Wayfaring the BearWatch Project
The land invites one to move away from anthropocentric tellings - towards narrations of becoming knowledgeable in company with the seasons, snow, ice, wind, lichens, and caribou. Such stories leave room for us as researchers, but aren’t about us. (or better quote, Ingold, Ermine or EEE)
Media
Acknowledgements
An explicit note of acknowledgement for this cut should go out in particular to George Konana, in Gjoa Haven, and Leonard Netser in Coral Harbour. Both men have taken me out on the land, the sea and the ice on multiple occasions between 2020-2023. They patiently took time to introduce me to their land and explained how they found their way in various ways and under multiple conditions. Although they graciously responded to my many questions, I am most grateful to their valuable lessons of guiding me to tag along and just be present for the ride.
Becoming a Wayfarer
My name is Saskia de Wildt. This cut, focusses on my Phd research on the challenge of conciliating western sciences and IQ in community-based polar bear monitoring research. More precisely, it traces my processes as I asks the question of what it means to practice knowledge conciliation under guidance of the principles of the ‘Ethical Space of Engagement’ (ESE, Ermine, 2007) and the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Protocols for Equitable and Ethical Engagement (EEE, 2020) rather than based on data-driven needs.
To engage with such a sensitizing question, entails- as will become clear- multiple shift. A shift of positioning; from distanced observer or reader to becoming an entangled “subject” – and a practical shift from operating based on fixed principles, to a practice of ongoing negotiations and ethical encounter. As you make your way through this knowledge-land-scape, this shift will also apply to you . Depending on the choices you make, you might shift from being a reader of my research, to becoming a wayfarer alongside me.
Knowledge Conciliation in Polar Bear Research
There is little disagreement regarding polar bears as a species of importance - whether as a keystone predator, a sentinel of changing Arctic environments, a source of sustaining more-than-human relations, or as sources of income through guided sports hunts. The reconciliation of such differences of valuing and knowing polar bears within polar bear management is, on the other hand, less straightforward. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ, the Inuit way of knowing and being in the world, or “that what Inuit have always known to be true”) considers humans and polar bears, for example, as traditionally co-existing in a relationship of larger land-based entanglements that requires harmony and balance. Western formulations of wildlife conservation, on the other hand, typically, conceptualize polar bears as a species in need of human intervention to ensure their survival. The importance of reconciling such seemingly opposite ways in which human/bear relationships matter, has increasingly been recognized in Canada.
This is partly the result of the efforts of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), amongst which their reconciliatory principles and their 94 Calls to Action. It is, however, arguably more directly the result of Inuit trailblazing efforts to formalize Territorial Land Claims Agreements in wildlife co-management systems across Inuit Nunangat: the Inuit homelands, the preferred term for specifically, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik (Northern Québec) and Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador) in Canada).
The polar bear co-management regime in the Nunavut Settlement Area, for example, is based on the 1993 Nunavut Land Claim Agreement (NLCA), that states that “Inuit must always take part in decisions on wildlife”, while “the guiding principles and concepts of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) are to be described and made an integral part of the management of wildlife and habitat.” Despite such formalized co-management, tensions remain. Data-driven conservation, management and monitoring of polar bears in Inuit Nunangat, while necessary to address significant data gaps on population trends and a rapidly changing Arctic environment, has also proven itself a challenging environment for the conciliation of different ways of knowing and being.
This cut explores the methodology of wayfaring as a potential transformative ethical practice of knowledge conciliation. It centers the unfolding of a particular research project: BearWatch, a Genome Canada funded community-based polar bear research project. Excerpts of project reports serve as a guiding cut, while you, I, and multiple others may thread our own corresponding paths alongside it.
Wayfaring as a Sensitizing Method
Use text from 1.2 word doc here
But before you keep going, notice that you have stumbled upon a Vista. This Vista is a viewpoint, it will help you orient. It is called "The Ethical Space of Engagement". Perhaps it will help you direct your course along the way.
