Climate scientist says traditional Inuit knowledge can advance Arctic research
'Colonialism in science and research is not history. It's a system of relations of power,' says Shari Fox
*Originally published on Jan. 11, 2023.
For decades Inuit — who of course live in a close relationship with the land, water, ice and wildlife — have been watching climate change unfold in real time. Yet the majority of climate researchers studying the Arctic have been non-Indigenous and not from the Arctic.
It's something that Arctic researcher Shari Fox points to as vital expertise that is missing from the way scientific research has typically been conducted. She argues scientists from the south have too often ignored or discounted the scientific value of the lived experience and traditional knowledge of the Inuit.
Fox is a senior research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado. And the director of the Northern Program at the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre at Carleton University in Ottawa.
"To be clear, colonialism in science and research is not history. It's a system of relations of power. And we're still dealing with this ongoing legacy," Fox said in her TD Walter Bean public lecture in December 2022.
For over 25 years, she's been working with Inuit collaborators in the Baffin Island community of Clyde River. Her public lecture called The Meaning of Ice: Co-production of Knowledge and Community Action in a changing Arctic is based on the award-winning book, The Meaning of Ice, which Fox worked on with Inuit collaborators from Greenland, Alaska and Canada, as well as visiting scientists.
Here's an excerpt from Shari Fox's lecture.
I've had the opportunity to work alongside a community, to co-develop a range of projects and programs, and that work is ongoing. Part of that work has been confronting the history and the ways that Arctic research has been traditionally carried out, which is not a good legacy.
In Linda Tuhiwai Smith's seminal work Decolonizing Methodologies, she says the term "research" is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The word itself, "research," is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world's vocabulary.
When mentioned in many Indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence. It conjures up bad memories. It raises a smile that is knowing and distrustful. It's so powerful that Indigenous peoples even write poetry about research. The ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world's colonized peoples.
I learned on my first visit to Nunavut that Inuit call researchers siksiks — ground squirrels. You only see them in summer. They scurry around in the tundra doing who knows what, and then they disappear. And you have no idea what they were up to. To be clear, colonialism in science and research is not history. It's a system of relations of power. And we're still dealing with this ongoing legacy.
Tuhiwai Smith also writes about a comment she's heard frequently from several different Indigenous communities: we're the most researched people in the world. She says the truth of such a comment is unimportant.
What does need to be taken seriously, she says, is the sense of weight and the unspoken cynicism about research that the message conveys.
Often people will confront that weight with cynicism, humour, funny stories shared about researchers and research as a way to deal with what lies underneath the broken cultural protocols, the disrespected values and people ignored.
And the greater danger, she says, is in the creeping policies that intruded into every aspect of our lives — legitimated by research, informed more often by ideology.
Links mentioned in lecture:
- Robert Kautuk Photography
- Inuit-led research, land-based programming & multimedia (co-founded by Shari Fox)
