<small>Estimated time to follow this cut without detours: 20 minutes. </small>
=Abstract=
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>.
=Introductie=
[[File:Southampton Island.jpg|thumb|Spring on Southampton Island (Photograph taken by author in 2021)]]
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).
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.
<small><references /></small>
This cut focusses in particular on the challenge of conciliating western sciences and IQ in community-based polar bear monitoring. More precisely, it asks the question of what it means within the larger apparatus of community-based polar bear research to practise knowledge conciliation under guidance of the principles of the ethical space of engagement, rather than by data-driven needs. I ask this question as a non-Indigenous PhD researcher as part of a larger project that’s 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. Most researchers and policymakers in the field of polar bear science more generally- and on the Bearwatch project more particularly- are either western-educated scientists from a variety of natural sciences, or Inuit knowledge- and rights holders. I, myself, am a white, queer, settler-guest researcher from the Netherlands with a background in the arts and social sciences. Approaching this research context as a non-Indigenous researcher from such a different cultural and disciplinary place of beginning than the other Bearwatch team members and most people in the field, has added another layer of complexity to the already challenging issue of ethical knowledge-relating across cultures. I have aimed to leverage this intra-cultural complexity to seek additional disciplinary ways of understanding- and possibly practising- knowledge conciliation, in accordance with the guiding principles of ‘the Ethical Space of Engagement’ (Ermine, 2007), within the western science-heavy field of polar bear monitoring.
=Acknowledgements=
I explore whether it’s possible to rethink the challenges of ethical reconciliation between IQ and data-driven western science in polar bear monitoring through an arts-based, post-disciplinary practice-based approach. As will become clear in the following pages, I don’t attempt to formulate a “new-”, “alternative”, or “innovative” problem-solving approach to knowledge conciliation across cultural differences. Instead, I perform a particular positioning and ongoing opening-, through a practice of wayfaring (as forwarded by Ingold, 2010) that’s guided by the concept of ‘ethical space’ (as forwarded by Ermine 2007).
An explicit note of acknowledgement for this cut goes out in particular to George Konana, in Gjoa Haven, and Leonard Netser in Coral Harbour.
This ethical space, as I will explain later, emerges both through principled practices and as a condition for (non-)Indigenous sciences and knowledge systems to re-position themselves as more equitable partners-in-encounter. In this cut, I invite you along with my own post-disciplinary art-based research, to experience how the principles of ethical space have helped me reposition myself within the BearWatch project. This cut also provides possibilities to gain insights on how these principles have guided me in my attempts to practice my methodological wayfaring in respectful dialogue with IQ and western natural sciences. This cut does not so much manifest in a list of conclusive take-aways, but rather seeks to provide the conditions for you as a reader to find your own way and gain emergent insights on what it means to ethically encounter and engage.
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.
==Invitation(s)==
[[File:Leonard Netser and George Konana.jpg|thumb|Leonard Netser (left) and George Konana (right) photographed by author]]
Throughout this knowledge-land-scape, and thus also along this cut, I invite readers to become an intra-dependent agent of meaning making, and as such an implicated part of my research. My writing and research-creations function as an extended site of encounter across reader, author and the more-than-human intra-active agents, practices and events that were part of my fieldwork in the hamlets of Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven) and Salliq (Coral Harbour) of the respective Kitikmeot- and Kivalliq region in the territory of Nunavut. This extended site of encounter allows readers the possibility to respond-. In other words, it draws on the reader's abilities and willingness to ethically, and responsibly engage with some of the diffractive possibilities as they were encountered by me during my research within the BearWatch project. To facilitate possibilities for such intra-active response, I have extended multiple invites to trail-off from each main cut. The purpose of such possible wandering is to facilitate engagement across the multiple sites of encounter in which my research has taken place, through the possibilities of wayfaring, as put forward by Tim Ingold (2010).
Thank you for teaching me the valuable lesson of just tagging along and being present for the ride.
==Wayfaring==
=Becoming a Wayfarer=
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.
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."
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.
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.
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).
<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>
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.
==Wayfaring the BearWatch project==
<small><references /></small>
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.
=Knowledge Conciliation in Polar Bear Research=
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.
