Open access

Our practice of outreach during the Ice Monitoring project in Nunavik: an early-career researcher perspective

Publication: FACETS
12 March 2020

Abstract

Inuit Nunangat, including Nunavik, is seeing an ever-increasing number of research projects. While mainstream approaches to research are colonial in nature and have historically contributed to the oppression of Indigenous peoples, a new paradigm is now emerging from Indigenous recommendations. Researchers are encouraged to collaborate with Inuit or Northern communities, organizations, and governments and to develop communication strategies to keep local populations informed. This paper focuses on outreach activities organized on several occasions throughout the Ice Monitoring project, in which we participated as PhD students. We share details on this periodic outreach program, which included a Facebook page, hosting an information table at the Co-op store, activities with high school classes, and participation in Raglan Mine’s Environmental Forum. We also discuss lessons learned and the transformation of our practice.

Introduction

Inuit Nunangat which includes the Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut, and Inuvialuit is seeing an ever-increasing number of research projects; between 1996 and 2011, the number of publications concerning this region increased by 200% (ITK 2018). Mainstream approaches—the dominant trend—to scientific research are colonial in nature and have historically contributed to the oppression of Indigenous peoples (Smith 2012; ITK 2018), including Inuit (Pfeifer 2018). Today, the research community recognizes the partnership role Inuit must play in research involving people, wildlife, and environment (ITK 2018). The International Polar Year 2007–2008 hoped to “strengthen the dialogue and links between Arctic residents and the research community”, for instance through community outreach activities (International Council for Science 2004). One of three committees guiding research priorities within ArcticNet, a Network of Centres of Excellence of Canada operating since 2003, is the Inuit Advisory Committee (ArcticNet 2019), and the network’s annual conference showcases many northern speakers and talks relating to Inuit priorities. A new research paradigm is taking form, outlined through principles like ownership, control, access and possession (OCAP; a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre, see FNIGC 2019) of research processes and data, as well as a commitment to the values of respect, equity, reciprocity, equality, and transparency (INQ 2017).
The community–researcher relationships are increasingly placed as the heart of the research process (ACUNS 1998; Nickels and Knotsch 2011). Yet, “the idea of trusting relationships as a foundation for ethical engagement in research is easy to endorse but difficult to enact” (Ball and Janyst 2008, p. 52). Building relationships based on trust requires researchers to spend time in the community, and it also involves a commitment to the relationship and to community interests, for instance youth training and empowerment Castleden et al. 2012; Provencher et al. 2013; Tondu et al. 2014; Gérin-Lajoie et al. 2018). Inspiring examples of this include artistic and cinematographic projects (Heath 2010; Baird et al. 2018), online data diffusion and cartography (Laidler 2006; Ljubicic et al. 2014; Carter et al. 2018), youth and (or) elder camps (Gearheard et al. 2013; Hirsch et al. 2016; Gérin-Lajoie et al. 2018; Gibson et al. 2018), and community-driven monitoring (Knopp 2010; Loseto et al. 2018). Outreach or community engagement can be undertaken with scientific activities like announcements on the radio, posters, and school lectures (Castleden et al. 2012) and also with nonscientific activities like playing games and drinking tea (Castleden et al. 2012, Tondu et al. 2014), as well as spending time with youth, feasting together, and witnessing cultural events (Adams et al. 2014).
Certain projects require that researchers visit a community frequently, or even spend months or years living there, providing an opportunity to build relationships. For others, however, presence in the community can be limited to a few days per year. This is the case for the Ice Monitoring project (Gauthier et al. 2018), a collaboration between local public and private partners as well as university researchers. Data collection for this sea-ice research project in Nunavik’s Salluit, Deception Bay, and Kangiqsujuaq was limited to a day’s work, twice per year. In this context, team members could hardly hope to meet more than a dozen or so people in each community, let alone build meaningful relationships.
In this paper, we share details about the Ice Monitoring project’s periodic outreach program (Part I), discuss lessons learned (Part II), and explore the transformation of our practice moving forward (Part III). We address the complexity of our position as non-Indigenous early-career researchers participating in a project that includes private partners through a discussion on the perception of our integrity. Before delving into these questions, we first present ourselves, share our hesitation to write this paper, and provide some context on the Ice Monitoring project.

