<small>Estimated time to follow this cut without detours: 20 minutes. </small>
The incorporation of Inuit Knowledge in wildlife co-management and research is mandated by the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. Nevertheless, Inuit Knowledge in polar bear research is often selectively engaged with, rendered technical, and validated through scientific categories. This cut explores more explicitly the methodology of wayfaring as a potential transformative ethical practice of knowledge conciliation in the particular context of the community-based research of the BearWatch project. It narrates the project as a “netbag” story in which excerpts of project reports serve as a guiding cut, while reader and author correspond alongside it. Redirected by “ice-pressure ridges” and invites, such an intra-dependence performance of moving “alongside” facilitates a place-bases understanding of ethical engagement as a ‘knowing along the way’ (Ingold, 2010). Rather than rushing towards descriptive outcomes or conclusive take-aways, this cut allows us to make meaning with- both the physical, relational and the institutional landscape, and with the material dynamics of community-based fieldwork within the large-scale Genome Canada funded project; BearWatch. With the use of a knowledge-land-scape, comprised of (auto-) ethnographic materials derived from participatory observations, co-creative methods and interviews, this cut facilitates a rethinking of knowledge conciliation, beyond its usual focus on data, through an ethics of care and attention, while resisting linear, outcome-driven, and settler-centric practices.
The land invites one to move away from anthropocentric tellings - towards narrations of becoming knowledgeable in company with the seasons, snow, ice, wind, lichens, caribou and many more. Such stories leave room for us as researchers, but aren’t about us<ref>see Le Guin, U. K., & Haraway, D. J. (2019). The carrier bag theory of fiction (pp. 149-154). London: Ignota books. </ref>.
Acknowledgements
[[File:Southampton Island.jpg|thumb|Spring on Southampton Island (Photograph taken by author in 2021)]]
An explicit note of acknowledgement for this cut should go out in particular to George Konana, in Gjoa Haven, and Leonard Netser in Coral Harbour. Both men have taken me out on the land, the sea and the ice on multiple occasions between 2020-2023. They patiently took time to introduce me to the land, answer my many questions, show and explain how they found their way across the land in various ways and under multiple conditions. Most valuable, however, is how they taught me to tag along and just be present for the ride.
<small><references /></small>
=Acknowledgements=
=1. Introduction=
An explicit note of acknowledgement for this cut goes out in particular to George Konana, in Gjoa Haven, and Leonard Netser in Coral Harbour.
Polar bears have captured the public imagination for being charismatic and as one of the most politicized animals in the world (e.g. Strode 2017; Slocum 2004). There is little disagreement across cultures regarding polar bears as a species of importance, whether as a keystone predator, a sentinel of changing Arctic environments, a cultural icon, as a more-than-human relative, or a source of income through the guiding of sports hunts. The reconciliation of such differences within polar bear management is, on the other hand, less straightforward. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ, the Inuit way of knowing and being in the world) considers humans and bears, for example, to co-exist in a relationship that requires harmonic balance for it to remain ongoing (see for example Keith 2005; Karetak et al. 2017), while western formulations of wildlife conservation conceptualise polar bears, on the other hand, as a species in need of management to ensure its survival. The importance of reconciling such seemingly opposite ways in which polar bears matter across cultures, has increasingly been recognized, and even formalised through Territorial Land Claims Agreements across Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit Homelands, see ITK, 2018).
Both men have taken me out on the land, the sea and the ice on multiple occasions between 2020-2023. They patiently took time to introduce me to their land and explained how they found their way in various ways and under multiple conditions.
The polar bear co-management regime in the Nunavut Settlement Area for example, is based on the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement (NLCA), which states that ‘Inuit must always take part in decisions on wildlife’ (NTI 2004), while ‘the guiding principles and concepts of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) are to be described and made an integral part of the management of wildlife and habitat’ (Wildlife Act 2003). Despite such formalised co-management, tensions remain. Significant data-gaps, and the international pressures to fill such gaps, as well as a rapidly changing Arctic environment and the difficulties of conciliating vastly different ways of knowing and being in wildlife conservation continue to haunt in particular the management and monitoring of polar bears in Inuit Nunangat.
[[File:Leonard Netser and George Konana.jpg|thumb|Leonard Netser (left) and George Konana (right) photographed by author]]
This cut, focusses on the challenge of conciliating western sciences and IQ in community-based polar bear monitoring research. More precisely, it asks the question of what it means to practice knowledge conciliation under guidance of the principles of the ‘Ethical Space of Engagement’ (ESE), as proposed by Sturgeon Lake, Ontario, Canada First Nation elder Willie Ermine , rather than based on data-driven needs.
Thank you for teaching me the valuable lesson of just tagging along and being present for the ride.
=Becoming a Wayfarer=
<span class="next_choice">To engage and answer such a question, under guidance of the ESE, entails- as will become clear- multiple shift. A shift of positioning; from distanced observer or reader to becoming an implicated “subject” – and a practical shift from operating based on fixed principles, to a practice of ongoing negotiations and ethical encounter. This shift applies also to you as a “reader” as you will engage with this “manuscript”. Within this knowledge-land-scape you are invited to shift from a reader to becoming a wayfarer.</span>
My name is Saskia de Wildt. This cut traces my PhD research as I have conducted it with-in a large Genome Canada funded research project: "BearWatch."
