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.
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.
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.
Explore this landmark insight, that became a defining feature of this knowledge-land-scape.
Or keep going to reach the end of this cut.Another Point of Beginning
You have reached "Another Point of Beginning". These are not conclusive endings to my research, but rather perform at the cusp of emergence: They are a story so-far. Some of these points mark the end of funding cycles or project activities. Or they mark the limitations and scope of this particular PhD dissertation. Others are trails, and tracks that have faded out, as they remained un-revisited. They however always mark one moment along an ongoing animate line of correspondence between multiple agencies, and they usually allow for continuing with another cut.
This is where we take account for our journey so far. This journey is always partial, and so are the insights we have built on our way. You can trace the path you have taken through this Knowledge-Land-Scape by clicking the "trace" bar in the upper left corner of your screen. It will allow you to account for some of the insights that your journey has given you. The map below shows you the full extent of wayfaring possibilities of the scape.
Beyond the Cut
The wayfaring pilot was not developed further after the making the paper prototype in spring of 2022, in respect for Leonard's wishes to not further collaboration with the Bearwatch project. However, the insights that emerged from the mapping interviews, the making of the prototype, the moments that Leonard Netser took me out on the land, and our conversations, have fed further into my thinking about knowledge, and the design of this knowledge-land-scape as an extended sight for audiences to engage with my research. It has helped me to think about wayfaring as a method to think with-, and as a potential method to think-with-others. Such thinking would have undoubtedly have been much richer than it currently is, would Leonard and I have found another opening to continue our conversations. I am nevertheless thankful for the conversations so far.
The insights and spaces that materialized through the processes of wayfaring and prospective aesthetic action within the BearWatch project have materialized in project proposals for continued work in Gjoa Haven on new term terms of engagement. Instead of participation and integration of Inuit Knowledge, follow-up research is formulated from assumptions of co-leadership that is preceded by a "setting of the table", including the negotation of knowledge conciliation method and decision-making protocols under guidance of the ICC EEE protocols and according to the principles of Ethical Engagement.
w “Voices of Thunder” Animated Graphic Documentary has been screened multiple times in Gjoa Haven, and shared on the Gjoa Haven community Facebook page, with the explicit call to share the movie and show it to friends and family within and outside of Gjoa Haven. It was also screened at several academic conferences related to the (Canadian) Arctic and wildlife management. Among them was a plenary screening at the Annual Science Meeting of ArcticNet in Toronto, 2022, and it was screened as an opening movie during Critical Arctic Studies conference in Rovaniemi, 2023. We furthermore circulated the movie in the film festival circuit, where it got accepted and screened at several relevant festivals like; Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival (SVAFMF) in Toronto, 2023, Aulajut: Nunavut International Film Festival in Iqaluit, 2023, Dawson City International Short Film Festival in Dawson, 2024 and the Available Light Film Festival in Yukon, 2024. Finally, it was taken up in the online collection of imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in 2023.
The film was not only disseminated by BearWatch researchers. The HTA screened the movie at a regional meeting during which the HTA’s of Gjoa Haven, Taloyoak and Cambridge Bay met with the Kitikmeot Regional Wildlife Board. The film was received with praise from the regional board and the other two communities. A Member of the Legislative Assembly, who resides in Gjoa Haven, leveraged the film, together with the “Winds of Change” website in a letter to the Minister of Environment to call attention to Gjoa Haven testimonies and request ‘a detailed update’ on the ‘department’s work with the Gjoa Haven Hunters and Trappers Association to manage this subpopulation’.
As for this cut and its testimonial reading, we invite audience members to engage with Gjoa Haven appeals in ways that feel appropriate to ones reconciliatory responsibilities. We nevertheless hope to inspire our academic audience(s), especially those researching wildlife in Nunavut (and beyond), to recognize themselves as structurally implicated in the structures that have contributed to the experiences to which the testimonies in this manuscript speak, and explore how such structures manifest in their own research context.
Our article, Voices of Thunder: Polar Bear Quota Reduction Impacts in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut - From Purveying Voices to Accepting Testimony, was submitted for peer review at the Arctic Science Journal in January 2025.
Toolkit
Project proposals
Wayfaring / ESE / setting the table
Detour:Cut 2 Aesthetic Action Point of Beginning
Detour:Cut 2 Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch