By Jason Prno -- Traditional knowledge studies have long been a regular part of environmental assessments for mining projects in the North and across the country. But are they having any effect on the way projects are developed, or is it just lipstick on a pig?
A cool breeze off the still-frozen Clyde River skirts through town, but inside the community hall there’s warmth and excited chatter. It’s July in this small, Baffin Island community, and a dozen people have gathered to see the results of a traditional knowledge exercise they’d participated in over the past year. A hush soon falls over the room as an elder clears his throat and rises to his feet. “Before, the qablunaat might not have understood how to see the land,” he says, gesturing to the maps, recordings and transcripts on the tables around him. “Now they will see it the way that we see it.”
In Pond Inlet, at a similar meeting a couple weeks earlier, another elder had expressed a similar sentiment: “Developers always used to come in with their plans already set, and the communities were only given an opportunity to say, ‘Yes,’ or ‘No,’” he said. “Now, through our Inuit knowledge, we can be involved as the decisions are being made instead of being told what is already decided.”
Elders on Baffin Island and around the North have seen hundreds of qablunaat – pronounced “kabloona” and meaning “white people” – come and go through their communities over the years, picking at rocks. In recent years, the visitors have begun to stop and ask questions about the land, the wildlife, and the people’s beliefs. The results of one such “traditional knowledge” study are arrayed in community halls for a series of meetings with Toronto-based mining company Baffinland Iron Mines: maps of where the caribou and the marine mammals are seen, where the best berry harvesting is, and where the sites of archaeological or spiritual significance lie.
Baffinland hopes to develop an iron ore mine near Mary River on Baffin Island. After months of interviews, a year of computerized map production, and several follow-up visits, the results have been delivered to the communities. They have raised hopes that the knowledge of the people will influence the development of the mine, and that local communities will benefit – in the broadest sense of the word – from the wealth that will someday be extracted from their land. But, looking at the history of traditional knowledge studies, is that hope justified?
Traditional knowledge – often given the inelegant acronym “TK” – has always been around, it just hasn’t always been used by qablunaat. The term is meant to capture the knowledge held by aboriginal peoples of the local land and wildlife, the Earth’s natural processes, and of ways to ensure harmony and balance in life. “Traditional knowledge is often overlooked as being nothing more than information of where animals are harvested, or where the good fishing spots are,” says Shelly Elverum, a Pond Inlet-based anthropologist who has worked on a number of traditional knowledge studies, including the one for Baffinland. “But it is much more. It encompasses the wisdom, knowledge and beliefs of a community. It includes rules and norms for interacting with the environment and each other.”
For generations, aboriginal peoples have relied on their traditional knowledge for the sustainable use of local resources. Often, this knowledge was passed down orally, or through simple observation – a son watching his father hunt caribou or jig for fish, for example. Aboriginal peoples have repeatedly requested its consideration when developments are proposed on their traditional lands, but it is only recently that traditional knowledge has begun to influence the non-aboriginal world.
Its growing influence is a reflection of the acknowledgement by non-aboriginals – often made only after a trip to the courtroom – of the rights and privileges that aboriginal peoples have over their traditional land. Prior to this, aboriginal peoples were often ignored during resource development, with decisions that affected them made in faraway places by those uninterested in their plight. But the tide has turned, particularly in the North, putting traditional knowledge at the forefront of efforts to integrate aboriginal voices into resource-development decisions.
We can thank a number of events for this transition, including early court decisions and the actions of influential aboriginal figures, but, particularly in the North, nothing was more influential than the Berger Inquiry. After Justice Thomas Berger conducted the first environmental assessment of the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, he made the infamous decision to halt development, declaring that more time was needed to settle aboriginal land claims in the area. However you feel about his recommendations, his extensive travels through Northern communities – listening to the concerns of those closest to the land – set a new standard for consultation with aboriginal peoples.
odern resource developers recognize this value also, and in some instances have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into capturing aboriginal perspectives for the purposes of planning and sustainable resource development. Through interviews with elders and hunters, community workshops, and detailed map production, traditional knowledge studies have delivered local information that would be otherwise unavailable. Often, these studies are part of a broader consultation program, aimed at engaging those communities most likely to be affected by a development.