Author presentation

We are two PhD students (a physicist and a geographer) at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Quebec City and share first authorship of this paper. We have a strong background in social justice organization and identify as female euro-descendents. While the outreach activities described in this paper were organized by a large and diverse group of collaborators including northerners as well as academics, the following perspective is that of the two authors, writing here in the first person (“we”).
Throughout our involvement in students’ rights activism and feminist struggles, we gained an understanding of how certain groups are marginalized and excluded, as is the case for Indigenous peoples in Canada. We learned about Indigenous organizations’ and individuals’ recommendations for doing research in their communities at the ArcticNet annual meeting, workshops aimed at training early-career researchers to work with northern Indigenous communities, and university courses in feminist studies. During the research project, we continued to educate ourselves through workshops, news outlets—Nunatsiaq News, CBC North, and CBC Indigenous, etc.—and Inuktitut classes, becoming increasingly aware of Inuit calls for self-determination and research decolonization. Finally, we learned by working with Salluimiut and Kangiqsujuammiut (people of Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq), and northerners such as the Kativik Regional Government environmental specialist.

To publish or not to publish?

Because we dedicated a significant part of our PhDs to participating in the Ice Monitoring project’s outreach program, we eventually had to face the question of “making it count” professionally by publishing a paper on the subject. The lack of recognition for time spent on outreach has deterred researchers from engaging in such activities in the past (Provencher et al. 2013). Yet, funding agencies increasingly value outreach as part of a northern research program (Ball and Janyst 2008; Provencher et al. 2013), and early-career researchers have been encouraged to share their outreach efforts through peer-reviewed publications (Tondu et al. 2014).
Even so, we reflected on what it meant to gain professional recognition from our participation in the project’s outreach, worrying that it would cheapen our efforts. For instance, authors have condemned the practice of using community-based research for career building (Mitchell and Baker 2005; Tuck and Yang 2012). Ultimately, we decided to write this paper for the following reasons. First, researchers—particularly students—often have a limited number of opportunities to do outreach and cannot rely solely on improving through iteration; consulting the scientific literature on outreach is a good way to improve. Second, sharing our experience with our peers allows us to process our feelings and reflect on our practice and to continue educating ourselves by situating our story relative to what others are doing (Tondu et al. 2014). Third, if outreach is to be understood as integral to the research process, it should involve thoughtful planning, decisions informed by the literature, and the attention to detail shown in other aspects of research.

Context

Ice monitoring in Salluit, Deception Bay, and Kangiqsujuaq

Sea ice is behaving in an increasingly unpredictable way due to the impacts of climate change in Nunavik (Nickels et al. 2005; Cuerrier et al. 2015). This raises a safety issue for Inuit who travel on the ice to practice traditional activities like hunting and fishing (Tremblay and Furgal 2008). Ice monitoring in Salluit, Deception Bay, and Kangiqsujuaq—the Ice Monitoring project—is a research project that documents seasonal sea ice in three bays located in northern Nunavik using satellite images, time-lapse cameras, underwater sonars, and fieldwork (Gauthier et al. 2018). The neighbouring Deception Bay is also monitored. Two mining companies have marine infrastructure in this bay; therefore, it sees ice-breaker maritime traffic from 1 June to 15 March—no ice-breaking is allowed during seal calving season (GENIVAR 2012, p. 228).
The project is a collaboration among the Kativik Regional Government (KRG); Raglan Mine, a Glencore company (Raglan); Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS); and the northern Villages of Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq. It was supported by a Polar Knowledge Canada grant called Safe Passage from 2015 to 2018. The academic partner in the project—the Centre Eau Terre Environnement at INRS—is a public university located in Québec City and specialized in interdisciplinary research.

