“Transforming Knowledge and Forming Understanding: the Importance of the Earth’s Cold Regions to Our Collective Future”

1. “Transforming Knowledge and Forming Understanding: the Importance of the Earth’s Cold Regions to Our Collective Future” Nancy Doubleday, Ph.D. HOPE CHAIR IN PEACE AND HEALTH Faculty of Humanities, McMaster University 2012 ANNUAL CONGRESS OF THE SWISS ACADEMY OF SCIENCES October 25, 2012.

2. I would like to begin by expressing my deep appreciation to Inuit who have taught me so much and who have given me deep hope for our collective future. I remember Sam Raddi, Agnes Semmler, Nelson Green, and Mark R. Gordon. I thank Rhoda Innuksuk, Martha Flaherty and Mary Simon. AshevakKenojuak ‘Nunavut 1992’ Government of Nunavut (G.N.)

3. Tasks for our time together: 1) honoring the past, from many points of view; 2) sharing of knowledge in the present, by building understanding across cultures and other divides; and 3) joining together in creating “our common future” in the sense of Brundtland, by valuing inclusivity, diversity, and uncertainty, informed by our shared understanding and by new insights, arising in part from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary integration of our shared knowledge.

4. We define the Arctic as the northern polar region, north of 60˚. It is a region larger than Europe. Below you see maps of the Arctic circumpolar region made using polar projections.

5. The Arctic Peoples include indigenous and non-indigenous populations: Of the ~5.7 million people identified as living in the Arctic circumpolar region, the Inuit living in Alaska, Canada and Greenland comprise ~100,000. http://www.amap.no

6. As we know, from many sources, the Arctic is changing.... The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, 2005, reported that between September 1979 and September 2003, observed Arctic sea ice decreased by 20 %, that sea ice thinned by 18% over the entire Arctic Basin, and by 40% in the central Arctic Basin. (Source: R. Corell, 2005). Since then, we have seen further losses of multi-year ice in 2012 summer melt and some fear the virtual disappearance of sea ice in the future. http://e360.yale.edu/slideshow/nasa_images_depict_rapid_loss_of_thick_arctic_sea_ice/73/1/ http://www.eesi.org/publications/Briefing%20Summaries/3.15.05%20ACIA%20Briefing%20Summary.pdf

7. ..and there are many changes, such as impacts of contaminants, militarization, shipping, resource development, globalization... and they are interconnected in surprising ways... Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, AMAP 1994, 2002, 2006, 2007 http://www.amap.no/?main=http%3A//www.amap.no/mapsgraphics/go/search/q/%2522heavy%2520metals%2522%2520OR%2520%2522metals%2522%2520OR%2520%2522humans%2522%2520OR%2520%2522heavy%2520metals%2522%2520OR%2520%2522metals%2522%2520OR%2520%2522humans%2522

8. TASK 1. HONORING THE PAST • From our work, we know that Inuit themselves value: • strength, both physical and mental • patience and persistence mean survival • cooperation means pulling together • survival depends on cooperation • consensus works • respect for all persons and for all ages is expected

9. Story 1. Inuit and the Anvil. By looking from the side of the Inuit, the people who live in the Arctic, different things become visible: For example, when Frobisher left his Baffin mine, his party abandoned many things of interest to the Inuit, and while the location of Meta Incognita remained hidden to Europe for 300 years, the Inuit side of the story was in continuous replay, partly through their re-purposing of the important resources left behind...

10. By painstakingly collecting records of Inuit oral history, Robert McGhee of the Canadian Museum of Civilization was able to reconstruct the location and history of Frobisher’s Baffin mine. This image, drawn by an Inuk living in Baffin, was collected by Charles Francis Hall, author of My Life with the Eskimos, 1865. http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/hist/frobisher/frred01e.shtml To the British eye, it is clearly an anvil, but to the Inuit it was an object ideal for a game of “test of strength” that was played for a century or more.

11. So, “Power and Prejudice” or “Partnership and Collaboration” becomes the question... For American whaling captains who operated in the Beaufort Sea as recently as 1934, the answer was clear: The ability to partner and collaborate across cultural differences, with Inuit, resulted in more than simple survival – their partnerships on the whaling vessels produced commercial wealth, reflected in grand houses on the Atlantic Seaboard and in California.

