Cut 2 Abstract

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 monitoring research is often selectively engaged with, rendered technical, and validated through the epistemic categories of western-based sciences. Ethical knowledge conciliation in accordance with Indigenous principles of “ethical engagement” or Inuit protocols of ethical and equitable engagement, however, require a rethinking of the ontological nature of what knowledge “is” on the part of western-educated scientists. This cut re-configuratively traces three case-studies of “aesthetic action” that were part of the community-based monitoring research project “BearWatch” project, i) Community-based participatory filmmaking, ii) the organization of two (pre-workshops), and iii) “Mx. Science”, a diffractive arts-based intervention. To see how its intra-active practices and processes may produce the “ethical spaces” that are required for ethical knowledge conciliation. I ask what kinds of spaces open up through these aesthetic actions? What possibilities for cross-cultural engagements can we find in those spaces? What terms of engagement emerge? What slippages do they reveal and what can we learn from such moments, when it comes to im/possibilities of ethical knowledge conciliation?

Return to Cut 2: "Aesthetic Action"