Within my research I explore what it means to practice knowledge conciliation under guidance of the principles of the ‘Ethical Space of Engagement’<ref>Ermine, W. (2007). The ethical space of engagement. Indigenous Law Journal, 6(1), 193–203.</ref> and the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Protocols for Equitable and Ethical Engagement (EEE<ref>Inuit Circumpolar Council (2022). Circumpolar Inuit Protocols for Equitable and Ethical Engagement.</ref>) rather than based on data-driven needs.
=2 Terms of engagement=
<div class="next_choice">
As you make your way through this knowledge-land-scape you might, depending on the choices you make, start feeling a shift from being a reader of my research, towards becoming a wayfarer alongside my research.</div>
In opposition to the straightforward processes of traversing “over”, or “across”- to be a wayfarer, is to be able to make decisions in-between and along the way. When such decision-making happens in line with the principles of the ESE, this also – as will become clear - entails a degree of shared meaning making with others. In this case, such others will include me – as you will be corresponding with me alongside your upcoming journey. As such, and in line with the principles of the ESE, I want to propose some terms of engagement between us.
Firstly, it is possible to forgo this invitation to become a wayfarer. As you will enter and make your way across this knowledge-land-scape, you will have the possibility to keep following this “cut”, and read “about” my process of wayfaring the BearWatch project. Should you choose to accept some of my invitations on the way, however, this should come with the understanding that such a decision entails your willingness to become an active and immersed agent in the ensuing material opening and closing opportunities for shared meaning-making within my research.
<small><references /></small>
<span class="next_choice">As you try to figure out what this concretely means, you sport a formation of rocks. You could take a moment to orient, and prepare for your upcoming journey. If you step onto this rock right next to you, you will get a better view of your surroundings. It perhaps provides possibilities to gain some deeper understanding of what such shared-meaning making and its boundaries could entail. Otherwise, you could just get going and learn more about how I positioned myself within the BearWatch project.</span>
=Knowledge Conciliation in Polar Bear Research=
=3. The BearWatch project=
Tensions around knowledge co-production in polar bear monitoring and co-management remain.
The track you are currently tracing cuts along the unfolding developments of the Genome Canada funded research project called ‘Bearwatch: Monitoring Impacts of Arctic Climate Change using Polar Bears, Genomics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge’ – hereafter referred to as ‘Bearwatch’. Bearwatch ran between 2015 and 2023, during which it sought to meaningfully engage IQ in its development of a new non-invasive genomic polar bear monitoring toolkit. The project was a collaboration between northern communities in the Nunavut Settlement Region and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, HTAs in Gjoa Haven and Coral Harbor, the Inuvialuit Game Council, the governments of Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon, the Canadian Rangers, and researchers and students from multiple universities across Canada and beyond.
Data-driven conservation, management and monitoring of polar bears in Inuit Nunangat- while necessary to address significant data gaps on population trends and a rapidly changing Arctic environment- has also proven itself a challenging environment for the conciliation of western sciences and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ<ref>The Inuit specific cosmology of knowing and being in the world, see N. S. D. C. Nunavut Social Development Council. (1998). Report of the Nunavut Traditional Knowledge Conference, Igloolik, March 20-24,1998. Iqaluit: Nunavut Social Development Council. 35p.</ref>).
Most researchers and policymakers in the field of polar bear science more generally – and on the BearWatch project particularly – are trained in a variety of natural science disciplines of the western academic institute, or they are Inuit knowledge and rights holders. I, myself, am a white, queer, settler-guest researcher from the Netherlands with a background in the applied arts and social sciences. Approaching this research context as a non-Inuit researcher from such a different cultural and disciplinary place of beginning than most other Bearwatch team members and polar bear monitoring practitioners, has required me to negotiate and navigate my own way alongside many of the project’s activities. This particular cut allows you trace those two parallel tracks in a manner that also allows for you to thread your own way through this knowledge-land-scape. As such, this cut is not so much about deriving at conclusive take-aways about ethical knowledge conciliation within BearWatch, as much as it about extending material opportunities for you, the reader, to become knowledgeable alongside it.
<div class="next_choice">This cut explores the methodology of "wayfaring<ref>Ingold, T. (2010). Footprints through the weather‐world: walking, breathing, knowing. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16, S121-S139.</ref>" as an ethical practice of knowledge conciliation. </div>
<span class="next_choice">Before you head out, down this path, you realize it might be helpful to look up the meaning of “intra” dependency, as opposed to “interdependency”. Then you realize this entails taking off your mitts and taking your phone out of your pocket. It’s freezing, and your phone might not last long in these temperatures. Besides, the community of Gjoa Haven has been urgently pressing for a workshop that needs attending to.</span>
<small><references /></small>
<span class="detour link" data-page-title="Intra-dependency" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[intra-dependency|Detour: look up the meaning of "intra-dependency"]]</span>
=Wayfaring as a Sensitizing Method=
=4. TEK workshops=
My wayfaring approach, as will become clear, does not attempt to formulate a new, alternative, or innovative means of knowledge conciliation across cultural differences, nor does it lead to conclusive take-aways about ethical knowledge conciliation.