The use of traditional knowledge is particularly beneficial in remote regions like northern Baffin Island, as many types of environmental baseline data have never been collected. After so many years of aboriginal peoples being ignored, one now cannot underestimate the value of listening to local concerns. Aboriginal peoples can help fill knowledge gaps related to the land, wildlife migrations and harvesting areas. In the Baffinland example, the traditional knowledge study provided information that showed long-term caribou migration cycles that were poorly understood by Western science. “The amount of new and otherwise unrecorded information we acquired during the traditional knowledge study was incredible,” says Mike Setterington, terrestrial biologist for the Mary River project. “While this information is well known to local Inuit, the scientific community has at times been in the dark due to a lack of previous research in the area.” Because a traditional knowledge study relies on thousands of observations made over time, it can also add an important historical perspective and understanding of changes to natural systems.
Traditional knowledge studies also provide insight into aboriginal culture, values, and beliefs. Such information is invaluable to a miner trying to build bridges and a sense of trust with communities potentially affected by their project.
Successful studies rely on a number of things, not least of which is a team of researchers from many disciplines. Biologists need to work closely with social scientists, who in turn work with community liaisons, local interviewers and mapping technicians. Open-mindedness and patience are essential.
It can be difficult to measure the impact of a traditional knowledge study on a mining project. There was clear evidence of influence when Baffinland moved its shipping lane, but other effects are surely more subtle. One measure of success might be the reaction from community members when the results of a traditional knowledge study are published.
There was still snow on the ground in Igloolik last May when Baffinland returned to share the results of the Mary River study. As people began filtering in for the meeting, an elder looked through a series of maps on walrus and seals and smiled. “Wow,” she said, “look at all this knowledge we have collected!” Mika Kunnuk, a researcher from Igloolik who interviewed a number of the community’s elders, agreed that the results were impressive. “The maps were so full,” she said. “They were covered with Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. Even as an Inuk I learned from it."
The use of traditional knowledge, however, is not without its issues. Finding a balance with scientific information has proven particularly troublesome. The recent polar bear conservation debate is a perfect – seemingly unending – example. Scientific opinion says that polar bears are threatened due to climate change and overharvesting, while Inuit believe that bear populations are rising and hunting quotas should be increased. Both sides have repeatedly butted heads and a meaningful resolution seems a long way off.
Similarly, integrating traditional knowledge into the regulatory process has faced difficulties. In environmental assessments, where the results of traditional knowledge studies stand to offer much influence, findings have been underutilized in the past or used as window dressing for the “real” science. In 1996, the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee made the point that the traditional knowledge study for BHP Billiton’s Ekati diamond mine in the NWT was limited to an overview of the literature, interviews with BHP’s own aboriginal employees, and some preliminary issues identified by aboriginal organizations. “In fairness to the proponent,” CARC wrote, “it was not something [BHP] alone should have been asked to do. Documentation of traditional knowledge must be done by aboriginal communities.” In further fairness, 1996 was a long time ago.
In essence, the problem is one of differing views of the world and the place of people in it. “Traditional knowledge and science are two very different ways of understanding and describing how the world around us works,” says Elverum. “Where traditional knowledge is holistic, based on ongoing human experience and has great historic depth, science is often reductionist, and based on isolated experiments and quantification.” Bringing these vastly different views together under the roof of an environmental assessment hearing has understandably been a challenge. Furthermore, many resource and environmental managers have been trained and are firmly rooted in the conventions of analytical science; this has at times led to a resistance in the adoption of traditional knowledge approaches.
Even with these difficulties, the North is nevertheless seen as a leader when it comes to incorporating aboriginal voices into decision-making. Numerous regulatory decisions reflect this, such as the creation of co-managed wildlife boards, the ongoing settlement of land claim agreements (including Nunavut, the world’s largest land claim), and requirements for traditional knowledge to be considered in environmental assessments. Extensive consultation programs and the standard use of Impact and Benefit Agreements by developers are other prominent examples. The difficulties mentioned above, it seems, are growing pains in a rapidly evolving field.
Jason Prno is the owner of Trailhead Consulting, providing sustainability services in the North. He was involved in the traditional knowledge study for Mary River.