Governmental and industrial partners

KRG is responsible for delivering public services, including in the environment and climate change research sector, as well as technical assistance—regarding management, land use planning, etc.—to the 14 communities of the Kativik region (KRG 2017). This region includes all of Nunavik except the Cree community and reserved land both designated by the name Whapmagoostui, which are part of the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee)/Cree Nation Government (Whapmagoostui First Nation 2019). Raglan is a nickel-ore mining company operating in Nunavik. A road network connects their mining complex to Donaldson Airport and to their deep-water harbour infrastructure in Deception Bay. Deception Bay is part of the traditional territory of Salluimiut and is also called Salluit Aippanga—the “second Salluit” (Ruffin and Alaku 2011). Snowmobile trails connect Salluit and Deception Bay, some of them using the frozen bays. Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq are the two communities closest to Raglan infrastructure, and both receive royalties from the mine (Rodon et al. 2013). This geographical proximity (Fig. 1) leads to many ties between Salluit, Kangiqsujuaq, and Raglan.
Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Map of Nunavik showing the locations of Salluit, Deception Bay, Raglan Mine, and Kangiqsujuaq. Inset: Map of Nunavik in Canada. Data source: Boundary Files, 2011 Census (Statistics Canada 2011).

History of the research project

KRG identified sea-ice monitoring in Deception Bay as an environmental priority for the area, and Raglan was interested in supporting a climate change research project relevant for the communities of Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq. The research group from INRS, based in Quebec City and with a long-standing history of doing research with northern communities, was recruited as a research partner to conduct data collection and scientific analysis. This laid the groundwork for a locally motivated research project co-designed with the regional government. The northern villages of Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq and their Land Holding Corporations were contacted and gave their approval for the project, including associated activities and instrumentation in Salluit, Deception Bay, and Kangiqsujuaq. The Avataq Cultural Institute was consulted to ensure the project did not encroach on archeological sites important to Inuit. Finally, the Nunavik Marine Region Impact Review Board was contacted to get permission for the deployment of underwater sonars in Deception Bay.
Data collection was performed by a team including local guides from the community, the KRG environmental specialist, and scientists from INRS. The guides were very involved in the work, for instance using the monitoring equipment, brainstorming about fieldwork strategy, helping to recruit other guides, and training youth guides. KRG organized community meetings before and during the Ice Monitoring project, which is the standard procedure for its research collaborations. The organization also coordinated calls on the radio in Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq to inform community members of meetings or fieldwork relating to the project.

The importance of mentorship

As graduate students working in the Ice Monitoring project, we were offered a chance to get involved in science communication activities developed by other members of the research team and their collaborators, specifically the Ice Mission activities described in Part I.
Many of the research collaborators played a significant role in our learning process: a university professor in northern studies and remote sensing, a university research professional involved in outreach, the Kativik Regional Government environmental specialist with a background as a high school science teacher in Kuujjuaq, an Inuit guide living in Salluit, and the Community Outreach Director at Raglan. These individuals also greatly contributed to the outreach program we describe in this paper either in person or through logistical and financial support. Mentorship by northerners was essential to our outreach practice.

Part I. Periodic outreach program

For the Ice Monitoring project, presence in each community was extremely short: one to several days, twice a year. Outreach activities typically lasted only a couple of hours. Despite their scarcity, the activities were planned in advance and over the course of the project. Table 1 shows an inventory of the activities in the project’s periodic outreach program, their length, and the number of activities organized in each community. It is important to note that in-community work in the north can be affected by unforeseen circumstances. For example, planned outdoor activities with the Salluit high school were cancelled in 2016 and 2017 due to bad weather or school closures.
Table 1.
Table 1. Inventory of the community outreach activities organized during the Ice Monitoring project from 2016 to 2018, with their length and the number of times each activity was organized.
 Number of times each activity happened:
 in Salluitin Kangiqsujuaq
Facebook page (online in April 2016)
Table at the Co-op store (1600–1800)01
Ice Mission school activities (1–2 class periods)
   In-class presentation11
   In-class lab15
   Outdoor lab13
Participation in the Environmental Forum (2–4 d)
   Project booth11
   Question and answer session on the radio11
   Community presentation11
Funding was required to pay for time in the communities, where the biggest expense was for accommodations. Research funds (NSERC Discovery Grant—Northern Research Supplements Program, Northern Scientific Training Program) and fieldwork were optimized to plan for a little more time (a half or full day) in each community than what was required for the fieldwork (a day and a half). In the third year of the project, a personal grant from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation paid for three additional days of in-community time in Kangiqsujuaq before fieldwork, coordinated by the graduate student who received the grant. Funding and logistics for in-community time (several days) associated with the Environmental Forum were supplied by Raglan.

