On 1st March 2021, Scotland-based researchers from social science, political geography, and multidisciplinary backgrounds met online to discuss stakeholder engagement and knowledge production in local and Indigenous contexts in the Arctic. The theme of this networking meeting was Engaging Local and Indigenous Communities with a focus on exploring how to enhance collaboration between Scottish higher education institutions and research organisations in Scotland-Arctic research.
This event was the fourth event in a network series titled “Scotland’s Role and Contribution in a Changing Arctic Environment” supported by the Scottish Government through the Nordic and Arctic Unit Directorate for External Affairs. These network events intend to lay the foundation for consolidating Scottish expertise on Arctic matters and build an interdisciplinary network for more consistent involvement of Scottish institutions in Arctic research and international forums.
This event featured a great line-up of speakers to showcase some interesting Scotland-Arctic research on how best to engage with local and Indigenous communities during research and proceeded to an open discussion with attendees to explore future opportunities for meaningful engagement in Scotland and Arctic contexts. A recording of the event is available online – click here. If you attended the session, or watched the recording, and wanted to contribute further thoughts and join a dedicated Scotland-Arctic mailing list, you can by filling out this survey – click here. There will also be two consolidation events to reflect on this network series and start the initial steps towards a Scotland-wide Arctic research network on the 15th (click here) and 17th March (click here).
Professor Gisele Arruda, Honorary Tutor at the University of Aberdeen and Social Scientist at Anvivo Polar Research, US Arctic Committee, opened the event as Chair with an observation on the pressures that glacier and sea ice retreat is putting on Sub-Arctic and Arctic landscapes observing that the major drivers of change are energy security, transportation (new trade routes) and climate change. These are leading to serious social science impacts both locally and globally. Professor Arruda comments that whilst climate change impacts the geophysical landscapes, it also disturbs and changes the lifestyles of communities and indigenous populations in the Arctic. Climate change disrupts the ecosystem and the balance of ecosystem services that many rely upon. Professor Arruda highlights that the meaning of ‘place’ is very important in the Arctic and that there is a strong sense of connection to the landscape. Traditional knowledge of local communities is very important and should be valued. It is therefore important to engage early with communities to have conversations on climate change. Professor Arruda concludes by underlining that local and indigenous communities have traditional values, activities and practices that have contributed to the development of unique economies and community lifestyles. The voices, perspectives and knowledge from local and indigenous people can add value to current scientific discourse.
Professor Alison Brown, Professor in Anthropology and Museum Studies at the University of Aberdeen, provided an overview of several projects that engaged with local and indigenous communities in Arctic settings. The first, Material Histories: Scots and Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian Fur Trade was concerned with exploring the Fur trade in the North East of Scotland that linked with families in Canada. The work of Glasgow museum connections helped link families between Scotland and Canada, highlighting the historic links of Scotland and various Arctic communities and regions. The second project that Professor Brown discussed was the Mittimatalik Arnait Miqsuqtuit Collective: Pond Inlet Women’s Sewing founded by Nancy Wachowich and Sheila Katsak in 2015. The project aimed to record the traditional sewing practices of this area and 74 masterclasses were recorded with Inuit seamstresses describing different sewing skills, followed by four short compilations. The exhibitions featured at the Cultural History Museum in Oslo as well as the British Museum, McLean Centre for Indigenous and Canadian Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario. In addition to this, whilst not an Arctic project, Professor Brown also shared some experiences from the Blackfoot collections project in UK museums that might be relevant to this network. The project aimed to raise awareness of Blackfoot knowledge into museum, data bases and advise staff on traditional care methods of artefacts so that they can be curated in a culturally responsive manner. It was key to work directly with communities in order to understand community perspectives as the stakes are much higher for communities: for us it might be just a project but for them, it is their lives. Professor Brown highlights that for successful projects, it is important to better understand how to support community visits, taking on board ethical, financial and emotional costs to community members. Finally, Professor Brown discussed the Sakha Summer Festival and Cultural Revitalisation which aimed to explore silencing of cultural memory during times of ideological oppression alongside several other key aims. Knowledge exchange was a key aspect of this study.
To conclude Professor Brown outlined four considerations that she felt were important for this type of research: Community input and consultation from the start, build in enough time to work with partners, funding, as this kind of work is expensive, and finally, to expect the unexpected.