Tensions around knowledge co-production in polar bear monitoring and co-management remain.
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.
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>).
=Workshops Summer 2019=
<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>
<small><references /></small>
=Wayfaring as a Sensitizing Method=
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.
[[File:PB skulls.jpg|thumb|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”.
<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’.
Hereafter referred to as "Bearwatch."
'''"Keep going"''' to learn more </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 the summer of 2019, to discuss and document testimonies of Gjoa Haven hunters and other community members.
=The BearWatch Project=
[[File:Mapping TEK Gjoa Haven 2019.jpg|thumb|Participants discussing during BearWatch TEK workshop 2019]]
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.
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. The 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.
<div class="next_choice">
This cut is guided by excerpts of its project reports.</div>
These recordings and workshop notes became the primary materials which were transferred to me, as a new PhD student on the BW project in 2020, with the purpose of having these experiences written out, as to a larger academic audience, through academic publishing, as part of the overarching research project.
=Transdisciplinary Threading=
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...
'''[[Voices of Thunder#purveyor of voices|Click here]] to go (back) to my deliberations around non-Indigenous scholars presenting Indigenous experiences in academic research'''
<div class="next_choice">
But before you set on your way, notice that you have stumbled upon a "Vista".
This '''"Vista"''' is a viewpoint. Go check it out!</div>
'''[[Voices of Thunder#output|Click here]] to go straight to the different narrative outputs that BearWatch scientists, the Gjoa Haven HTA and several community members co-created, building off of these workshops.'''
<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>
=Decision-making=
'''Staying with the trouble: [[Politics of recognition]]'''
You now have a choice to make.
=Coral Harbour First trip 2020=
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?
'''[[Caribou hunt|Invitation]]:Join along for a Caribou hunt'''
[[File:Invitation background.jpg|thumb]]
=Covid-19=
<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.
'''[[Covid 19 personal whereabouts|Explore deeper:]] Personal whereabouts during Covid-19'''
=Covid-19 Remote interviews=
Otherwise,
Take a '''"Detour"''' to look up the meaning of “intra” dependency, as opposed to “interdependency” before you keep going.
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03098265.2024.2406292/Getting Punk and personal publication]
Or,
=Fieldtrip BW team Summer 2021=
==Coral Harbour==
'''"Keep going"''' to keep following this cut instead.</div>
====Driving the Island====
<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>
====Drinking Coffee====
=TEK Workshops=
==Gjoa Haven==
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.
===HTA meetings presentations===
The BearWatch project was designed to include a “Genomics and its Environmental, Economic, Ethical, Legal and Social aspects (GE3LS)” component
===Voices of thunder meetings===
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>.
====Stranding the car====
[[File:Mapping TEK Gjoa Haven 2019.jpg|thumb|Participants discussing during BearWatch TEK workshop 2019]]
====ATV ride====
<div class="next_choice">You have taken a moment to sit down and read what Genome Canada has written on their website about GE3LS.
====Camping at the Weir====
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.
'''[[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'''
You weigh your options,
=Meetings Spring 2022 Gjoa Haven=
====Checking seal dens====
'''"Keep going"''' to move on with the project.
====Collecting ice====
Or,
=Meetings Spring 2022 Coral Harbour=
'''"Detour"''', to read about GE3LS.
====Spending time in Yan's Cabin====
Or,
====Qamutiq building and riding====
====Walking the same road every day====
Check out the '''"Wrecksite"''' of "Knowledge Co-production"</div>
=====Seasonal changes=====
<small><references /></small>
=====Illness=====
<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]]
=Workshops Summer 2019=
=Fall 2022 Coral Harbour=
The Gjoa Haven Hunters and Trappers Association (HTA) doesn't want to "keep going," however.
In text link naar [[Aesthetic Action#Design consultation pre-workshop & workshop Coral Harbour|Design consultation pre-workshop & workshop Coral Harbour]]
They have urgently been trying to get the BearWatch researchers to turn their focus towards the available polar bear harvest quota.
=====remote planning=====
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.
=====illness=====
[[File:Gjoa Haven's Appeal.mp3|thumb]]
=====tension=====
=Going on the Record=
=====absence=====
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.
==Wayfaring Calendar pilot==
<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.
