On the land and in the water: connecting and disconnecting the Mackenzie Delta

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area

Tags: social sciences

Principal Investigator: Krause, Franz (2)
Licence Number: 16098
Organization: University of Cologne
Licensed Year(s): 2018 2017
Issued: May 30, 2017

Objective(s): To document and analyse current uses and meanings of the Mackenzie Delta, focusing on people living in and around Aklavik.

Project Description: This research project aims to document and analyse current uses and meanings of the Mackenzie Delta, focusing on people living in and around Aklavik. This will include information on people's livelihood practices, mobility, and senses of belonging. Research will consider delta uses and meanings in particular in relation to the delta's social and ecological volatility and people's creative responses, as well as in relation to their 'hydrosociality', i.e. the internal links and congruence’s between social relations and hydrologic flows. This is an anthropological research project, and its empirical methodology is based on long-term participant observation, semi-structured interviews, place biographies and landscape change workshops. Participant observation will be carried out in two periods, from August to December 2017, and from February to July 2018. The Principal Investigator (PI) hopes to accompany people in Aklavik and on their trips on the land. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with volunteer interviewees identified through a snowball approach, at places of their convenience. They will be audio-recorded, and they will focus on people's past and present experiences in the delta, on their hopes and fears, and on stories that feature the delta prominently. The PI will collect place biographies by asking people about the histories of a number of places across the delta that have been significant for their livelihoods/mobility/belonging. Finally, the PI will organize one or more landscape change workshops, where a selected number of delta inhabitants can talk about material and social changes in particular parts of the delta, aided by one or more high-definition aerial photographs. This project will contribute to documenting 'hydrosocial' knowledges and practices of the inhabitants of the Mackenzie Delta (esp. Inuvialuit and Gwich'in). The research relies on community involvement for participant observation (on the land and in the settlements), interviews and group discussions. Participation will be voluntary and non-remunerated, but all interview recordings, a selection of digital photographs (interviewees and pictured people permitting), and all publications resulting from the fieldwork will be shared with the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute (GSCI) and the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC). Since this is a larger comparative project (with other delta studies in Brazil, Kenya and Myanmar), research participants will also learn about life in the other three settings. As the PI will live in Aklavik, in close proximity to the research participants, the PI will be able to communicate about emerging findings on a day-to-day basis and answer their questions as they arise. Towards the end of the research project (probably in 2020); the PI will give presentations of its main results at the Moose Kerr School, Aklavik, and at the Aurora Research Institute, Inuvik. In case the documentary film(s) materialize, the PI will show it/them (including those of the other deltas) to the community during the end-of-project visit (2020). The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from August 15, 2017 to December 15, 2017.