12. Story 3. From Cold War Era Militarization in Arctic Canada to Recognition of Inuvialuit Rights Photos By: Brian Jeffrey http://www.ve3uu.com/target2.html Distant Early Warning Line (1954-1957) Mid-Canada Corridor (1951-1958, decommissioned 1964-65) Pinetree Line (1952-53) http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.pinetreeline.org/misc/other/dewmap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pinetreeline.org/misc/other/misc5d.html&usg=__NIQOdbwUB4ZYuBKOeaIAv_LzrfA=&h=382&w=720&sz=38&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=WT-ttphFIRFM3M:&tbnh=74&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddew%2Bline%2Bmap%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

13. Early Lessons from the Arctic: Sam Raddi and the DEW Line: Land Claims, Co-management and Cultural Survival Tagak Curley, Jean Chretien, Sam Raddi Photo by Harry Palmer Used with permission Between 1975 and 1985, a comprehensive land claim was negotiated and settled in the Western Arctic between the Inuvialuit and Canada

14. However from an Inuit viewpoint, we see other aspects. These new areas began as dreams. A map is a perspective, among other things. Here we see an image of historical treaties , from a government source: Inuvialuit Settlement Area = 1,000,000 km2 http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/national/hist_treaties/map.jpg http://www.itk.ca/sites/default/files/InuitNunaat_Basic.pdf

15. The Inuvialuit Settlement Agreement: Recognized Inuvialuit rights to land and resources, and extinguished them in exchange for specific rights and compensation Established formal participation in management Recognized rights to benefit from and participate in agreements for non-renewable resource development Set aside private lands and private rights of Inuvialuit Provided legal certainty to the Government of Canada and to Canadians about the nature of sovereignty and ownership in the Western Arctic of Canada Averted some of the potential for future conflicts over lands and land use, and resource management Gave us the legal framework for co-management.

16. Globalization and the Arctic If we believe, as Noam Chomsky has said, that globalization really began with the “Age of Discovery” and the imperial territorial expansion and conquest of the past 500 years, we can say that the Arctic has experienced globalization, beginning with Martin Frobisher’s mine for “fool’s gold” on Baffin Island (1576-1578).

17. As Holling et al. (2002) say: “Interestingly, local problems of the moment can have part of their cause located half a planet away and have causes whose source is from slow changes accumulated over centuries.” If this is the case, how can we engage the past in the present in order to change the future?

18. What we need is a redefined form of globalization: “For scientists, globalization should offer a meeting ground for all: spaces of encounter for minds and hearts, eager to bring about fairer practices of enterprise and trade, respect for the integrity of all human civilisations, re-awakened sensitivities to landscape, nature and cultural identity….” Anne Buttimer, International Geographic Union (IGU) Report, 2000-2004. In brief, we need to begin to globalize differently

19. Story 4. Militarization, Northern Contaminants, Health and Justice Abandonment of the Distant Early Warning Line, known as the “DEW Line”(built in the 1950s, to provide security for the United States and Southern Canada during the Cold War Era), has led to “hotspots” of point source contamination with heavy metals and organo-chlorine compounds. Mining of nuclear material, including the uranium used in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima mined at Pine Point, has been linked to cancer among those who mined and transported the uranium. Nuclear waste disposal by the former USSR in the Arctic Ocean off Nova Zemlya has yet to be addressed. Northern Contaminants: From Bad to Better, to Best, Practices for Knowledge-sharing and the Importance of Integrating Knowledge from Science, Social Science and Humanities

20. Beginning with “Arctic Haze” in 1950, the story of long-range transport of atmospheric and oceanic contaminants to the Arctic emerged, challenging all of our disciplinary categories. It also challenged us to put a human face on environmental and health issues. Slowly we adopted new approaches to cooperation and knowledge integration. One result was the Northern Contaminants Program. TASK 2. SHARING KNOWLEDGE IN THE PRESENT: A Role for Interdisciplinary, Intercultural and Transdisciplinary Collaboration

21. NORTHERN CONTAMINANTS

22. Recognizing and documenting changes, interpreting, responding, adapting, mitigatingproblems of unclear causes, separation of drivers and impacts across scale, distance, culture, globalized changes, localized impacts Adaptive Hypothesis: By understanding the potential impacts of a changing climate and responsive environment in the context of their knowledge and practices, people will be better able to make plans for the future.

23. Story 5. Photos and Plants Through Time: Processes for Making Meaning, Making Sense of Change, and Healing Together • Community Involvement as Process • Introduction to the community (Radio, Community Open House) • Meet with local groups (Hamlet, HTA, Elders, Healing Team, Teachers) • Build trust and cooperation • Participate in community events • Hire local coordinators, translators • Involve community members in research, decision making Christopher Kittosuk and Sarah Kudluarok Collecting Plant specimens, Sanikiluaq, August 2008 – Photo by Morgan Ip

24. Photos and Plants Through Time Specific Objectives To understand the relationship between a changing treeline and people’s lives in the tundra-treeline transition zone of Northern Canada during a period of climate change, using photographs and plants as evidence of changes and as keys to memories and stories of past conditions.

