Congratulations to Dr. Razak Abu!
We celebrate the success of Razak Abu who successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled, “Knowledge, Use, and Change in the Saskatchewan River Delta: Assessing the Changing Livelihoods of Cumberland House Métis and Cree Nation’’.
Razak explained how to operationalize “Two-eyed seeing” - bringing Traditional Knowledge and Western Science together - to better understand long-term social-ecological changes. His work drew on instrumental records, archival records, interviews and oral histories of people in the Saskatchewan River Delta to understand how local Indigenous peoples had experienced and adapted to changes in life on the land and waters since the building of the EB Campbell Dam in 1963.
Razak faced a formidable committee composed of an anthropologist, an Indigenous studies specialist and political scientist, a geographer, an aquatic ecologist, and an ecological economist. His external examiner was Dr. Nancy Turner –an internationally recognized ethnobotanist. She said after the defence, “I was very impressed with Razak, and even more so after meeting him.” Congratulations Razak!
