Nunavut researchers head south to test scientists’ IQ

Jennifer Ullulaq, seated in blue jacket, and Robin Ikkutisluk, with video camera, interview a Gjoa Haven youth for their Nanivara project which connects youth and elders for the purpose of recording Inuit traditional knowledge. (PHOTO COURTESY NANIVARA)

Somewhere on King William Island this winter, across Rae Strait or south towards the mainland, an old Inuk hunter is deliberately forsaking the modern convenience of his snowmobile for a wooden sled and a team of dogs.

He says it’s important that some things are kept the traditional way — it connects you to something greater.

The statement left a mark on Jennifer Ullulaq, a 24-year-old language researcher from Gjoa Haven, who interviewed the hunter this summer in collaboration with the community-based heritage project, Nanivara.

“It really opened my mind,” said the young researcher.

Nanivara is a project that connects Inuit youth with elders to preserve and collect traditional knowledge and, at the same time, teaches modern methods of documentation.

In English, Nanivara means, “I found it.”

And now, from a hotel in Vancouver, Ullulaq, her colleague Robin Ikkutisluk and other Nanivara staff are preparing to showcase their project and pitch Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit to a room containing some of the leading researchers in western science.

“Physical scientists, as far as I’m concerned, need to be a heck of a lot more responsive, informed, sensitive and capable of working with Inuit youth and Inuit, period,” said Nanivara architect and University of British Columbia professor, Dr. Frank Tester.

Nunatsiaq News reached out to the Nanivara team on the eve of the group’s presentation to the 2015 ArcticNet Annual Science Meeting which is currently underway in Vancouver.

ArcticNet is one of the foremost conferences where the global scientific community to share findings and shape research north of 60.

But those involved in Nanivara believe the conference is in the midst of a culture change and so they’re using the opportunity to lobby traditional scientists on the value of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.

“There’s been, in recent years at this conference, a trend towards greater attention being paid to working with communities, doing community-based work,” said Mark Stoller, Nanivara project facilitator in Gjoa Haven.

“It’s still being framed largely like, ‘how does Inuit traditional knowledge benefit science?’ But there’s another side to that,” he added.

“How is it that scientific researchers can’t be more engaged in the community and do research that is really meaningful to the community?”

That question could not have come at a better time.

In July 2017, the $142.4-million Canadian High Arctic Research Station, or CHARS, will open in Cambridge Bay.

The station is promising to blend its development-directed science with Inuit traditional knowledge, according to its science and technology plan for 2016-19.

However, the original act that created CHARS makes no mention of using traditional knowledge.

Many people involved with the facility’s development and policies will be attending the conference, explained Tester.

It’s a chance to move away from giving traditional knowledge mere lip service, or what Tester dubs “quaintification.”

“It’s where you treat Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit as quaint or interesting, but not terribly relevant. You drop them into your manuscripts as a kind of token acknowledgement of another culture,” he explained.

Tester wants to see more scientists think about the social, cultural and historical context within which they find themselves while working in Nunavut and the North.

And no other demographic would benefit greater from a truly equal partnership, Tester argued, than Nanivara’s principle target: Inuit youth.

Youth in the project are taught to use digital equipment, such as cameras and recorders, to collect traditional knowledge through interviews with elders.

It’s a win-win scenario — learn practical skills while learning about your heritage.

And that equation seems to be working.

Nanivara’s format is based in part on an earlier, award-winning project from Arviat, called Nanisiniq, which garnered success and worldwide attention in 2011.

Some participants of the Nanisiniq program helped to form Isuma TV, an Inuktitut-language television station.

And for Nanivara, more than 20 hours worth of interviews conducted by youth are now on display at the heritage centre in Gjoa Haven.

“It’s remarkable because Gjoa Haven is an incredibly diverse community in many respects, and some of that diversity comes out in many of these interviews,” explained Stoller.

For young researchers Ullulaq and Ikkutisluk, their language revitalization studies, as well as Nanivara, have served as invaluable training.

“We learned from individual elders, where they came from and how they felt about changes while Nunavut was being created or after it was created,” said Ikkutisluk.

For her, opportunity to explore her culture’s traditional knowledge has made her career path very clear.

“After I started with the program, I found myself interested in anthropology and environmental studies. After the New Year, I’ll be starting university courses,” she said.

“I’m looking at studying and researching in the Arctic.”

And if Ikkutisluk can use traditional knowledge to learn about being a scientist, then perhaps the two traditions aren’t as distinct as some would think. At least, that’s what the Nanivara team is hoping.

Nanivara researchers were expected to take the stage at ArcticNet on Dec. 10. The conference was set to wrap up Dec. 11.