Dr.scient. Finn Danielsen, Lead of UArctic Thematic Network on Collaborative Resource Management, Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology (NORDECO) for Greenland and Denmark was the next speaker and discussed the work of the thematic network. The main objective for the network is capacity development and community monitoring. The founding partners of this network are Greenland Climate Research Centre, Hokkaido University, University of Alaska and NORDECO (Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology). So far, the network has organised a seminar, an experience exchange workshop in Hokkaido and a training course in Nuuk. At the seminar, one of the key topics of discussion was best practices to engage with Arctic communities and how to increase public resource managers in engaging in participatory research. Following this, Dr Danielsen also provided an overview of the course that was held in Greenland in which it was discussed how in practice, government ministers and officials can engage and be supported in their effort to support the environment and making decisions that impact the environment and other decisions related to natural resource management in Greenland. One thing that was highlighted from this course was the resources on the digital platform PISUNA-net. This platform helps ministers systematically listen to the opinions and knowledge of community members on issues revolving natural resources. It allows communities to report directly to municipal authorities. All of this information is then held in PISUNA-net so that the decision makers at any level have access to this information and see the perspectives from these communities. It allows for decision making at the most appropriate level. Dr Danielsen explained that this is important as we are currently seeing the largest distribution of species change caused by climate change in 25 thousand years. This is impacting ecosystems, health, and economies. Adapting to this requires respect, collaboration, exchange and cross-weaving of indigenous, industry and community based, formal and academic science. To conclude, Dr Danielsen highlights that scientist executed monitoring and participatory monitoring is very different. With participatory monitoring, decision making can occur at a faster rate at the local level than scientific monitoring does (although this can influence higher level decision making it is at a slower rate). Without involvement of local people: the monitoring may sometimes be isolated, academic exercises with limited impacts in the ‘real’ world.
Dr Steve Taylor, Director of Centre for Recreational Tourism Research at the University of the Highlands and Islands spoke next on the Transnational Collaborative approaches to addressing tourism issues facing communities across the Cool North. Dr Taylor discussed three northern periphery Arctic programmes that he has been involved in which focuses on engaging and working with indigenous communities and exploring the tourism aspects of community development. These projects are; the development of slow adventure in Northern Territories which promotes slow immersive journeys through natural places. The second, is a scientific tourism project called SCITOUR. This is a new marketing concept lead by the University of Lapland, working with partners in Greenland and Iceland with the aim to use scientific tourism products and educational tools. It is important to engage with communities to ensure that these experiences are culturally sensitive and have a meaningful impact for communities. The final project that Dr Taylor discussed is called Sustainable Heritage Areas: Partnerships for Ecotourism (SHAPE). Dr Taylor comments that although these are applied research projects there will be opportunities for academic output related to these projects. Collaborative research of this nature addresses common challenges like youth migration and overcoming issues of peripherality, as well as providing transnational sharing of good practice and learning from different local contexts. Aim of SHAPE was to develop partnerships that might not traditionally work together to explore innovative approaches to tourism that provides local economic value. To conclude, Dr Taylor highlighted that the value of local engagement is key, and it is important to bring local communities together to achieve meaningful impact. There is a real affinity with Arctic partners due to commonalities and common challenges.
Dr Katerina Strani, Head of Cultural Studies section and Deputy Director of the Intercultural Research Centre at Heriot Watt University presented next on present and future Scottish- Arctic collaborations, highlighting some language and culture projects that she has worked on recently. The first project, IndyLan, was funded by EU to develop apps as an educational tool for users to learn Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Saami, Basque and Galician languages as well as the local cultures associated with the languages. It is hoped that this would attract wider interest in learning indigenous languages and their cultures. The Arctic partner for this project is the Saami council in Karasjok, Norway and one of the community members commented recently that Covid-19 restrictions were the first time that there has been a border between Norway and Finland in their areas. In addition to this, Dr Strani then discussed another project which aimed to produce an app that had had language and cultural information provided for refugees. This was based on the moving languages app which is a language app for refugees. This involved work from the RADAR project and involved Arctic partners Learnmera Oy, in Helsinki, Finland and Flkuniversitetet, Sweden (adult education association). In developing this, some of the questions that were explored included the role of languages as a requirement for citizenship in the context of migration. Feedback from refugee organisations highlights the significance of the apps culture feature. To conclude, Dr Strani highlighted some areas for future research, including research on indigeneity as well as research on migration and multicultural communities. In addition to this, there were lessons for sustainability as well as considerations for cultural resilience, bearing in mind that resilience has been overused and criticised.