25. Photos through Time: recalling the past and understanding the present in order to adapt to the future... Notes on photos: Upper left : Cape Dorset, Nunavut ca. 1970; repeat photo at upper right in 2008Lower left photo: scanning landscape image/photograph; in the background community participants review and witness consent/release forms.Lower right photo: Discussing images with community participants;.

26. Story 6. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) When the oral history of the Inuvialuit reported traditional harvesting of bowhead whales, and conventional historical research did not, a project took place to interview Elders. Their qualitative narratives were corroborated. Their rights were recognized. Some of the Elders did taste this prized food again before they died. Among Inuit, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) is the preferred term for their traditional knowledge. The emergence of indigenous systems of knowledge within formal management science and co-management in Arctic Canada has not always followed a smooth path. However, this knowledge paradigm is the foundation for the collaborative approach evident in the Canadian IPY Program of 2007-2009.

27. Story 7. Resilience is about Culture, Learning and Values: • Learning to live with (accept) change and uncertainty • Nurturing diversity = greater options for renewal/reorganization • Combining knowledge types to enhance learning • Creating conditions/opportunity for self-organization (Adapted from Berkes,, et al., 2003) Inuit Culture is highly adaptive in these terms:

28. Story 8 Two Observations, One Surprising Hypothesis = An Unexpected Proposal for Changing the Way We Work in Science, Social Science and Humanities A researcher observed a small black particle apparently acting in response to Coriolis force, circling as it drilled down through the ice on an Arctic lake – literally. In a focus group in Cape Dorset, a member of the community reported remembering how the behaviour and nature of the ice in the bay had changed in his life time. The researcher recalled the small black particle and the diesel generator in the community . Then, recalling the promise of slowing regional warming in the Arctic on the order of 20% by controlling regional and local black carbon emissions, decided to challenge colleagues to consider as an hypothesis the combination of black body effects coupled with Coriolis forces as a mechanism for ice rot.

29. TASK 3. OUR COMMONS FUTURE: JOINING TOGETHER TO CREATE A NEW COMMONS The unexpected proposal: What if we just shared what we know, instead of treating it like currency? Would we adapt faster? Would we innovate more effectively? Would we act collectively to resolve our large problems to some degree? What if we behaved as if we shared a commons? What if we adopted values more like those of Inuit and worked together?

30. The Adaptive Cycle: A metaphor for change in ecosystems and in social-cultural-ecological systems Rigid organizations Emergent systems Mature trees New forests Innovation, growth Decline, chaos seedlings Decay, senescence Gunderson and Holling, 2002 http://rs.resalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/4box-adaptive-cycle.gif

31. The Adaptive Cycle: Temporal and spatial connections of social-cultural-ecological systems Rigid organizations Emergent systems Mature trees New forests Innovation, growth Decline, chaos seedlings Decay, fire, senescence Gunderson and Holling, 2002 http://rs.resalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/4box-adaptive-cycle.gif

32. Gibson-Graham “ethics of contingency” The lesson of the Arctic is fundamentally that everything really is interconnected and it is changing. The challenge is ours: to adapt, to choose, to change ourselves. But how? “self-believers in our economic capacity, responsible to our political abilities, conscious of our potential to become something other than what we have heretofore chosen to be” “...cultivation of ourselves as subjects of freedom...” “...as choosers...” Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2003. An ethics of the local. Re-thinking Marxism 15: 49-74

33. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS: ABOUT OUR “COMMONS” FUTURE It’s really about: adaptive capacity, resilience, the role of self-efficacy, understanding our capabilities and the impact of collaboration, because:

34. We are all in this together... Whether we depend on the glaciers of the Himalayas...

35. ...or the permafrost stability of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau...

36. ...there are more sources of fossil fuel combustion in the pipelines, and more changes lie ahead. We can reconsider our past practices and change our course.

37. If we remember: 1) Change needs collaborative efforts 2) We need to consider re-conceptualizing the human project 3) Paradoxes and panarchies require attention 4) Challenges remain, but there are alternatives for engaging constructively with power and difference as groups, in order to bring about needed change Story 9. Sam Raddi’s Story

38. I would like to begin by expressing my deep appreciation to Inuit who have taught me so much and who have given me deep hope for our collective future. I remember Sam Raddi, Agnes Semmler, Nelson Green, and Mark R. Gordon. I thank Rhoda Innuksuk, Martha Flaherty and Mary Simon. Sam Raddi, AshevakKenojuak ‘Nunavut 1992’ Government of Nunavut (G.N.)

39. An Appreciation I would like to sincerely thank the leaders and organizers of the 2012 Congress of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, particularly, KaréninaKollmar-Paulenz and her colleagues, who invited me to speak this evening and who organized this congress.

40. Thank you!