What does "two eyed seeing" mean? How does this apply to climate change? 

"Two Eyed Seeing is a philosophy that has been termed by a Mi’kmaw community member in Nova Scotia and talks about the importance of being able to understand both sides. Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall (Eskasoni, Nova Scotia – Traditional Territory of Mi’kma’ki) coined the English phrase “Two-Eyed Seeing” many years ago for a guiding principle found in Mi’kmaq Knowledge as reflected in the language. 

On one side you have the Indigenous side where we have that connection to the land. We have tradition and values that are ingrained in us in being able to move forward and adapting and mitigating climate change through a different lens. 

On the other side there is the European and Western Science side that has some really good information and helps to identify adaptation and mitigation measures moving forward. If you take both of those views and you put them together you get a robust sense of what’s happening and how to move forward in a good way." 

What is "traditional knowledge"? Which can help climate change adaptation? 

If we put those two (sides) together and look at the traditional ecological knowledge which are the observations and the knowledge that the community members pooled within their space, their communities and the stories that they heard from generations and generations about what those (climate) changes are.

To be able to put that together with the (scientific) modeling and not have them separate, that’s how we developed our framework for mitigating and adapting to climate change.