Preparation Gjoa Haven Workshop

Now that I had a list of of solid and applicable guidelines to the workshop agenda, it was time to organize the workshop itself.

Seeking and preparing a space that would be fitting, and provide the right conditions to space of exchange and open-ness, we decided on the ... center. A room in which the community sometimes organizes drumdances and other cultural affairs. We also found a caterer, and decided on a menu for each day including the community feast on the first night. Thirdly, we needed to scout an appropriate site to build a Qaggiq: a big communal igloo, especially for gatherings - to be built on the second day of our workshop.

Of course much more needed to be done. Follow the side-trail to get a full understanding of all the preparation that was required for the final workshop. Alternatively, keep going, to jump straight into the workshop.

Invitation: Workshop preparations

3 day Workshop Gjoa Haven

At the evening of the 21 November it was time to start our Gathering.

Attendees from the south who would join for the gathering, including Bettina ...., the director of Genome Canada and Les ...., the .... of Genome Canada had arrived the previous afternoon. Marsha Brannigan, recently retired wildlife biologist for the NWT, who had run the BearWatch project, Kimberley McClintock project manager for BearWatch, and prof. Graham Whitelaw and prof. Stephen Lougheed, PI's of the project also arrived three days prior to the gathering.

The next parts of this cut will take you through the final gathering per agenda point. Each session will be accompanied by guidelines, insights, motivations or research questions that underly the decision made for that segment.

Community Feast & Movie Screening

24 community members, including our research partners and interpretor showed up to our opening feast and movie screening. Apart from community members, there were in total five Queens University researchers, one former government biologist and two Genome Canada funders present for the evening. During this first evening we had no online participants calling in.

As discussed in the pre-workshop we took plenty of time for people to arrive and get comfortable. Attendees were greeted by Mx. Science, and we made sure that elders were seated in the comfortable couches and received something to drink.

Once, we felt that people had had enough time to settle in, we opened the gathering with some words from the Gjoa Haven HTA vice-chair, James Qitsualik, who had lead the project within the community. We then started the screening of three community co-created movies: Voices of Thunder, Pihhiq, and the throatsinging film with Kathy and Janet.

Exhibition Danny Aaluk

During the gathering I had installed an ongoing exhibition of Danny's work.

This exhibition was physically accessible, within the Gathering space, as well as digitally accessible through the Kumospace.

Art Gallery Danny Aaluk by gingertheworld

Building Igloo

Mx. Science Hosting

Return to Cut 2 "Mx. Science"

Closing

Detour: BW Final Reporting and evaluations