Fall 2022 Gjoa Haven

After losing a week in travel delays, there is a lot of preparation left to do for the final workshop in Gjoa Haven- starting with the organization of a "special meeting" with the HTA to finetune the agenda, invitees, and logistical set-up of the meeting.

Luckily, it is much easier to set up such meetings in Gjoa Haven, than it was in Coral Harbour. Due to the much wider relational network here, it was more clear how to engage in collective dialogue and logistically produce a gathering that meets community desires.

Keep going to find out what the final workshop agendas in both communities emerged to be, how we evaluated them and what was reported back to funders. You may also detour to a different cut that guides you along our preparation and workshop activities step-by-step. Taking this detour brings you into Cut 2: Aesthetic Action and provides an opening to engage with the affective dynamics of this final gathering in Gjoa Haven.

Cut 2: Gjoa Haven (Pre-)Gathering

Winter 2022 Final Workshops

In Gjoa Haven we organized a three-day gathering, that was preceded by a two-day pre-workshop that fed into the design of the gathering. The final gathering was kicked-off the evening before with a community feast and the screening of the three movies that were co-created with the community and the HTA. Following these screenings Marsha Branigan, the recently retired government-biologist of the North-western Territories, presented on the the governance structure of polar bears as to set an informative background for the upcoming three days.

The first day consisted of presentations from the BearWatch scientists.

The second day was designed to be a collective exercise, providing an opening to encounter each other in renewed ways and gain insights into what knowledge conciliation beyond a data-driven approach could look like.

The third day consisted of a collective discussion that included a community-panel on "living with polar bears", bringing together community insights, science and management to set a direction for future work.

Although in Coral Harbour we did not manage to organize a pre-workshop, we did combine our two-days workshop with multiple school activities - including a sponsored lunch, a science bingo, and the collective building of a Qamutiq, that was donated to the school after.

Keep going to find out how we evaluated both workshops and what was reported back to funders. You may also detour to a different cut that guides you along the preparation and workshop activities step-by-step. Taking this detour brings you into Cut 2: Aesthetic Action and provides an opening to engage with the affective dynamics of this final gathering in Coral Harbour.

Cut 2:Coral Harbour Gathering

BW Final Reporting

Both workshops were evaluated in different ways.

The three-day workshop in Gjoa Haven had multiple evaluation moments. One evaluative moment took place right after the the building of the Igloo on day-two. everyone who had participated in the activity gather into a warm tent and were served soup. Afterward we each shared our throughts on the activity while eating soup and pilot biscuits with spam. The second collective evaluative moment took place on the morning after the three-day workshop, in the same space we had gathered for the other parts of the workshop. Present at this second evaluation were two elders, the Gjoa Haven HTA vice-chair and our interpretor, as well as the BearWatch funders, PI's, the former government biologist of NWT, and two BearWatch researchers including me. The latter evaluation was lead my me, and the questions were based on key concepts that had emerged from my auto-ethnographic notes, literature and, most importantly, on the terms of engagement that were drafted during the pre-gathering and that were agreed upon across the workshop organizers prior to our gathering.

In Coral Harbour, the funders did not join, nor did one of our PI's and the other researcher, that had been present in Gjoa Haven. Our local PI Leonard Netser was unavailable for the final gathering. The conditions had furthermore not been in place for us to organize a pre-workshop with community members during the earlier visit in the community. Instead, we opted to hold a smaller pre-workshop meeting with the two BearWatch PI's, the former government biologist of NWT and I, as well as a meeting with the local interpretor, who we had hired to work with us in Coral Harbour. This pre-workshop was prefaced on "lessons-learnt" from the Gjoa Haven Gathering, without presuming that the terms of engagement drafted in the previous community would apply in Coral Harbour as well. During this pre-workshop meeting, and with the input of the interpretor, we agreed upon certain processes to be applied in the Corl Harbour gathering. Subsequently we evaluated these processes in a post-workshop evaluation with the same group of people.

In February 2023, the next year, I conducted eight follow-up individual interviews with the Southern researchers, government biologist, funders of the BearWatch project and the interpretor from Gjoa Haven to discuss their experiences of the workshops, two months after it had taken place.

Not all insights are immediate, or measurable. Sometimes, possibilities to think with- emerge from in-between the lines, rather than within them - and they may take time to unveil themselves. My efforts to employ creative methods and aesthetic action, as a way to create new conditions and possibilities to encounter each other during the final gatherings, had seemingly succeeded in some ways, while meeting resistance in others. While recovering from an intense final season of the BearWatch project, slowly but surely, a figure, with a renewed meaning materializes: The Shipwreck.

Explore this landmark insight, that became a defining feature of this knowledge-land-scape.

Or keep going to reach the end of this cut.

Landmark: The Wreck-site

Another Point of Beginning

Toolkit Project proposals Wayfaring / ESE / setting the table

Detour:Cut 2 Aesthetic Action Point of Beginning

Detour:Cut 2 Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch

Detour:Cut 1 Voices of Thunder

Detour:Cut 3 Wayfaring the BearWatch Project