Facebook page for the research project

In April 2016, a Facebook page was created for the Ice Monitoring project. The page is called “Ice Monitoring in Salluit, Deception Bay and Kangiqsujuaq”. Every subsequent team visit to communities was announced on the page and itinerary updates were shared when relevant. The page was promoted on all project posters and communication material and presented as a way to communicate with the researchers and ask them questions. When a community outreach activity was scheduled, it was announced on the page. The choice to focus our online efforts on a Facebook page instead of a website was motivated by the importance of Facebook in Inuit communities (Dunn 2016; Jérôme et al. 2018) and the challenges associated with internet quality and access in Nunavik (McMahon and Mangiok 2014). All posts were in English, and the page was managed by one of the two authors.

Table at the Co-op store

An information table was held at the Kangiqsujuaq Co-op store (one of only two stores in the community) for two afternoons in January 2018. This event was coordinated with the Co-op manager two weeks before visiting the community. Following his advice, the table was set-up beside the tills at the entrance during periods of high traffic at the store, i.e., from 1630 to closing time at 1800 on Thursday and Friday. The table featured posters, maps, and fact sheets with snow and ice thicknesses measured over the years. All the material was in English. Many community members stopped at the table, including women and children and Arctic College students from out of town. The table was held by the two authors.

Ice Mission school activities

During the period described in this paper (2015–2018), the Kativik Ilisarniliriniq high school curriculum included a learning and evaluation situation on sea ice called Avativut—the impact of this activity on learner experience is evaluated in Hébert-Houle (2017). Fieldwork in the communities provided a good opportunity to create links between what students were learning on sea ice in science class and research carried out in the community. This included three different activities: (i) an in-class presentation, (ii) an in-class laboratory called the Ice Mission, and (iii) an outdoor activity on ice monitoring. Each activity involved one or both authors, took one or two class periods, and was organized at least once in each community (see Table 1). Each community was visited six times for fieldwork from 2016 to 2018. One or more Ice Mission activities were organized during two of these visits in Salluit and five in Kangiqsujuaq.
In-class presentations on the Ice Monitoring project were organized for secondary levels one through five in English and French. These presentations included posters and multimedia, for instance videos of Inuit guides using the ice monitoring equipment during fieldwork. The in-class laboratory involved testing mystery ice samples prepared to mimic lake ice, sea ice, and river ice. Opacity was tested using a flashlight, salinity using a portable refractometer, and porosity by putting several drops of food colouring on the ice surface. Students were guided through the steps and wrote the results on the board, either taking turns around the experiment table or coming up to the front of the class one by one. The outdoor activity was organized during the spring fieldwork. Students, teachers, researchers, and local guides assembled on the sea ice in front of the village. In general, students were separated into groups and shown how to use the ice monitoring equipment. The type of fieldwork changed from year to year, which led to different versions of the activity.

Participation in the Environmental Forum

Raglan has been holding a yearly Environmental Forum in each community since 2016 to present the results of their environmental monitoring to the population. The forum evolved from evening-only community presentations to a 4-d-long event. Scientists from research projects supported by Raglan are invited to participate and communicate news, current results, and plans for the future. In this paper, we focus on the October 2017 and March 2018 editions—both several days long—where the Ice Monitoring project was represented by the KRG environmental specialist and one of the authors.
Information booths were open to the public for 2 or 3 d in the community gym (Kangiqsujuaq) or the community centre (Salluit), with coffee and snacks. The Ice Monitoring booth featured posters and maps, pictures of all the community members involved as guides, a slideshow of fieldwork pictures and videos, some ice monitoring equipment, and fact sheets with results. All documents were in English. Some material was translated to Inuktitut for the October 2018 Environmental Forum, which is outside the scope of this paper. For the question and answer period on the local FM radio, each project was briefly presented, and listeners were invited to call in with questions or comments. A translator relayed the presentations and answers in Inuktitut. During the community presentation evening dedicated to research, each project had roughly 15 minutes. The presentations were given with two speakers, slowly and with simple sentences to facilitate the simultaneous translation from English to Inuktitut.
Other forum activities included meetings with local elected officials, activities with the schools, and meetings with land users. Also represented at the Environmental Forum were two research projects in Deception Bay by the Nunavik Research Centre and Caribou Ungava.

