NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: North Slave Region

Tags: dene culture, traditional knowledge, ancestry, skills training

Objective(s): To expand the understanding of Dene canoe practices in order to co-develop a canoe training that centres Dene canoe skills and knowledge.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5377. This project aims to centre Dene approaches to canoeing for people who deliver or participate in Dene-led canoe trips in Denendeh. This will support them to learn Dene canoe practices and strengthen their knowledge and skills to connect with their ancestral waterways. The research goal is to expand the understanding of Dene canoe practices in order to co-develop a canoe training that centres Dene canoe skills and knowledge. While the content of the training will be place- and Dene-specific, what can be adapted to other settings is the approach to developing this training. This is the contribution to supporting, validating and documenting Indigenous canoe practices within land-based education. Overall, this will support the land-based education goal to develop trainings and programs for on the Land leaders that are rooted in Dene ways of being, knowing, and learning. In phase one, the research team will build a 5-foot birchbark canoe with local Elders. The team will use this activity to identify experts in the community who are knowledgeable about Dene canoe practices for the interviews and future programming. The team will ask Elders/knowledge holders who participate to engage in interviews and Rachel will keep an auto-ethnography. In phase two, the research team will host a canoe training with Dechinta staff and knowledge holders. Some participants’ knowledge will be embodied, and the team will learn or gather information through participation and observation which will be noted in Rachel’s research journal. The team hope to learn of canoe routes in the territory, identify paddlers in the Dene community, and expand the understanding of how Dene learned and taught canoeing. In summer 2023, the research team will take what was learned from the previous two phases and implement them into a pilot canoe program with Dechinta staff and students in Chief Drygeese Territory, NWT. The route for this program will be determined with input from experts. Canoe training from a Dene worldview will be delivered throughout the program, and will conduct a program evaluation with students and staff. Rachel will document her observations and experiences in a research journal and in her final thesis paper. All participants will have a briefing ahead of the event to know that this is part of a research project. The Principal Investigator (PI) will be recording observations on the stories about canoes, mechanics of canoe building, language/terminology, and ethics/protocols of canoe practices and building. The PI will also note unique and/or common practices in my observations. A paper and presentation will be available to all research participants, including hard copies. A presentation to research participants and community will be done. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023.