The BearWatch project was designed to include a “Genomics and its Environmental, Economic, Ethical, Legal and Social aspects (GE3LS)” component. GE3LS is described on the Ontario Genomics website as investigating ‘questions at the intersection of genomics and society’, and as ‘providing stakeholders with the insights needed to anticipate the impacts of scientific advances in genomics, avoid pitfalls, cultivate success, and ultimately, contribute to Canada’s leadership in the 21st-century global bioeconomy’ (Ontario Genomics, accessed 04-11-2024). Within the BearWatch project proposal GE3LS was interpreted and included as the ‘Evaluation, Mapping and Integration of Polar Bear Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit/Traditional Ecological Knowledge (IQ/TEK), Historical Records and Science’, with the goal of guiding faecal sampling and to develop a long-term and viable monitoring program using community based field collection and leading-edge genomics science (BearWatch research proposal, 2016 p.30). The purpose of this was ‘to increase community ownership of polar bear monitoring through community-based collection and knowledge sharing’ and to respond to the ‘legal authority of land claim agreements, asking that IQ/TK be used to make management decisions’ (BearWatch research proposal, 2016 p.30-31). Along the way, the proposed activities under the GE3LS component were adjusted and in some cases downscales for feasibility purposes based on feedback from Research Committees and community feedback. Activities to ‘identify TEK gaps’ and ‘fill them’ (Schedule H report, March 2019) were narrowed to focus more on partner communities, through ‘case studies’ that would help inform broader suggestions on monitoring.
[[File:PB skulls.jpg|thumb|Two polar bear skulls at George Konana's cabin.]]
As part of this GE3Ls activity three TEK mapping workshops were co-designed with the HTA of Gjoa Haven to ‘identify TEK gaps’ and ‘fill them’. The temporal and spatial polar bear TEK that was collected, was processed and published in the MES thesis of Scott Arlidge, another student that participated in the project. It ‘provides a georeferenced knowledge base that displays information on polar bears including harvest sites, bear movement, denning sites, and hunter knowledge areas’ (Arlidge, 2022 p.13). The data as shared in this publication is presented in this thesis as i) ‘a historical record of polar bear knowledge for the community of Gjoa Haven’; and ii) ‘as a guide to areas of high polar bear activity for future targeted polar bear monitoring effort’s’ (Arlidge, 2022 p.ii).
It instead unsettles fixed ideas about “knowledge” towards a “coming to know”, and instead of “knowledge integration” it performs the idea of “worldly encounters”.
=1.2 Wayfaring=
<div class="next_choice">
This cut centers the unfolding of a particular research project: ‘Bearwatch: Monitoring Impacts of Arctic Climate Change using Polar Bears, Genomics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge’.
Ingold (2010) describes the wayfarer as ‘a being who, in following a path of life, negotiates or improvises a passage as he goes along’ (Ingold, 2010 s126). Wayfaring is a body-on-the ground, material way of knowing that emerges along the course of everyday activities, rather than built up, gathered or collected from ‘fixed locations’. Rooted in the ‘weather-world’ of complex entanglements and partial perspectives, it drives the research along as a process that is unfixed, fluid and in constant motion of coming to know-, or becoming -other. As a transcultural, methodological practice, I argue that a process of wayfaring allows for ethical knowledge conciliation to be understood as a space, practice and process of engagement, that can take place in correspondence with the Ermine’s ethical Space of Engagement (ESE, 2007)- instead of as a data-driven endeavour. Knowledge can be seen as ongoing, fluid and place-based, rather than frozen in time, packageable and exportable. It makes it possible to attune to the seasons and make meaning through navigating both the physical, relational and the institutional landscape through an ethics of care and attention.
Hereafter referred to as "Bearwatch."
In its simplest form, wayfaring is a practice of responding, correspondence, and of practicing one’s own response-ability. Relying on such response-ability in this knowledge-land-scape is the difference between an open-ended, future-oriented practice of collective sense-making, and a dead-end, unidirectional trajectory of me guiding you towards a description of best research practices in accordance with publicly available Inuit guidelines on ethical engagement, like for example those of the ICC’s ‘circumpolar Inuit protocols for Equitable and Ethical Engagement’ (2022) or the National Inuit Strategy on Research (ITK, 2018). This proposition is not in any way meant to discredit such guidelines. It rather points out that such guidelines will not be very effective if they are not being responded to or enacted with gestures of meaningful intent.
'''"Keep going"''' to learn more </div>
The publication of such guidelines can perhaps be, in following with Ingold, compared to the lines of an architectural drawing. Such lines are a descriptive gesture, an instruction. What we get to read in the publication of such guidelines, is the final result of a creative process; an instructive product about protocols, rather than insights of the productive process that has brought these protocols themselves into being. In other words, the 2022 ICC publication can be understood as a trace of agreements about ethical engagement, rather than as an active practicing of ethical engagement itself. It is hard to be in lively correspondence with a trace – beyond, of course, the act of narrowly following it to its final destination. Such a trace tells a story, but it is itself not story-ing: it doesn’t move, change or respond in relation to your engagement with it. For such lively intra-action, correspondence, or relational resonance, one needs to consider guidelines on ethical practices as a multi-directional verb. Not a retro-spective trace-ing, but rather for example a prospective thread-ing (Ingold, 2020 p.181).
