, you have to watch water because water can be your friend or water can be your enemy. Water has a voice, you have to respect it. We have to listen to what the water is telling us, we have to respect it, we have to be the voice. The three voices is really important.

Dr. Samantha Amin (8:37)

That makes a lot of sense to me and it's nice to see that you're centering as the third Lens, essentially earth. Because that's the thing that's so important for us to think about, not just on Earth Day, but all the time. It's where we live, it's our home, and we have a deep connection to it that sometimes we forget.

Dr. Merle Ballard (8:54)

Yes, I guess I should mention is I am a fluent Anishinaabemin speaker, meaning this is my mother tongue. This is the first language I spoke growing up, the first language that I learned from my mother. The role of the mother is very important because they teach their children, traditionally speaking. Maybe it's not the case in some, but traditionally, mothers are the ones who pass on the language. And from this language are the traditions, the customs that are embedded with the Langu. Like, for example, the work that I'm doing stems from the work that I did from my Master's and my PhD plus my experiential learning growing up on the reserve, what it was like. So when I was talking to the women, they talked about their role, the importance of language being passed.

Dr. Samantha Amin (9:46)

It sounds to me like the respect for earth and for nature is codified in Anishinaabe moen. It's codified in the language. And women are central to that. They're the ones who preserve and pass on the language and the practices that go with it and living with nature.

Dr. Merle Ballard (10:04)

Respectfully, it's kind of looking at the ethical sphere. The ethical component is deeply embedded in the language. So they had this knowledge, and a lot of times this knowledge is overlooked. Indigenous peoples know the indicators of changes over land, for example, the work that I'm doing is using Anishinaabemuin to develop for biological monitoring of water and developing indicators, identifying the indicators of change over time from the original naming of the spaces and places throughout the watershed. For example, indigenous people know about weather patterns. They know simply by the observation of, like in the evening and the way the sun sets, the color of the sunset. This again is what my mother instilled in me. And before it rains, the way the air smells, the way the leaves rustle, the way the leaves turn upside down, these are the indicators of weather patterns and as well too, climate change. Because of the oral history, the oral tradition, they know the climate change, the climate trends that have occurred, and comparing it with the present. When you look at these, the indicators, they can identify the changes related to climate, whatever's happening. Under the combination of the toots sciences, the three voices is really important.

Dr. Samantha Amin (11:39)

So we talked about indigenous people being the firsthand observers for different indicators of climate change. What are some meaningful ways that people Institutions and governments can help integrate and respect these knowledge systems and climate action.

Dr. Merle Ballard (11:55)

Indigenous science is a science of its own on the same level as Western science. Indigenous science is a science. Indigenous people know that. It's the knowledge of the waterways. It's a knowledge of how the fish migrate. It's a knowledge of where the fish spawn, what the water conditions are. It's a knowledge of when a certain insects go to the water, when they hover, when species do not drink from the water. What does that mean? Now those are indicators and distance. People know these things but they don't say that it's covered because it's part of who they are. Whereas a Western scientist. Oh, I discovered species living. No you didn't. It's been living there forever.

Dr. Samantha Amin (12:37)

It's just been known to you. Yeah, like I was trained in, in Western science and that's what I went to school for. So what are, what's some things someone like me should do to make more space for Indigenous science? When I'm trying to think about climate solutions.

Dr. Merle Ballard (12:54)

Yeah, I think learn about Indigenous science. I'm with the University of Calgary. I'm a Canada research Chair and Associate professor in Earth, Energy and Environment in the Faculty of Science and we're going to be offering, I'm going to be offering a course on Indigenous science at the University of Calgary this summer. It's a graduate course and it's the first time it's being offered as a pilot because the University of Calgary is, is really progressing towards Indigenous science because that's the thing with Indigenous science. It's not about one subject. It's very broad, holistic. It includes everything. And that's. Yeah, that's the beauty of it.

Dr. Samantha Amin (13:38)

Dr. Merle Ballard is an Anishinaabe scholar from Lake St. Martin First Nation and the inaugural Chief Indigenous Science Advisor at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Check out her work through the University of Manitoba and her talks on Indigenous science and environmental stewardship. Thanks Merle.

Dr. Merle Ballard (13:54)

Thank you for inviting me.

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Dr. Samantha Amin (14:35)

A new AI powered brain implant was able to translate Thoughts to speech in an instant. For patients with paralysis, like the study's participant Ann, this is the closest to naturalistic speech a communication device has come yet. A brain computer interface, or bci, is a system that lets the brain talk directly to a computer. It works by detecting the electrical signals your brain naturally produces when you think, move, or even just imagine speaking, and then translates those signals into commands that a computer can understand. See, Anne had a stroke in her brainstem which left her quadriplegic and unable to speak. Even though she knows what she wants to say, the hope is that a BCI can decode what she intends to say and turn those thoughts into real time audible speech, letting her have more full conversations again. Currently, most patients with severe speech impairments rely on devices ranging from simple picture boards to computer programs that synthesize speech from text. These tools can be life changing, but they're still slow and far from natural communication. Scientists are still developing these brain computer interfaces, but even in previous attempts with Anne published back in 2023, the ones that they tested there could only produce speech after she finished silently speaking an entire sentence. It's not exactly real time, but a new system from researchers at UCSF and Berkeley beat that. Their brain computer interface was able to simultaneously detect words and thought and turn them into speech within just three seconds. This is a huge improvement compared to current non brain computer interface devices like the one Ann uses day to day. That typically takes 20 seconds or more. Here's how they did it. A brain surgeon implanted a paper thin sheet with 253 electrodes onto the surface of Ann's brain, specifically the sensorimotor cortex, which plans and initiates movements needed for speech. This implant can monitor the combined activity of thousands of neurons at once. To train the system, the team recorded her brain activity through the electrodes while ann silently mouthed 100 sentences from a set of words and phrases that appeared on his screen. They trained the deep learning model on that data to interpret the patterns of neural activity. Because the system was designed to capture activity in tiny windows of time every 80 milliseconds, it didn't have to wait for Ann to finish a whole sentence. It could start interpreting what she was trying to say while she was still saying it. That's a big deal. In fact, during 100 test trials, it only produced three false positives cases when it spoke, even though she wasn't attempting to. The system produced between 47 and 90 words per minute, still slower than natural conversation, which is around 160 words per minute. But a huge leap forward for neural decoding tech. The team published the research in Nature Neuroscience. So far, Ann has been the only patient to test the device. So there's a long way to go before a device like this is available to the masses. But as a proof of concept, it's such a great start. And for an added touch, per Ann's request, they trained the system on recordings from her wedding video so the computer speech sounded like her voice from before her paralysis. If you're into the show, we want to hear from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and then tell us which stories you want to hear more of. Whether it's science, tech, anything, or who do you want to hear us talk with next? It actually helps a lot. And yeah, we really do read them. Like, what do you think of these? Could AI actually replace scientists? Or here's a good one. What does ecstasy have to do with treating ptsd? That's the next episode for Warner Bros. Discovery Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Teresa Carey, our producer is Chiara Noni, our audio engineer is Nick Karisimi, and head of Production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie Berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Amin. Thanks for listening.

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Dr. Samantha Amin (19:25)

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