Voices of Thunder

Estimated time to follow this cut without detours: 20 minutes (excluding 20 minutes animated graphic documentary.)

"We want our “Voices of Thunder” to echo everywhere. We want everyone to know what happened to us. We seek acknowledgment and apologies for suffering the consequences of the quota regulations; a loss of culture and knowledge, as well as increased danger due to the rising number of polar bears around our communities. Inuit knowledge in terms of accuracy and inherent value needs to be recognized and better acknowledged. We want better integration of Inuit knowledge in survey research, like for example accounting for seasonal changes. Scientific monitoring surveys have limitations, we ask that researchers will recognize and take Inuit observations more seriously".

Gjoa Haven HTA (2021)

Uqshuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven)

This is a view across Uqshuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), Nunavut. Most of the events along this cut take place in this community.

Uqshuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven) filmed by Peiwen Li (2021)

Uqshuqtuuq is pronounciated: [uq.suq.tuːq], meaning "lots of fat" in Inuktitut (the language spoken by Inuit), referring to an abundance of marine animals like seals. Its English name, "Gjoa Haven" is pronounced : [Joe.ha.ven] and was given by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen during his expedition to find the Northwest passage. Gjoa Haven was named after his wooden ship "Gjoa". It is the only hamlet on King William Island, located in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut, Canada. Its current population is estimated around 1400 people.

My name is Saskia de Wildt, and I visited Gjoa Haven for the first time in 2021- during the second year of my PhD research.

By then, however, I already knew quite a bit about the history of polar bear hunting restriction in Gjoa Haven.

"Keep Going" to read what I had learnt before I ever came to the community.

Or,

Take a "Detour" to read an abstract of this cut

Detour: Abstract

Inuit and Polar Bears

Polar bears and humans share an important relationship in Inuit culture.

Within Inuit ways of knowing and being, polar bears are to be respected as powerful predators, and appreciated for being a source of sustenance.

In Canada, Inuit have a right to hunt polar bears. Such hunting takes place under "harvesting quota" regulations, and are managed per Polar Bear Management Unit (PBMU). Hunters from Gjoa Haven, Cambridge Bay and Taloyoak share the M’Clintock Channel (MC) PBMU.

Fgure 1: 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.

Polar Bear Quota Reductions

At the start of this century, however, polar bears seemed to be declining in numbers, and the hunting quota in the MC PBMU was severely reduced.

Between 2001 and 2004 the MC PBMU was subjected to a three-year polar bear moratorium (a full suspension of hunting).

And in 2005 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 until 2015, while Taloyoak did not receive any tags from the MC management unit between 2001 and 2015.

Impacts for Gjoa Haven

Both Taloyoak and Cambridge Bay- unlike the residents of Gjoa Haven- however, also have traditional hunting grounds outside of the MC PBMU. So, when the quota was so drastically reduced, the community of Gjoa Haven was disproportionately impacted.

No other community in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories has experienced such a (near) moratorium over such an extended period of time.

Signing the MoU (illustration by Danny Aaluk, 2021)

Seeking Recognition

After two generations of hardly being able to hunt polar bears, the Gjoa Haven hunters and Trappers Association have asked the researchers of the BearWatch project to help them gain recognition for the impacts such quota-decisions have had in terms of lost income, loss of culture, and loss of intergenerational knowledge transfer.

Notice, that you have stumbled upon a Vista. This Vista is a viewpoint, it will help you orient. This one is called "The Ethical Space of Engagement".

"Check out the Vista"

Or,

"Keep Going" to learn more about my PhD research in the BearWatch project, sought to assist in sharing the impacts of these quota reductions across multiple audiences.

Vista: The Ethical Space of Engagement

Joining the BearWatch Project

My PhD research is part of a larger project: ‘Bearwatch: Monitoring Impacts of Arctic Climate Change using Polar Bears, Genomics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge’.

In the summer of 2019, just before I joined the project in the fall, two workshops were co-organized to discuss and document community testimonies on the multiple impacts of the polar bear quota reductions on Gjoa Haven hunters and other community members.

The recordings of these workshops and its accompanying notes were transferred to me in 2020. I was requested to translate Gjoa Haven’s experiences into an academic publication, as to share them with a larger academic audience.

This "assignment" made me feel uneasy however;

"Who was I to convey the lived experiences of people who I had never even met, and provide context to a situation that I had no connection to?"

What would you do?

The most straightforward solution to these questions seems to be to organize a call with the Gjoa Haven HTA, and have a conversation about what they expect from such a publication. The Principle Investigators of the project are supportive and are willing to organize such a meeting.

"Keep going" to find out what happens after setting-up this call.

Or,

First gather more information on the workshops that were conducted in 2019. "Detour to Cut 3".

Or,

"Stay with the Trouble", to explore some of the complexities underlying such a project.

Stay with the trouble: The Politics of Recognition

Detour to Cut 3: Workshops Summer 2019

Ongoing Conversations

With support of my supervisors a special meeting with the Gjoa Haven HTA was organized to discuss how they wanted their testimonies to be shared. A total of five separate meetings took place between the Gjoa Haven HTA, myself, and three BearWatch PI’s In 2020 and 2021 - each lasting about three hours.

Among multiple other insights, this led to a clear articulation of the main objectives of Gjoa Haven HTA representatives for publishing their experiences;

We realized that additional avenues of knowledge creation were needed in parallel to academic publishing, if we were to pursue such a broad spectrum of recognition.

You have run into an "Ice-Pressure Ridge".

It's 2020 and we are in the middle of a Covid-pandemic.

Feel your way across the Ice-Pressure Ridge to understand how this work with the Gjoa Haven HTA was subjected to conditions created by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ice-pressure ridge: Covid 19 Personal Whereabouts