=The BearWatch Project=
The difference between the trace and the thread as an intentional practice of moving through the world is directional. The trace is both retro- and/or prospective, it describes a one-sided story of a past or future event. The thread, perhaps as a ball of yarn -as Ingold asks us to think about it- is on the other hand, neither retro- nor prospective. It is emergent, and winds or unwinds as you proceed through the world with it (Ingold 2020). This emergent quality of continuously opening up to the world is what makes the thread alive and respondent. To wayfare as a thread, is not so much about moving forward, or towards something, but is rather about transformation. A movement in which nothing remains static; nature- and the researcher included -become emergent; being necessarily turns into becoming, and representing turns into performing ongoing movement. This is what navigating the knowledge/land/scape affords. It allows for you, as a reader to engage, return, and be in correspondence with my research. It is an ongoing process of re-positioning.
The BearWatch project ran between 2015 and 2023, during which it sought to meaningfully engage IQ in its development of a new non-invasive genomic polar bear monitoring toolkit.
=1.3 Wayfaring the BearWatch project=
<div class="next_choice">
This cut is guided by excerpts of its project reports.</div>
The explorative goal of this cut is therefore, not so much to argue for a specific outcome or practice of knowledge relating, but rather to deepen our understanding of how, as researchers operating with(in) the traditions and institutes of western science, we can practice ethical research under open-ended conditions of uncertainty. In pursuit of such a goal, I have moved away from presenting solutions, towards facilitating a process of becoming.
=Transdisciplinary Threading=
This cut performs certain key-moments of the BearWatch project that took place during the period that I was part of the project, as possible sites of encounter and ethical engagement. You are invited to follow along the unfolding of the project through these key moments. They are performed as sites of diffractive im/possibilities between narrative vignettes, ethical dilemmas, research-creations, and auto-ethnographic fieldnotes that emerged from my own practice-based engagements within the communities of Gjoa Haven and Coral Harbour. Along the way in-between such sites you are either re-directed by the material forces of emergent ice-pressure ridges (a land-based metaphor for the more-than-human agencies that intra-act to shape the conditions under which some of this work has taken place), or invited to trail-off on unexpected side-tracks (which perform the possibility of wandering). Such redirections provide possibilities to orient or gain emergent insights on what it means within this particular research context to practice polar bear research as an ethical space, or process of engagement.
The paths you will navigate alongside this project, interweave and correspond with that of mine, and with those of researchers and policymakers in the field of polar bear science, with polar bears themselves, community members, ice-pressure ridges, snowdrifts, silly hats and many more...
Deriving value from this work requires immersion and attentiveness. Such is the futurity that this dissertation aims to enable and contribute to; extended ethical knowledge encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge holders, multidisciplinary research teams, and academic readership, based on ethical and attentive engagement. Remaining a distanced spectator will not do. As such, this cut starts by taking you along to a series of workshops that were conducted in Gjoa Haven, during the Summer of 2019.
<div class="next_choice">
But before you set on your way, notice that you have stumbled upon a "Vista".
=3. Workshops Summer 2019=
This '''"Vista"''' is a viewpoint. Go check it out!</div>
The M’Clintock Channel (MC) Polar Bear Management Unit (PBMU) used by hunters from Gjoa Haven, Cambridge Bay and Taloyoak (see figure 1), was in 2001 subjected to a three-year polar bear moratorium (a full suspension of hunting). In 2005, the moratorium was lifted and Gjoa Haven and Cambridge Bay signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board (NWMB) for alternating quotas of one and two tags per year, while Taloyoak did not sign the MOU at all, and therefore did not receive any tags from the MC management unit between 2001 and 2015. No other community in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories has experienced such a (near) moratorium over such an extended period of time. Despite a more recent rise in tags in 2022, these impacts continue to be felt today. Based on a desire for recognition and acknowledgement of the impact of these polar bear quota regulations, two workshops were co-organized in addition to the original <span class="detour link" data-page-title="TEK_workshops" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[TEK workshops]]</span> that were planned to take place over the summer of 2019, to discuss and document <span class="detour link" data-page-title="Voices_of_Thunder" data-section-id="7" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Voices of Thunder#output| the testimonies of Gjoa Haven hunters and other community members]]</span>
<span class="pop-up vista link" data-page-title="The_ESE_(process)" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="Vista">[[The_ESE_(process)|Vista: The ESE]]</span>
[[File:(color) Figure 1 Map of the MC PBMU..jpg|thumb|Map of the M’Clintock Channel Polar Bear Management Unit area (Vongraven and Peacock, 2011). Adapted with permission to include the locations of Gjoa Haven, Cambridge Bay and Taloyoak, who each hunt within this area.]]
=Decision-making=
[[File:Mapping TEK Gjoa Haven 2019.jpg|thumb|Participants discussing during BearWatch TEK workshop 2019]]
You now have a choice to make.