The BearWatch Project
The track you are currently following will cut along the unfolding developments of the Genome Canada funded research project called ‘Bearwatch: Monitoring Impacts of Arctic Climate Change using Polar Bears, Genomics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge’ – hereafter referred to as ‘Bearwatch’. Bearwatch ran between 2015 and 2023, during which it sought to meaningfully engage IQ in its development of a new non-invasive genomic polar bear monitoring toolkit. The project was a collaboration between northern communities in the Nunavut Settlement Region and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, HTAs in Gjoa Haven and Coral Harbor, the Inuvialuit Game Council, the governments of Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon, the Canadian Rangers, and researchers and students from multiple universities across Canada and beyond.
Most researchers and policymakers in the field of polar bear science more generally – and on the BearWatch project particularly – are trained in a variety of natural science disciplines of the western academic institute, or they are Inuit knowledge and rights holders. I, myself, am a white, queer, settler-guest researcher from the Netherlands with a background in the applied arts and social sciences. Approaching this research context as a non-Inuit researcher from such a different cultural and disciplinary place of beginning than most other Bearwatch team members and polar bear monitoring practitioners, has required me to negotiate and navigate my own way alongside many of the project’s activities.
This particular cut allows you trace the unfolding of the BearWatch project along multiple (sometimes parallel) tracks in a manner that also allows for you to thread your own way through this knowledge-land-scape. As such, this cut is not so much about deriving at conclusive take-aways about ethical knowledge conciliation within BearWatch, as much as it about extending material opportunities for you, the reader, to become knowledgeable alongside my creative practice (auto-)ethnography with the research project.
Point of Decision-making
Before you head further down this cut, you have a choice to make. Will you trace the most straightforward path across the BearWatch project, engaging just with the descriptive elements of my research? Or will you thread your own way alongside me, becoming an intra-dependent maker of meaning? The former choice will be a more disconnected, conventional experience, whereas the latter will be more of an immersed narration, that places you “within” my knowledge-land-scape.
In this line of thought you realize it might be helpful to look up the meaning of “intra” dependency, as opposed to “interdependency”. Then you realize this entails taking off your mitts and taking your phone out of your pocket. It’s freezing, and your phone might not last long in these temperatures. If you choose to keep going instead, you will move straight to reading about the TEK workshops that were held in the community of Gjoa Haven in 2019, as to inform a feasibility study on future community-driven polar bear fecal sample collection.
Detour: look up the meaning of "intra-dependency"
TEK Workshops
Polar bear populations- and thus Indigenous harvesting- are, under the international agreement on the conservation of polar bears, to be managed ‘in accordance with sound conservation practices based on the best available scientific data available’ (Lentfer, 1974). The NLCA states furthermore that ‘Inuit must always take part in decisions on wildlife’ (NTI 2004), while part 1 of its wildlife act, states that ‘the guiding principles and concepts of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) are to be described and made an integral part of the management of wildlife and habitat’ (Wildlife Act 2003).
In response to the ‘legal authority of land claim agreements, asking that IQ/TEK be used to make management decisions’, and ‘to increase community ownership of polar bear monitoring through community-based collection and knowledge sharing’ the BearWatch project was designed to include a “Genomics and its Environmental, Economic, Ethical, Legal and Social aspects (GE3LS)” component (BearWatch research proposal, 2016 p.30-31).
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 his 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).
You have taken a moment to sit down and read Arlidge's thesis. As you are about to check out what Genome Canada has written on their website about GE3LS, someone brings up the existence of a nearby shipwreck: Knowledge “integration”. They suggest you go check it out to get another perspective on bringing IQ together with western sciences.
You weigh your options, as there is also another workshop lined up for tomorrow. The Gjoa Haven HTA has urgently been trying to get the BearWatch researchers to turn their focus towards the available polar bear harvest quota. 20 people will come to talk about how a harvesting moratorium from 2001 has had reverberating impacts on them up until today.