Part II. Lessons learned during outreach efforts

Early-career researchers—including graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and early-career faculty—in the natural sciences typically feel less equipped to conduct research with northern communities than their colleagues in the social sciences (Sjöberg et al. 2019), and we were no exception. To improve our research practice, we relied on mentorship (as described earlier) and on Indigenous recommendations (Asselin and Basile 2012; NCAI 2012; Smith 2012; INQ 2017; ITK 2018). In the predetermined context of very limited in-community time, only a few of these recommendations felt within our reach: those relative to individual attitudes and communication with community members. On the individual level, we tried to be mindful of our participation in a colonial system and often reflected on how our actions were either reinforcing it or not. In terms of communications, we tried to make the research easy to understand and interesting and to provide opportunities for community members to react to it.
While we did not perform a formal evaluation of our outreach efforts in the scientific sense, for instance through a survey, the activities were designed based on advice from northerners or Indigenous literature on the subject. Furthermore, any comments received on an activity were noted for the next time—for example, having translated material.

Adopting the right attitudes

When presenting to community members or interacting with high school classes, we tried to demonstrate respect for the communities and humility about our work, and put our personality forward to be approachable. We made it our responsibility to find meaningful ways to engage community members and to make our research interesting.
Adopting these attitudes was enriching. It gave us a lot of joy as well as challenges. For instance, putting our “whole selves” out there—as prescribed in NCAI (2012)—and striving to connect with people brought up feelings of vulnerability. Moments before being joined by Kangiqsujuaq’s high schoolers on the frozen bay in April 2016, we were excited to meet the teachers and the students, but also nervous. We hoped the activity would be interesting and relevant, and we felt inadequate when we feared that we hadn’t fully engaged with the students. It was important to keep in mind that different cultures have different codes, and successful engagement with students from another culture than ours might look different than success at home. In general, the act of caring about our activities was accompanied by intense feelings. These needed to be processed quickly for us to focus on fieldwork—a demanding process requiring emotional resilience. The intensity of this experience speaks both to the degree of our investment in outreach and to the emotional workload required for us to deconstruct ideas and practices. This work is both necessary and rewarding.

Being mindful of a community’s diversity

Researchers have often been warned that their understanding of a community can only be partial and dependent on the people with whom they interacted: “[…] no individual or body represents all the interests or points of view within a community” (Ball and Janyst 2008, p. 41). Moreover, the colonial relations of power in which research is embedded have universalized the experience of adult males as representative of the whole community (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016). For example, Indigenous women’s traditional knowledge of the land wasn’t recognized by settlers, who also excluded them from decision-making (QNW 2012; Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016; Basile 2017). This led to Indigenous women being excluded from research, particularly in the case of natural sciences projects (Basile 2017).
During our visits to Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq, the bulk of our interactions were with the community members who worked on the project as guides. All the people who were suggested as potential guides were men, which led to an all-male guiding team every time. Even so, some women participated in KRG land user meetings about the project. In general, however, interactions with women happened only in outreach activities, which again shows the importance of these initiatives. For example, we particularly enjoyed hosting a table at the Co-op because several women stopped to discuss the project despite being clearly busy. Outreach also served the additional purpose of making ourselves visible and available to community members who didn’t work closely with us and who might disagree with the project or have criticisms to voice.

Addressing the perception of our integrity as researchers

In a historical context where research has been used to perpetuate unequal relations of power (Mitchell and Baker 2005), trust in our integrity as researchers has to be earned. Research is often conducted in partnership with institutions that may have a history of their own with the community, like in the case of mining companies. Many issues are associated with mining on Indigenous territory: its environmental impact and social costs as well as population displacement and the land claims system (O’Faircheallaigh 2013; Hoogeveen 2015). With this in mind, it is expected that the communities of Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq may have a multifaceted relationship with Raglan (Rodon et al. 2013).
A significant portion of the Ice Monitoring project outreach program was performed in the context of Raglan’s Environmental Forum, which played a major and positive role in improving communications between the project and the communities. The scale of this event offered communication opportunities that went beyond what could have been done without Raglan’s logistical and financial support, exemplifying how research partnerships with the industry can foster novel science communication and outreach activities.
This is not to downplay some of the issues we faced during the forums regarding the perception of our integrity. Some people expressed doubt in any result that would come out of the project, thinking that we worked for Raglan. In an event like the Environmental Forum, where the partnership between the researchers and the mine is put front and center, it is not surprising that these questions came up. More generally, it is crucial that they be addressed for researchers to earn and keep communities’ trust.

