NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region

Tags: social sciences, climate change, culture, youth, oral history, social adaptation

Objective(s): This project will partner with the community of Ulukhaktok and involve community youth as researchers to develop an understanding of how social change and climate change interact to affect the functioning and well-being of arctic communities, specifically for younger generation community members.

Project Description: This project will partner with the community of Ulukhaktok and involve community youth as researchers to develop an understanding of how social change and climate change interact to affect the functioning and well-being of arctic communities, specifically for younger generation community members. The research methods in this study will be applied via an open and evolving process directed in collaboration with community participants. Prior to the commencement of the research, a research committee will be formed, consisting of two community youth researchers (1 male, 1 female), an elder, a representative from Helen Kalvak School, a representative from the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, and a university researcher. The research team will be responsible for guiding research methods in the community and integrating community suggestions into the research plan. Intensive interaction with and training of youth participants will also be carried out to: 1) identify broad research themes through a process of ‘participatory risk ranking’, which will involve working with small groups of youth to identify and discuss what the youth consider important to them and to the community, and concerns they have for conditions or problems that may be affecting these things; and 2) establish the role each youth participant will play in the research. Training will comprise of educating youth to lead focus groups, and in data organization and treatment. Primary data collection will consist of youth-led focus groups. The purpose of the first focus group is to learn what conditions community youth are dealing with, in the community and in the environment, how they are dealing with these conditions, and what is being done or could be done to help them deal with these conditions. Focus groups will be facilitated by youth researchers. It is expected that each focus group will consist of 4-6 youth under the age of 25 working together with one researcher. Focus groups will use techniques decided together with participants but may include group discussions, visual art exercises and/or role playing games. The second focus group, also led by youth researchers will be aimed at identifying whether the conditions and concerns (previously identified by adults and elders in the community as being problematic) are relevant to youth and if youth are also exposed and/or sensitive to these conditions. These focus groups will identify how youth relate to vulnerabilities identified by adults and elders in the community. Following the focus groups, participatory mapping exercise and a youth-elders oral history project and will take place. In collaboration with teachers, students in their respective classes will document how they interact with their natural environment using a map of the Ulukhaktok region. Students will be asked to label on their map where they have been on the land, why they go to these places, how often they go there, how much time they spend there in a year, and whether or not these places and activities are important to them and if so, why. Students will have the opportunity to conduct this exercise in a written, oral and/or visual format. Inuinnaqtun place names will be used as much as possible in this exercise. The youth-elder oral history project will start by having elders, who wish to participate, share with students their stories about the changes they have and are seeing in the community and environment. After this event, students will have the opportunity to learn more about what changes their elders have seen and what concerns they have about future changes by reviewing interviews (recorded and transcribed) with elders conducted during a previous research project. Groups of two high school-aged youth (possibly part of an assignment for the high school Northern Studies class) will develop a partnership with one elder participant. Each pair of youth will: 1) become familiar with the information their elder shared in previous interviews (listening to interview recording; reading written transcriptions); 2) conduct an interview with their elder guided by three open-ended questions: what was it like when you were growing up? how have things changed? what concerns do you have for youth today? Youth participants will also document five Inuinnaqtun words and/or phrases that elders use to describe the changes they have, or are experiencing. Participants will have the opportunity to film their interview for use in an oral history DVD recording to be left with the community; and 3) youth will analyze and organize the information they collect in their interview into a short one-page story including a photo of the elder. Together with members of the research team, each group will reflect on how their lives are different from their elders’ and how they relate to the conditions and concerns their elder identified as being problematic. These pages will be compiled together with photographs of elders (chosen by elders) into a document (in both English and Inuinnaqtun) to be left in the community. This written document will be complemented by a DVD of the youth-elder interviews that will be produced by young-researchers together with members of the university research team. At the final stage of the research, participants will be asked to evaluate the research process through two exercises: a) a short questionnaire (to be developed by the research committee), and b) a focus group to discuss what participants liked about the research, what they did not like, and suggestions for how to improve future research involving Inuvialuit youth. Research results will be communicated to the community, region and larger scientific and policy community by the youth researchers. This may include presentations in the community (e.g. at the school; elders gatherings, etc), at conferences and meetings (e.g. one youth researcher will have the opportunity to present at the ArcticNet annual meeting in December 2007), and to regional policy makers in Inuvik and Yellowknife. The study will be carried out within the municipal bounds of Ulukhaktok from March 2 to April 20, 2007.