Wrecksite: Knowledge "inclusion"
Workshops Summer 2019
The M’Clintock Channel (MC) Polar Bear Management Unit (PBMU) used by hunters from Gjoa Haven, Cambridge Bay and Taloyoak (see figure 1), was in 2001 subjected to a three-year polar bear moratorium (a full suspension of hunting). In 2005, the moratorium was lifted and 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, while Taloyoak did not sign the MOU at all, and therefore did not receive any tags from the MC management unit between 2001 and 2015. No other community in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories has experienced such a (near) moratorium over such an extended period of time. Despite a more recent rise in tags in 2022, these impacts continue to be felt today. Based on a desire for recognition and acknowledgement of the impact of these polar bear quota regulations, two workshops were co-organized in addition to the original TEK workshops that were planned to take place over the summer of 2019, to discuss and document the testimonies of Gjoa Haven hunters and other community members
_Figure_1_Map_of_the_MC_PBMU..jpg)
The workshops were advertised over the radio in both English and Inuktitut (Inuit language), and interested individuals signed up through the HTA. One workshop was held May 15, 2019 in the evening with 10 participants and one on May 16 in the morning with 11 participants. These participants comprised mainly older male community members, many of whom had hunted, or still hunt polar bears. There were two female participants in each workshop. Three of the participants were between the ages of 20 and 40, with the remainder older. These two workshops focused specifically on the impacts of polar bear hunting quota reductions on the community. The workshop questions were co-designed by the BW academic researchers and HTA representatives and were asked in both English and Inuktitut to prompt discussion. The format however remained open-ended, meaning that "off-script" discussions were encouraged during the workshop, and occasionally specific members were asked to participate in answering particular questions because of their connection to the issue, as identified in previous interviews or by other community members. Two BW researchers and an interpreter would ask the pre-designed questions and prompt discussion, while a third BW researcher made notes. Both workshops were audio-recorded.
The BearWatch PI's and Gjoa Haven HTA-board want to use the recordings of these impacts workshop as primary materials for an academic paper. They ask you to write it, even though you have just joined the project and have not yet set foot into the community.
What to do?
Although you understand that writing “about” other people’s experiences doesn’t exactly sound ethical, you have little time and need to keep going. Your first fieldwork trip to Coral Harbour is upcoming, and you need to prepare for that. Besides, the Gjoa Haven HTA wants a publication, no need to complicate things further. Alternatively you can stay with the trouble and explore in what ways the “Politics of recognition” complicates such writing practices. Maybe you have already leaned into such tensions, and all that is left now, is to organize a conference call and have a conversation with the Gjoa Haven HTA about these complexities- which will redirect you (back) to Cut 1: Voices of Thunder.
Stay with the trouble: The politics of recognition
Detour to Cut 1: Voices of Thunder Testimonies
(Re)turn to Cut 1: Voices of Thunder Conversations
Coral Harbour First Trip 2020
Alongside funding from Genome Canada, the project PI’s also successfully applied to the Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada/ World Wildlife Fund to fund ‘traditional knowledge research and a denning survey in Coral Harbour, Nunavut’ (Schedule H, 2020, March 31. This intended study included documenting polar bear TEK in Coral Harbour, surveys of vacated dens by locals to collect a variety of samples and data, and the initiation of a collaborative effort with the high school to train students in land-based surveys.
Covid-19
The den survey and TEK collection activities in Coral Harbour were planned for March and April, but were postponed due to COVID-19. The Hamlet of Coral Harbour requested outside visitors stay away the day before most of the BearWatch team was set to arrive in the Hamlet, and the BearWatch PI’s respected their wishes. I had, however, travelled North a day early, and arrived in the community on exactly the day that the Covid-19 epidemic was declared pandemic. Non-resident travel bans came into effect in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories immediately, as well as physical distancing requirements within communities.