The workshops were advertised over the radio in both English and Inuktitut (Inuit language), and interested individuals signed up through the HTA. One workshop was held May 15, 2019 in the evening with 10 participants and one on May 16 in the morning with 11 participants. These participants comprised mainly older male community members, many of whom had hunted, or still hunt polar bears. There were two female participants in each workshop. Three of the participants were between the ages of 20 and 40, with the remainder older. These two workshops focused specifically on the impacts of polar bear hunting quota reductions on the community. The workshop questions were co-designed by the BW academic researchers and HTA representatives and were asked in both English and Inuktitut to prompt discussion. The format however remained open-ended, meaning that "off-script" discussions were encouraged during the workshop, and occasionally specific members were asked to participate in answering particular questions because of their connection to the issue, as identified in previous interviews or by other community members. Two BW researchers and an interpreter would ask the pre-designed questions and prompt discussion, while a third BW researcher made notes. Both workshops were audio-recorded.
Will you trace the most straightforward path along the reports of BearWatch project? Or will you start threading your own path as you feel your way forward in response to the company you may encounter along the way?
These recordings and workshop notes became the primary materials which were given to me, not long after I joined the BearWatch project. I was requested to describe these experiences and share them with a larger academic audience through academic publishing. This request however presented me with multiple dilemmas.
[[File:Invitation background.jpg|thumb]]
What to do?
<div class="next_choice">If you have not yet checked out the '''"Terms of Engagement"''' of this knowledge-land-scape, you should seek them out - find them on the bottom right corner of your screen.
Although you understand that writing “about” other people’s experiences doesn’t exactly sound ethical, you have little time and need to keep going. Your first fieldwork trip to Coral Harbour is upcoming, and you need to prepare for that. Besides, the Gjoa Haven HTA wants a publication, no need to complicate things further. Alternatively you can stay with the trouble and explore in what ways the “Politics of recognition” complicates such writing practices. Maybe you have already leaned into such tensions, and all that is left now, is to organize a conference call and have a conversation with the Gjoa Haven HTA about these complexities.
Otherwise,
<span class="Pop-up link" data-page-title=" Politics_of_recognition " data-encounter-type="Stay with the trouble">[[Politics of recognition|Stay with the trouble: The politics of recognition]]</span>
Take a '''"Detour"''' to look up the meaning of “intra” dependency, as opposed to “interdependency” before you keep going.
<span class="return link" data-page-title=" Voices_of_Thunder " data-encounter-type="return">[[Voices of Thunder#Ongoing conversations|Return to Cut 1 Voices of Thunder"]]</span>
=<span id="Coral Harbour First trip 2020"></span>4. Coral Harbour First trip 2020=
Or,
Alongside funding from Genome Canada, the project PI’s also successfully applied to the Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada/ World Wildlife Fund to fund ‘traditional knowledge research and a denning survey in Coral Harbour, Nunavut’ (Schedule H, 2020, March 31. This intended study included documenting polar bear TEK in Coral Harbour, surveys of vacated dens by locals to collect a variety of samples and data, and the initiation of a collaborative effort with the high school to train students in land-based surveys. These activities were planned for March and April, but were postponed due to COVID-19. The Hamlet of Coral Harbour requested outside visitors stay away the day before most of the BearWatch team was set to arrive in the Hamlet, and the BearWatch PI’s respected their wishes.
I had, however, travelled North a day early, and arrived in the community on exactly the day that the Covid-19 epidemic was declared pandemic. Non-resident travel bans came into effect in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, as well as physical distancing requirements within communities. Having travelled up to Coral Harbour during early spring, the weather was changeable, and indeed took a turn after my arrival. Despite immediately rescheduling my flight back South, my departure from Coral Harbour got postponed by multiple days of blizzards. During these days I was welcomed, kept company and supported by Leonard Netser, Coral Harbour based BearWatch PI, and his family. Having never travelled to the North, and without the other BearWatch team members present, the situation allowed for Leonard and I to become acquainted with each other, in way that has allowed for an ongoing rapport between the two of us as the project unfolded.
'''"Keep going"''' to keep following this cut instead.</div>
One of the most influential moments of my PhD took place during those “lost” days that I was not able to fly out from Coral Harbour due to morning blizzards- Leonard invited me along on a Caribou hunting trip.
<span class="detour to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Intra-dependency" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[intra-dependency|Detour: look up the meaning of "intra-dependency"]]</span>
'''[[Caribou hunt|You're invited to join along for a Caribou hunt.]]'''
=TEK Workshops=
<big>'''[[Spring Coral Harbour|Ice pressure ridge: Spring in Coral Harbour]]'''</big>
From here, you jump straight into the BearWatch project- beginning with the TEK workshops that were held in the community of Gjoa Haven in 2019 as to inform a feasibility study on future community-driven polar bear fecal sample collection.