Deconstructing our ideas and practices

A second aspect of our integrity lies in the degree to which our ideas and practices are embedded in colonialism. The ongoingness of colonialism in contemporary research is embodied by the ideas and practices of institutions and individuals alike (Snelgrove et al. 2014; Bird-Naytowhow et al. 2017), including researchers. Transformative learning is being put forward as key to deconstructing colonial ideas and overcoming ignorance (Castleden et al. 2013). In this type of learning, individuals move beyond registering intellectual facts and instead experience a range of emotions, positive and negative. Throughout Part II of this paper we have highlighted ways in which we made ourselves vulnerable by being authentic and caring, and the emotions we experienced as a result of this. Even if the scale of our actions is small, the experience had a profound impact on us. It is not an exaggeration to say that our spirits soared when we successfully engaged community members or that we were crushed when we didn’t. Looking back, we identify this experience as a form of transformative learning that helped us in our efforts to disentangle our ideas and practices from their colonial roots.

Part III. Moving forward

We don’t mean to imply that the outreach described in this paper was sufficient. As PhD students stepping into an on-going project, we were overwhelmed by Indigenous recommendations on research, very limited in-community time, funding limitations, and project deadlines. Today, it would be easier for us to navigate these restrictions and find areas in a project where outreach could be included. We would also feel more confident in our instincts of which activities may work best and of the general importance of doing them. Even so, limited in-community time would likely remain a significant hurdle to building outreach programs such as those referenced in the introduction, and as early-career researchers we would still lack influence on the level required for such action.
In the context of “research fatigue”, we sometimes wondered if outreach activities could become invasive. Community members may understandably be tired of hearing about research projects and of being solicited time and time again to engage with researchers (Brunger and Wall 2016). Without having an answer to this question, we feel that certain forms of outreach may put less pressure on people than others. An example of this is the Environmental Forum, where people could hear about three research projects in one sitting. With this in mind, we would focus on communication networks and relationships already existing in the community—for instance collaborating with Youth Fusion employees living in the community and organizing activities with the youth to foster school perseverance (Youth Fusion 2018).
We would also try to provide more space for local perspectives on the project. The outdoor activity on the ice could include parts in Inuktitut by the guides on the cultural importance of sea ice, including short family stories, and on the work being carried out. Encouraging our Inuit collaborators to participate in presentations about the project would help improve communications: some information could be given in Inuktitut directly and by someone aware of the local reality, instead of by a stranger through translation. This would serve to deformalize the flow of information. A small example of this is the principle local guide for the project now co-administrates the Facebook page and sometimes posts updates on sea-ice conditions.
While no ethics certification was required for the Ice Monitoring project, consulting with the university ethics specialist proved very helpful with regards to the transformation of our practice. We would organize such a discussion early on in a future project. We would for instance like to reflect on how equal weight could be given to opinions about the project whether they be voiced informally at the Co-op or in formal meetings, which would be a way to include more opinions from women. To work with women on the land, one strategy could be to ask guides we’ve already worked with if their wife, female relatives, or female friends would be interested to guide us as well.
Towards the end of the project, we developed a radio outreach activity about the land that went beyond the scope of the research and originated from the on-going transformation of our practice. This oral expression activity was organized in 2018 with an English class at Kangiqsujuaq high school. It included brainstorming, recording, and listening. Students first came up with open questions like “What type of food do you get from the bay?” and “Where do you like to go on the land?” They then recorded themselves discussing climate change, hunting, mining, and their relationship to the land. With parental consent, the result was aired on CBC Radio One and CKIA 88,3 FM (Quebec City). The class listened to the podcasts (CBC 2018; CKIA 2018), which were also shared with the community via the school’s Facebook page (facebook.com/arsaniqschool/).