Jessica Penney, a PhD student from the University of Glasgow was the last speaker on this event, and shared their perspectives as an Inuit researcher from Canada who is engaged in research with local and indigenous communities. Jessica Penney highlights that reflexivity and positionality are very important to their research from both a personal ethics standpoint, but also from a methodology perspective. Their PhD research build from a MSc on the impacts of Muskrat Falls project on the community of Rigolet where there are concerns of methylmercury contamination (a naturally occurring neurotoxin that can increase in reservoirs). This contamination is impacting food systems as it bioaccumulates in the food chain and has cultural and social impacts. The main area of concern is that median methylmercury exposures could at least double for the majority of the Inuit population downstream. The research aims to understand the community’s perspective of potential risks and inform on health risks and communication strategies for the future. Based on this project, Jessica Penney was able to share key pieces of better practice for ethical and meaningful research outcomes. Firstly, the importance of working with Arctic-based researchers and experts in the local area. This does not necessarily mean that these experts will have a degree qualification. Those that are best suited to lead or be involved in research are those that live in the community and have experience. Related to this is the importance of incorporating capacity building into a research project. Secondly, it is crucial when working with indigenous communities, to have indigenous representation at all levels of the research process, in order to build long lasting, reciprocal relationships. Seeking consent and collaboration is essential for this to be realised, as well as the consideration of how project outcomes can be made accessible and translated into indigenous languages. Finally, Jessica Penney highlighted the value in centring community ethics within research, often many communities will have their own ethics practices. Engaging with local Arctic indigenous peoples should be a collaborative process, based on reflexivity and shared community values.
Numerous Scottish higher education institutions and research organisations were represented in the meeting: University of Dundee, University of Stirling, University of Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University, Heriot-Watt University, University of Aberdeen, University of Highlands and Islands, and University of St Andrews. We were also joined by researchers from various UArctic affiliated institutions and interested members of the public and civil society.
Attendees discussed opportunities and barriers to Scotland-Arctic research, the potential benefit of this research to people in Scotland and the Arctic, and strengths and weaknesses of Scottish research in the Arctic. Below is a summary of responses:
Barriers and weaknesses
- The coronavirus pandemic has halted travel and fieldwork.
- Limited funding opportunities in applied research, especially since leaving the EU. UK partners are not sure what future funding opportunities look like.
- With regards to funding, it is also a challenge that interdisciplinary research often ‘falls between the chairs’, particularly in national funding institutions – that is our experience from working many years in this field. A lot of these issues need collaboration and interdisciplinary research but a lot of the funding does not reflect this.
- When collaborating with communities we need to consider how local experts are adequately represented for their time. Particularly when you are asking for people to travel. Would like to push for in future grant applications to consider the external costs associated with asking communities to participate in research. Funding application needs to reflect the wider costs associated.
- A precondition of research is certainly whether the research is wanted. Our job is to be facilitators as opposed to leading the project. The way a research project begins is fundamental, who initiates it, how the researcher enters into the community.
- Research institutions need to allow their researchers to spend longer time immersing with communities, it requires taking time out from teaching and writing peer review papers.
Opportunities and strengths
- Community members need to be in the driving seat and that is essential.
- The engagement practices from the Arctic will be of application in Scotland.
- Over the past couple of decades there have been increases in indigenous scholars on all sorts of things.
- Recommendations to engage with University of Arctic and engage with UArctic thematic networks.
- Scottish geography is part of the Arctic and there are many similarities with the landscapes. Not to mention all of the other social science impacts that are similar. In addition to this Scotland will be directly impacted by the changes in the Arctic from shipping routes to changes in climate.
- In Denmark and Norway, the governments are supporting UArctic engagement by Danish/Norwegian UArctic members. Might it be possible for Scottish government to establish similar grant scheme?
- These “lived experiences on the land” offer learnings for other areas.
Be First to Comment