=Covid-19=
The BearWatch project was designed to include a “Genomics and its Environmental, Economic, Ethical, Legal and Social aspects (GE3LS)” component
When the spread of Covid-19 was declared a pandemic it shaped an ice-pressure ridge that was so immense, that it not so much required me to redirect- as it asked me to re-position. Both figuratively and literally. Having just arrived in Coral Harbour, for my first fieldwork trip and my first travel up North, I was requested upon arrival to return immediately. The pandemic was declared while I was in the air, and by time I landed the local “Northern” store, like many other stores across the country, was sold out of toiletpaper and hand sanitizer. As described above, I was, nevertheless, warmly welcomed by local PI Leonard Netser and his family- who made sure I was comfortable.
Three TEK mapping workshops were co-designed with the HTA of Gjoa Haven, as part of the projects GE3LS strategy to ‘identify TEK gaps’ and ‘fill them’<ref>BearWatch research proposal, 2016 p.30-31</ref>.
This pandemic has functioned as a double-edged sword. On the one hand it has caused a significant delay, and obstruction in terms of building community relations in the field. After I was finally able to leave Coral Harbour once the blizzards had ended, it took almost a year and a half before I could return North again, and start building relationships in the way that they are built most effectively- in person, and on the land. On the other hand, it has also allowed for more time to think about how to contribute to the BearWatch research project, in a way that honours my professional background, and ethical values. It has also opened pathways to initial remote connections with research partners in Gjoa Haven through communication platforms like zoom and conference calls. Nonetheless, the endemic has had significant and lasting impacts on the material circumstances under which I continued to work on my PhD.
[[File:Mapping TEK Gjoa Haven 2019.jpg|thumb|Participants discussing during BearWatch TEK workshop 2019]]
'''[[Covid 19 personal whereabouts|Explore this ice-pressure ridge further along its edges to learn more about my personal whereabouts during Covid-19]] '''
=Covid-19 Remote interviews=
‘Our territorial government collaborators are currently working from home with no field work permitted for the foreseeable future, and southern labs remain closed. We are working on plans to achieve our community goals remotely, but the full impact of COVID-19 on both lab work and field work remains to be seen.’
This was written as part of the schedule H report (March, 31, 2020), by BearWatch PI de Groot.
<big>'''[[Tech and tea|Ice pressure ridge: Understand how the technical equipment that's being used influenced our interviews]]'''</big>
=Fieldtrip BW team Coral Harbour Summer 2021=
'''[[Driving the Island|You're invited to join along for a drive around the island.]]'''
<big>'''[[Summer Coral Harbour|Ice pressure ridge: Summer in Coral Harbour]]'''</big>
=Fieldtrip BW team Gjoa Haven Summer 2021=
===HTA meetings presentations===
===Voices of thunder meetings===
====Stranding the car====
====ATV ride====
The environmental conditions in Inuit Nunangat seem initially a fitting context to easily debunk anthropocentric ontologies. For example, any visiting researcher who has tried to prepare, pack or pull a qamutiq (sled) across the land outside of Arctic Summer for the first time, like I did in 2021, has likely encountered the limits of human agency as well as the particular teachings of humility. The land itself invites one to move away from anthropocentric tellings - towards narrations of becoming knowledgeable in company with the seasons, snow, ice, wind, rocks, and caribou. Such stories leave room for us as researchers, but are importantly not about us. Donna Haraway calls such stories “netbag stories” (2016, p.38). She argues, inspired by Ursula le Guin (1986), that the kind of stories we need telling in these times are not those of the Antropos. Not those of the capitalized Human in History and all the weaponized tools such a Human might carry, but those of the netbag, the basket, or any other concave shape. Such a netbag, or even a pair of cupped hands enables carrying things along, and receiving and giving away. Such exchange suggests ongoing stories of becoming with-; a collective making and unmaking of the world with ‘companion species’ as ‘kin’ (Haraway, 2003 ; 2016). These stories acknowledge messy, earthbound, multispecies entanglements, rather than man-making tales of the single hero.
====Camping at the Weir====
<div class="next_choice">You have taken a moment to sit down and read what Genome Canada has written on their website about GE3LS.
'''[[Conference calls from the road#Butter|Invitation]]:Trail-off to understand better how my whereabouts influenced my writing, reading and broader relationship to the country after this fieldtrip'''
Then someone brings up the existence of a nearby shipwreck: "Knowledge Co-production”. They suggest you go check it out to get a deeper understanding of the im/possibilities around bringing IQ together with western sciences.
=Meetings Spring 2022 Gjoa Haven=
You weigh your options,
====Checking seal dens====
====Collecting ice====
'''"Keep going"''' to move on with the project.
=Meetings Spring 2022 Coral Harbour=
Or,
====Spending time in Yan's Cabin====
'''"Detour"''', to read about GE3LS.
====Qamutiq building and riding====
Or,
====Walking the same road every day====
=====Seasonal changes=====
Check out the '''"Wrecksite"''' of "Knowledge Co-production"</div>
=====Illness=====
<small><references /></small>
=====Gender based violence=====
<span class="detour to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="GE3Ls" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[GE3Ls|Detour: Read more about GE3Ls]]</span>
In text link to [[Point of Beginning Mx. Science]]
In text link naar [[Aesthetic Action#Design consultation pre-workshop & workshop Coral Harbour|Design consultation pre-workshop & workshop Coral Harbour]]
The Gjoa Haven Hunters and Trappers Association (HTA) doesn't want to "keep going," however.
