Regions: Sahtu Settlement Area
Tags: social sciences, traditional knowledge, traditional storytelling, social adaptation
| Principal Investigator: | Simmons, Deborah L (22) |
| Licence Number: | 14612 |
| Organization: | SENES Consultants/University of Manitoba |
| Licensed Year(s): |
2009
|
| Issued: | Sep 01, 2009 |
| Project Team: | Edith Mackeinzo (Community Researcher, Deline Knowledge Project), Jane Modeste (Advisor, Deline Self-Government Team), Sarah Gordon (Graduate Research Assistant, Folklore, Indiana University), Pauline Roche (Program Governance, Deline First Nation), Edward Reeves (Program Governance, Deline Renewable Resources Council), Ruthann Gal (Digital (GIS) mapping trainer, Aurora Research Institute), Dawn Ostrem (Digital storytelling trainer, Dawn Ostrem Communications), Robert Kershaw (Digital storytelling trainer, Centre for Digital Storytelling) |
Objective(s): To identify key elders stories that describe ways of understanding and adapting to change, to document and analyze ways that young girls/women and boys/men interpret stories, and how the stories are experienced in the bush, in the school, and in the community, and to examine the role of new media, including digital stories, digital mapping and a story-based digital dictionary in adapting stories to ensure their applicability to addressing risks related to change.
Project Description: The research follows the participatory method established by the Deline Uranium Team and Deline Knowledge Project. Déline governance will ensure that the research meets agreed-upon objectives benefiting the community; that Déline, Northwest Territories and university research guidelines are respected; and that the intellectual property rights of Déline participants are protected. The community research team play a key role in research design, analysis and communication of results. Research procedures include surveys, focus group meetings, and participant-observation at cultural events. Research tools consist of an audio recorder, still camera, a digital mapping tool, and possibly a video camera. This is a participatory research program initiated by the Deline First Nation community as part of a vision for research, education and capacity-building for self-government. Community researchers are provided with training, and community members participate in structuring every phase of the research, including project design, implementation, analysis and education activities. Communications products and community presentations related to the research process and outcomes are provided on a regular basis, and activities in the school ensure that students are educated about research process and results. The aim is to understand how Dene knowledge and stories can be used to address social and environmental change in the present and future. Within the community, research process and results will be communicated by community radio, written reports, oral reports and public presentations, newsletters and/or booklets, on the web, on multimedia CDs. Communication to the broader public is by permission of the Deline First Nation, including conferences and plain language and academic publications co-authored with the community research team. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from September 1, 2009 to December 31, 2009 in the community of Deline, NT.
