Co-producing maps as boundary objects: Bridging Labrador Inuit knowledge and oceanographic research

ABSTRACT

Climate change is affecting the marine environment in Nunatsiavut, leading to changing sea ice thickness and seasonal timing, and increasing water temperatures. This impacts the lives of Labrador Inuit, whose culture, economy, and history are deeply tied to marine spaces. Recently, research partnerships involving Inuit communities in Nunatsiavut have increased, creating space for Labrador Inuit in large scale marine research agendas. While including Labrador Inuit knowledge is critical for making research relevant to communities, there are challenges to engaging it alongside oceanographic scientific knowledge, as both stem from unique ontologies, at times having different values, scales, and languages of understanding. Boundary work offers a lens to analyze how boundary objects can foster connections between Labrador Inuit knowledge and oceanographic research. This research offers a conceptual exploration of this subject through analysing the co-production of maps representing Labrador Inuit knowledge of ocean features which, as data, were then applied in oceanographic research problems. Framing these maps as boundary objects demonstrates their utility in mobilizing Inuit knowledge into scientific approaches, acknowledging limitations with respect to knowledge that cannot be spatially rendered.

KEYWORDS:

• Boundary work
• oceanography
• Inuit knowledge
• Nunatsiavut
• research methods
• knowledge mobilization

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Nunatsiavut Government, the Rigolet Inuit Community Government and the Hopedale Inuit Community Government. We are deeply grateful to those who contributed knowledge to this project (in alphabetical order): Garland Baikie, Sarah Baikie, Kevin Flowers, John T. Lucy, Gus Semigak, Belinda Shiwak, Fred Shiwak, Harry Shiwak, Allan Vincent, Ian Winters, and others who did not want to have their names included.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The four Inuit regions in Canada (Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut) are collectively known as Inuit Nunangat, a term that encompasses the land, water, and ice that represent the Inuit homeland and which are integral to Inuit culture and way of life.

2 The land-fast ice consists of sea ice that is anchored or “fastened” to the coastline or sea floor. Unlike pack ice, it is does not move with currents and winds, although both impact how and when land-fast ice forms and breaks up. Currents, tides, and winds also influence the formation of recurrent features within the land-fast ice such as polynyas or tidal cracks.

3 Reanalysis models produce comprehensive records of how oceanic and atmospheric properties are changing over time. The ERA5 reanalysis provides estimates of atmospheric, land, and oceanic climate variables, and the GLORYS12V1 reanalysis provides estimates of physical ocean variables.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge funding and support from the Indigenous Community-Based Climate Monitoring Program (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada), the ArcticNet Network of Centres of Excellence of Canada, and the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR).

Notes on contributors

Breanna Bishop

Breanna Bishop is an interdisciplinary PhD student at Dalhousie University. She is interested in how Indigenous and western knowledge systems can contribute to understanding complex problems at the intersection of climate change and Indigenous rights. Her current research explores how Inuit describe indicators of oceanographic and climatological variables, including seasonality and change, and the underlying ontological approach to the generation and application of such knowledge. She is interested in understanding where western scientific approaches to oceanographic and climatological phenomena can align with Inuit knowledge to generate locally relevant information for climate change planning and decision-making.

Eric C. J. Oliver

Eric C. J. Oliver is an Assistant Professor of Physical Oceanography in the Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University. His research interests involve ocean and climate variability across a range of time and space scales including extreme events (marine heatwaves, storms), the predictability of climate variations, and the role of climate change on the mean state, variability and extremes of the climate system. He is an Inuk with roots in Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador). He is interested in Indigenous perspectives on climate, weather and oceans and in working with both Indigenous and scientific knowledge of these systems.

Claudio Aporta

Claudio Aporta is an Associate Professor at the Marine Affairs Program, Dalhousie University. He is a cultural anthropologist who has studied and documented Inuit-environmental and geographic knowledge for over 20 years, across the totality of the Canadian Arctic. His current interests are connected to co-management, sustainable communities, Marine Spatial Planning, Indigenous and local coastal knowledge, and knowledge mobilization.