=====remote planning=====
They have urgently been trying to get the BearWatch researchers to turn their focus towards the available polar bear harvest quota.
=====illness=====
After two generations of hardly being able to hunt polar bears, the Gjoa Haven HTA have asked the researchers of the BearWatch project to help them seek recognition for the loss of income, loss of culture, and loss of intergenerational knowledge transfer.
=====tension=====
[[File:Gjoa Haven's Appeal.mp3|thumb]]
=====absence=====
=Going on the Record=
Two workshops were organized in response to community requests, to record the impacts of polar bear hunting quota reductions on the community.
One workshop was held May 15, 2019 in the evening with 10 participants and one on May 16 in the morning with 11 participants.
Both workshops were audio-recorded.
The BearWatch PI's and Gjoa Haven HTA-board want to use these recordings as primary materials for an academic paper.
==Wayfaring Calendar pilot==
They ask me to write it. However, I have just learnt about this project and have not yet set foot into the community.
In text link naar [[Another point of beginning Wayfaring method]]
<div class="next_choice">
'''What would you do?'''
=Arctic travel=
=Fall 2022 Gjoa Haven=
'''"Stay with the Trouble"''' to explore how the “Politics of recognition” can complicate such writing- even if it risks completely derailing you from your course.
In text link naar [[Aesthetic Action#Design consultation pre-workshop & workshop Gjoa Haven|Design consultation pre-workshop & workshop Gjoa Haven]]
====Preparing cabin pre-workshops====
Or,
====Cooking/ Sharing food====
====Prayer====
'''"Keep going"''' to not engage further with the community of Gjoa Haven for now, and prepare for your first fieldtrip to the North- to Coral Harbour.
=====Truck Flat Tire=====
(The Gjoa Haven HTA wants a publication, so maybe there is no need to complicate things further for the moment?)
</div>
In text return to [[Workshop Gjoa Haven#Preparation Gjoa Haven workshop|Preparation Gjoa Haven workshop]] in the Workshop Gjoa Haven trace.
<span class="pop-up stay-with-the-trouble link" data-page-title=" Politics_of_Recognition " data-encounter-type="Stay with the trouble">[[Politics of Recognition|Stay with the trouble: The Politics of Recognition]]</span>
=====Broken Thermostat=====
=Coral Harbour First Trip 2020=
====Bingo====
[[File:Coral Harbour May 2022.jpg|thumb|Photograph of Salliq (Photograph by author, May 2022)]]
====Making posters====
Alongside funding from Genome Canada, the project PI’s also successfully applied to the Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada/ World Wildlife Fund to fund ‘traditional knowledge research and a denning survey in Coral Harbour, Nunavut’ (Schedule H, 2020, March 31. This intended study included documenting polar bear TEK in Coral Harbour, surveys of vacated dens by locals to collect a variety of samples and data, and the initiation of a collaborative effort with the high school to train students in land-based surveys.
=Winter 2022 Final Workshops=
<div class="next_choice">However, before you start, you hit an '''"Ice-Pressure Ridge"'''. The Covid virus has so rapidly spread, the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic on March 20, 2020.</div>
====Ethics====
<span class="redirective ice-pressure_ridge link" data-page-title="Covid-19" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="ice-pressure_ridge">[[Covid-19|Ice-pressure ridge: Immediately book a flight back]]</span>
Latest revision as of 11:02, 18 July 2025
Estimated time to follow this cut without detours: 20 minutes.
The land invites one to move away from anthropocentric tellings - towards narrations of becoming knowledgeable in company with the seasons, snow, ice, wind, lichens, caribou and many more. Such stories leave room for us as researchers, but aren’t about us[1].
Spring on Southampton Island (Photograph taken by author in 2021)
↑see Le Guin, U. K., & Haraway, D. J. (2019). The carrier bag theory of fiction (pp. 149-154). London: Ignota books.
An explicit note of acknowledgement for this cut goes out in particular to George Konana, in Gjoa Haven, and Leonard Netser in Coral Harbour.
Both men have taken me out on the land, the sea and the ice on multiple occasions between 2020-2023. They patiently took time to introduce me to their land and explained how they found their way in various ways and under multiple conditions.
Leonard Netser (left) and George Konana (right) photographed by author
Thank you for teaching me the valuable lesson of just tagging along and being present for the ride.
My name is Saskia de Wildt. This cut traces my PhD research as I have conducted it with-in a large Genome Canada funded research project: "BearWatch."
Within my research I explore what it means to practice knowledge conciliation under guidance of the principles of the ‘Ethical Space of Engagement’[1] and the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Protocols for Equitable and Ethical Engagement (EEE[2]) rather than based on data-driven needs.
As you make your way through this knowledge-land-scape you might, depending on the choices you make, start feeling a shift from being a reader of my research, towards becoming a wayfarer alongside my research.
↑Ermine, W. (2007). The ethical space of engagement. Indigenous Law Journal, 6(1), 193–203.
↑Inuit Circumpolar Council (2022). Circumpolar Inuit Protocols for Equitable and Ethical Engagement.