Conclusion

In this paper, we shared details on the periodic outreach activities in which we were involved, hoping to help our peers in their own efforts. We reflected on our experience and outlined lessons learned as well as how we would like to continue moving forward in the transformation of our practice. We refrained from talking about the “decolonization” of research, a process unachievable without the active and conscious involvement of Indigenous peoples themselves. Instead, we focused on actions aligned with this process but still within our reach as euro-descendent researchers.
Many questions remain unanswered. Who is doing outreach? Twelve out of 15 researchers interviewed by Castleden et al. (2012) about their community-based participatory research were women, as were seven out of nine speakers at a 2018 ArcticNet session on outreach by early-career researchers. This could be linked to the emotional work associated with the deconstruction of power relations, which we feel is inherent to researchers doing outreach in an Indigenous context. The pressure to “engage” with researchers piling on to a community’s research fatigue is another point on which we hope more work will be undertaken, particularly since researchers are increasingly asked to engage communities. We wonder, can there be too much outreach? Finally, we’ve discussed how outreach program in which we participated was led in part by the project’s private partner, and the challenges associated with this situation. This begs the question: who should pay for outreach? We leave these questions to the growing community of individuals committed to a better research system.

Acknowledgements

We express gratitude to the communities of Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq for their welcome. In particular, we are grateful to all the community members who worked as guides on the Ice Monitoring project, helped the project along the way, or participated in the outreach activities we presented in this paper. A special thanks to Juupi Tuniq and Pierre Lebreux from Salluit as well as Maasiu Arngak and Peter Qisiiq from Kangiqsujuaq, for their help during outdoor activities with high school students. We also express gratitude to the Kativik School Board for the authorization to do outreach activities with the students as well as the staff at Arsaniq and Ikusik high schools for their warm welcome and support. We extend a heartfelt thank you to Véronique Gilbert, the environmental specialist at the Kativik Regional Environment, for her role in fieldwork coordination, liaison with the communities and other project partners and, on a personal level, for her sustained mentorship. Thank you also to Amélie Rouleau—Public Affairs, Communications and Community Engagement Director—at Raglan Mine, a Glencore company, for her enthusiasm regarding outreach. Thank you to colleagues at INRS, particularly to Pr. Monique Bernier, principal investigator on the Ice Monitoring project, as well as Yves Gauthier and Jimmy Poulin, research professionals, for their commitment to community engagement. Thanks also to the interns who collaborated in outreach activities: Pierre-Olivier Carreau and Étienne Lauzier-Hudon. Thank you Catherine Girard, postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval (Sentinel North) and Guillaume Proulx, master student at Université du Québec à Montréal, for their insight on this manuscript. Thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments on this manuscript. Thanks to NSERC Discovery Grants—Northern Research Supplements Program and Polar Knowledge Canada (Safe Passage) for funding the fieldwork during which outreach was performed. Thanks also to Raglan Mine, a Glencore company, for supporting fieldwork and our participation in the Environmental Forum. Thanks to the W. Garfield Weston Foundation for funding an extended stay in Kangiqsujuaq. Scholarships were provided to the authors by NSERC, the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, and the Northern Scientific Training Program.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published In

cover image FACETS
FACETS
Volume 5Number 1January 2020
Pages: 123 - 137
Editor: Nicole L. Klenk

History

Received: 8 May 2019
Accepted: 27 November 2019
Version of record online: 12 March 2020

Data Availability Statement

All relevant data are within the paper.

Key Words

  1. outreach
  2. early-career researchers
  3. Nunavik
  4. Indigenous communities
  5. scientific communication

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Plain Language Summary

Learning to do better — a student perspective on scientific outreach in northern Indigenous communities

Authors

Affiliations

Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour [email protected]
Centre Eau Terre Environnement, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Québec, QC G1K 9A9, Canada
Centre d’études nordiques, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Valérie Plante Lévesque
Centre Eau Terre Environnement, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Québec, QC G1K 9A9, Canada

Author Contributions

All conceived and designed the study.
All drafted or revised the manuscript.

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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