It is often said that the Inuit language, Inuktitut, has dozens of words for ice cream. The reality is more nuanced. Translated into “ancient knowledge,” the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or IQ, is a type of oral record that classifies sea ice by type, condition, location, and utility. However, in meetings between Inuit and industry and government leaders focused on managing a warming ecosystem, this oral tradition has not always been treated with respect.
“It doesn’t matter what you tell the government or anyone, your knowledge — if it’s not written down, they won’t listen to you,” said Lucassie Arragutainag, manager of the Sanikiluaq Hunter’s and Trapper’s Association, in a recent plenary session for at the conference ArcticNet 2022.
Recently, organizations run by and for tribal peoples have taken a new approach to collecting numerical data on ice floes — while rewriting the terms of collaboration between their communities and Western science.
Homemade innovation
Nine months out of the year, Canada’s Inuit lands are dominated by sea ice, says Andrew Arreak, founder and regional operations manager of ice mapping service SmartIce. For the Inuit, ice cream is a grocery store. The ice is a highway. The ice cream is at home.
SIKU generates an estimated 14 times more data per research dollar than science-funded programs — by using the boots already on the ground.
Arreak explains that in the past, researchers came to the north, hired guides and collected data, and then left the region.
“We would never hear from them again,” he says. Meanwhile, Inuit communities needed to secure sovereignty over data that would empower them to stand up for themselves and for the ice.
In 2013, Arreak used his environmental technology degree to develop SmartICE, a monitoring program that provides information on ice conditions for the Pond Inlet community in Nunatsiavut. In recent years, the predominantly Inuit staff has grown to around 30 employees in as many communities in Inuit Nunangat and the Northern Territories.
SmartICE is trying to overcome a technical challenge: monitoring sea ice is difficult for a number of reasons. Satellite imagery can determine the area of land covered by ice, but not the thickness of the ice – and such imagery becomes largely ineffective during the three-month polar night.
A snowmobile pulls a qamutiik (sled) near an iceberg in Pond Inlet.
For this purpose, SmartICE uses two different measurement technologies. SmartKAMUTIKs are sensors that can be deployed on qamutiik, the sleds typically pulled by snowmobiles, to measure the thickness of the ice underneath. The organization also uses SmartBUOYS, or buoys, equipped with a series of thermistors — sensors that measure the temperature of surrounding water, snow, ice and air to estimate sea ice depth.
The locations where SmartICE collects ice samples are informed by community recommendations and are guided by a committee that includes community elders, the Parks Canada Agency, search and rescue teams, and others. The weekly ice maps they produce not only quantify the sea ice, but translate the data into traditional IQ terminology.
Katherine Wilson, a researcher at both SmartICE and Canada’s Memorial University of Newfoundland, notes that SmartBUOYS help the local community in ways that go beyond ice measurement: youth from a career preparation program in Nain help build the buoys and raise funds along the way valuable experiences do this. It’s a far cry from the old model where western scientists would come to the region, take their measurements, and go home.
Collaborative Harvest
SmartICE isn’t the only organization developing new, powerful ways to measure and share critical ice data.
In 2017, Joel Heath, executive director of the Arctic Eider Society, a charity focused on indigenous empowerment in research and conservation, launched an app called SIKU. Impressively, SIKU now acts as a GPS, route planner, recorder of flora, fauna and ship sightings – and through a partnership with SmartICE, a source of information about the ice.
This partnership has enabled SmartICE to disseminate important safety information to a wider population while also receiving more ice observations from individual users. This allowed SmartICE to further fine-tune when and where they collect ice samples.
SIKU generates an estimated 14 times more data per research dollar than science-funded programs — by using the boots already on the ground.
For both SIKU and SmartICE, indigenous self-determination – and sovereignty over the data – is the top priority. Both organizations give the communities that contribute data the right to determine how and with whom that information is shared. SIKU even includes granular controls that ensure people can report sealing catch data without publicly disclosing their private honey hole.
This approach has been very effective in inspiring more community members to share their knowledge. SIKU generates an estimated 14 times more data per research dollar than science-funded programs — by using the boots already on the ground.
Arreak says he carries with him the mental image of a classic Inuk man: on the ice, in front of a seal hole, waiting for the harvest. But it might be time to update this image. Today’s Inuk still use the Qamutiik sled – but this sled is now equipped with a sensor to measure the ice underneath. In their parka pocket, they probably carry a smartphone equipped with an app that can capture and share each of their ice observations.
And that data, in turn, has led to a more nuanced understanding of the melting ice — and helped convince Western researchers of the need for a new, more collaborative way of interacting with tribal peoples.
Source: www.ozy.com
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