Knowledge Conciliation in Polar Bear Research[edit]
Tensions around knowledge co-production in polar bear monitoring and co-management remain.
Data-driven conservation, management and monitoring of polar bears in Inuit Nunangat- while necessary to address significant data gaps on population trends and a rapidly changing Arctic environment- has also proven itself a challenging environment for the conciliation of western sciences and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ[1]).
This cut explores the methodology of "wayfaring[2]" as an ethical practice of knowledge conciliation.
↑The Inuit specific cosmology of knowing and being in the world, see N. S. D. C. Nunavut Social Development Council. (1998). Report of the Nunavut Traditional Knowledge Conference, Igloolik, March 20-24,1998. Iqaluit: Nunavut Social Development Council. 35p.
↑Ingold, T. (2010). Footprints through the weather‐world: walking, breathing, knowing. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16, S121-S139.
My wayfaring approach, as will become clear, does not attempt to formulate a new, alternative, or innovative means of knowledge conciliation across cultural differences, nor does it lead to conclusive take-aways about ethical knowledge conciliation.
Two polar bear skulls at George Konana's cabin.
It instead unsettles fixed ideas about “knowledge” towards a “coming to know”, and instead of “knowledge integration” it performs the idea of “worldly encounters”.
This cut centers the unfolding of a particular research project: ‘Bearwatch: Monitoring Impacts of Arctic Climate Change using Polar Bears, Genomics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge’.
The BearWatch project ran between 2015 and 2023, during which it sought to meaningfully engage IQ in its development of a new non-invasive genomic polar bear monitoring toolkit.
This cut is guided by excerpts of its project reports.
The paths you will navigate alongside this project, interweave and correspond with that of mine, and with those of researchers and policymakers in the field of polar bear science, with polar bears themselves, community members, ice-pressure ridges, snowdrifts, silly hats and many more...
But before you set on your way, notice that you have stumbled upon a "Vista".
Will you trace the most straightforward path along the reports of BearWatch project? Or will you start threading your own path as you feel your way forward in response to the company you may encounter along the way?
If you have not yet checked out the "Terms of Engagement" of this knowledge-land-scape, you should seek them out - find them on the bottom right corner of your screen.
Otherwise,
Take a "Detour" to look up the meaning of “intra” dependency, as opposed to “interdependency” before you keep going.
From here, you jump straight into the BearWatch project- beginning with the TEK workshops that were held in the community of Gjoa Haven in 2019 as to inform a feasibility study on future community-driven polar bear fecal sample collection.
The BearWatch project was designed to include a “Genomics and its Environmental, Economic, Ethical, Legal and Social aspects (GE3LS)” component
Three TEK mapping workshops were co-designed with the HTA of Gjoa Haven, as part of the projects GE3LS strategy to ‘identify TEK gaps’ and ‘fill them’[1].
Participants discussing during BearWatch TEK workshop 2019
You have taken a moment to sit down and read what Genome Canada has written on their website about GE3LS.
Then someone brings up the existence of a nearby shipwreck: "Knowledge Co-production”. They suggest you go check it out to get a deeper understanding of the im/possibilities around bringing IQ together with western sciences.
You weigh your options,
"Keep going" to move on with the project.
Or,
"Detour", to read about GE3LS.
Or,
Check out the "Wrecksite" of "Knowledge Co-production"
The Gjoa Haven Hunters and Trappers Association (HTA) doesn't want to "keep going," however.
They have urgently been trying to get the BearWatch researchers to turn their focus towards the available polar bear harvest quota.
After two generations of hardly being able to hunt polar bears, the Gjoa Haven HTA have asked the researchers of the BearWatch project to help them seek recognition for the loss of income, loss of culture, and loss of intergenerational knowledge transfer.
Two workshops were organized in response to community requests, to record the impacts of polar bear hunting quota reductions on the community.
One workshop was held May 15, 2019 in the evening with 10 participants and one on May 16 in the morning with 11 participants.
Both workshops were audio-recorded.
The BearWatch PI's and Gjoa Haven HTA-board want to use these recordings as primary materials for an academic paper.
They ask me to write it. However, I have just learnt about this project and have not yet set foot into the community.
What would you do?
"Stay with the Trouble" to explore how the “Politics of recognition” can complicate such writing- even if it risks completely derailing you from your course.
Or,
"Keep going" to not engage further with the community of Gjoa Haven for now, and prepare for your first fieldtrip to the North- to Coral Harbour.
(The Gjoa Haven HTA wants a publication, so maybe there is no need to complicate things further for the moment?)
Photograph of Salliq (Photograph by author, May 2022)
Alongside funding from Genome Canada, the project PI’s also successfully applied to the Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada/ World Wildlife Fund to fund ‘traditional knowledge research and a denning survey in Coral Harbour, Nunavut’ (Schedule H, 2020, March 31. This intended study included documenting polar bear TEK in Coral Harbour, surveys of vacated dens by locals to collect a variety of samples and data, and the initiation of a collaborative effort with the high school to train students in land-based surveys.
However, before you start, you hit an "Ice-Pressure Ridge". The Covid virus has so rapidly spread, the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic on March 20, 2020.
