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| In following with Karen Barad I recognize readers and authors (and many other more-than-human agents) as intra-dependently entangled within constellations of matter and meaning. In fact, we have already started to move forward alongside each other in our emergent processes of becoming knowledgeable. The idea here is that, instead of me presenting a descriptive narrative on ethical engagement and ethical space, we get to perform its mechanisms together – side by side.
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| The company for us to be- and think with varies, but emerge for a large part from the encounters I had as I threaded my way through my fieldwork in the hamlets of Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven) and Salliq (Coral Harbour) of Kitikmeot- and Kivalliq regions in the territory of Nunavut respectively. I was, for example invited to join along with caribou hunts, joined in with ice-fishing, rode an All-Terrain Vehicle to camp out at a fishing weir, collected ice, and took rides in the back of a qamutik (sled) to spend time at cabins, or check on breathing-holes and dens of seals. Also, within the communities, I learnt about the meaning of opening prayers at special meetings, and igloo building, as well as the “marginal”, every-day, material logistics that are part of land-based monitoring research projects in the Arctic, like car repairs, cargo transport, seasonal travel, and getting stuck for days during my regional travels multiple times due to blizzards and cancelled flights. Collectively, I refer to all those practical experiences that emerged as part of my methodological wayfaring, as ‘aesthetic encounters’- a term that I adapt from Robinson and Martin’s ‘aesthetic action’ . I look at the opportunities that emerge within such encounters for enunciating and conciliating different kinds of knowledges. What kind of spaces open up? What insights emerge within such spaces? And what possibilities for cross-cultural exchange, beyond data, become possible?
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| To engage such questions, however, while retaining the dynamic of open, affective and lively engagement with the world and each other in the way that the ESE calls for- we need to first, pay attention to the ways that we come to know the world. These ways are, I argue, connected to how we move through the world. Instead of mere observation, documentation, accumulation and representation, which reinforces subject/object divides, I argue for an ethos of ‘co-forming patterns of responsiveness, attention, desire and communication’, by way of wayfaring.
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| <span class="next_choice">You have reached a split in the track. Moving forward threads you into the the unfolding knowledge-land-scape of the Bearwatch project. This cut is all about the processes of side-by-side wayfaring. Allowing yourself to be redirected, detours you to a different cut in space and time: Cut 3 Aesthetic Action. That cut is all about the sites in which we encounter each other as we move along the knowledge-land-scape. Which direction do you take?</span>
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| <span class="detour link" data-page-title="Aesthetic_Action" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Aesthetic Action#Aesthetic action and the ESE|Detour: Aesthetic Action]]</span>
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| =4. TEK workshops
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| 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.
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| 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).
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