Bringing Indigenous and environmental justice value-based research methods and protocols into materials sciences and chemical research

The Indigenous Science and Ethical Substance Lab was formed in 2024 within the Technoscience Research Unit to lead transformative value-based research in material sciences, ethical substance, and chemical risk management. We conduct research guided by Indigenous ethics, practices, and science, and social justice frameworks.

As part of our core work in Indigenous Science, Technology, and Environmental Studies, we ask and seek to answer: How do we define ‘ethical substance’ and support justice-oriented materials discovery? How can Indigenous expertise and community-based methods create new practices and tools for addressing pollution and chemical risks?

This lab participates in two large projects, the first funded by a CFREF and the second by a NFRF-Transformation grant.

At the ISES lab, we promote value-based research design for the future of of materials discovery and chemical risk assessment, building on the CARE principles, community-research, and Indigenous methods. We ask: What do Indigenous research methods have to say to the use of AI in chemistry, chemical risk analysis, and toxicology? How can we in practice do research that activates Indigenous data sovereignty? How to address and prevent the weaponization of chemical research? How can Indigenous methods and community-based research change the practices of chemical risk analysis? How can we enact anticolonial and Indigenous governance processes in our environmental and scientific research practices?

Research Approaches

Research Projects:

1. Reimaging Life Cycles: Indigenous & justice-oriented life cycles
This research project offers a new approach to Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs). Life Cycle Assessments are tools to evaluate the impacts and processes of materials from their conceptualization to disposal and beyond. It contributes to the development of an Indigenous and Justice-based Life Cycle (IJLC) model–an exciting first-of-its-kind opportunity to bring Indigenous and justice-based research methods into ethical substance discovery. 

Rooted in Indigenous relational epistemologies that center collective responsibilities towards social and environmental betterment, we aim to action sustainability and harm reduction in research design, evoke frameworks of Indigenous data governance, and incorporate community-level accessibility of use and adoption in material discovery. Our IJLC model seeks to create a practical tool for communities and scientists to assess collective benefits and potential harms, and to guide decision-making toward meaningful locally-defined transformations, justice, and sustainability. 

Key features of the IJLC model include: an ethical design approach grounded in Indigenous as well as social and environmental justice frameworks that seeks to action sustainability in process and outcome; a toolkit for communities and scientists to support the application of the model; translational visuals that communicate complex ideas and processes across different audiences. 

2. Ethical Sustance
What is an ethical substance? What makes a substance ‘ethical’? This research project explores these questions through queer, anti-colonial, Indigenous and land-based perspectives, alongside community partnerships and art-based practices. By examining often-overlooked ethical tensions and historic and ongoing harms of substances in material discovery, we seek to foreground Indigenous and and value-based understandings of substance in material discovery.  

Our research approach prioritizes collaborations with workers and communities to reimagine relationships to substances in ways that honor land, bodies, and collective well-being. 

Key initiatives include: What is a Chemical? Workshops; ethical substance and Land-based and art-making practices; workers-led visions of ethical nail salons; collaboration with the Environmental Data Justice Lab and Aamjiwnaang First Nation community members on chemical risk community partnership; Critical Minerals Research with Sacred Earth.

3. Beyond Open Science: Indigenous Data Sovereignty
This research explores and reimagines data through Indigenous perspectives centering sovereignty, ethics, and principles in our thinking on how data is accessed, governed, and used. Our work seeks to mitigate harms and address the risks that current data practices in science pose to communities and Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and lands. We ask critical questions about current data practices in open science, Open and Big Data, artificial intelligence, and data infrastructure systems: Who benefits? Who decides? What is data? How can data be transformed if aligned with Indigenous values and governance systems? 

By bringing together research, teaching, and community perspectives, our research aims to shift how data is understood–not as information or neutral resource, but as deeply tied to people, land, and sovereignty. 

Key initiatives include: developing curriculum on IDGov and IDS in research methodologies and Indigenous science; building capacity in Indigenous Data Sovereignty among Indigenous faculty, students, and communities; exploring intersections of Indigenous Data and AI, Data Science & Ethics, and Beyond Open Data and Big Data; Indigenous data gatherings for dialogue, relationship-building, and the co-creation of ethical data governance practices. Our work is guided by Indigenous data governance frameworks such as the CARE and OCAP, and other data governance models developed Indigenous communities locally and globally.

3. Indigenous Approaches to Chemical Risk Analysis

This international Indigenous-led project, funded by an NFRF Transformation Grant, builds community-based chemical risk analysis tools of use to frontline Indigenous communities and brings Indigenous methods and knowledges into chemical risk analysis and new methods of toxicological analysis.

Acceleration Consortium
The ISES lab collaborates with Acceleration Consortium–a global community of academia, industry, and government that brings together artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, material sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs). Autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy to drugs. A mandate of the AC is to ensure that all materials and technologies are ethically designed, create sustainable materials, and engage with community-based and Indigenous knowledges. Some of the ISES-AC research collaborations include: establishing valued-based guidelines for SDLs; creating rubrics for partnership development; deepening the understanding of ethical and social dimensions of and implications of accelerated materials discovery. 

The TRU strives to ensure the ethical integration of Indigenous knowledges and values into research design for materials discovery. This includes proceeding with care and reciprocity, accounting for intergenerational impacts, and drawing on relational frames to undergird environmental sustainability. 

The Nail Salon Workers' Project, Parkdale Queen West Community Health Center
The Indigenous Science & Ethical Substance (ISES) lab collaborates with the Nail Salon Workers' Project (NSWP), a program at Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre. The NSWP aims to learn about and reduce the negative health impacts of working in nail salons and advocate for healthy and just work environments for nail technicians. Areas of focus for the program include training and capacity building; research, policy change, and advocacy; partnership building; and, program development. 

The collaboration with ISES includes participation in the Healthy Nail Salon Coalition, as well as mutually-defined work towards ethical nail products and nail salon-based life cycles.

Sacred Earth
Sacred Earth is an Indigenous women-led organization dedicated to advancing a just transition for Indigenous communities aiming to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and build resilience in the face of climate change.

The Indigenous Science and Ethical Substance Lab is collaborating with Sacred Earth to support research on understanding the role and impact of critical minerals for the energy transition, and the relationship between critical minerals and Indigenous Peoples. This research includes the stages to renewable energy development throughout the full life cycle, including the extraction and re-use of critical minerals. 

The ISES research projects are funded and supported by:

• Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) - Acceleration Consortium  

• New Frontiers in Research Fund - NFRF

Research Team
M. Murphy, Kristen Bos, Reena Shadaan, Erin Konsmo, M. Fernanda Yanchapaxi, Van Noronha de Araujo, and Jasmine Wemigwans