Welcome to TUKTU !
The TUKTU research project started in 2013. It was co-designed by a group of elders in a series of participatory workshops conducted in 2009 and co-facilitated by the late Vera Avaala, a Baker Lake resident and counselor acting as a co-researcher in the TUKTU project from its outset.
The elders identified four main concerns that were translated into research questions and served as a set of guidelines for the project : the future of the youth, youth/elder knowledge transmission, caribou livelihood, mining impacts, and Inuit/Saami youth exchange.
Since 2013, each year of the project has started with a spring visit and fieldwork involving a community meeting, in order to report back on the results of the previous year and to co-construct the research questions to focus on in the current year.
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Each year’s new programme is a follow-up of the previous year’s. The results are also posted on the Baker Lake Facebook page, and the students and research assistants introduce themselves through a short video to get acquainted with the community each year prior to their visit.
The 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 investigations demonstrated that mining extraction in Baker Lake generates positive opportunities (e.g. jobs, skills training and salaries), but also negative impacts (e.g. environmental pollution, changes to caribou migration patterns, changes to social cohesion). See the Results page for more details.
Triangular collaboration with our established network that includes local institutions, mining company representatives and residents facilitated local planning for this transition period. This effort included an exploration of new avenues for alternative activities as well as the possibility of recovering mining infrastructure for local use.
In response to local research interests, it was also pertinent to engage in a more precise assessment of caribou migration changes and the role of the mining industry therein (Warren Bernauer, 2015).
This work was developed in collaboration with the Kangiqsujuaq community of Nunavik and the Gällivare and Övre Soppero communities of Northern Sweden. We will launch a comparative study, applying the methods developed In Nunavik and Qamani’tuaq to the Swedish BOAZU project.
We mobilized traditional ecological knowledge and the community’s empirical observations of the land, comparing these with available scientific data (geographical surveys, wildlife and vegetation studies) to investigate mining impacts on migratory caribou.
Finally, the continuation of the Saami-Inuit youth exchange within the framework of the TUKTU project will strengthen the ties of Inuit youth with Saami youth who are facing a similar paradox of mining employment opportunities and the negative impacts of mining on caribou hunting/reindeer herding. In the long term, this exchange may generate new ideas for sustainable management, the exercise of Indigenous rights and the creation of economic alternatives to mining. In both Saami and Inuit schools, Anna, Annabel, Elise, Cécile and Amélie developed short-term research projects co-designed and co-led by the youth in conjunction with the elders. The caribou/reindeer livelihood booklet will continue to be developed.
The Saami students produced similar materials that were presented by Elise in the Baker Lake schools. Both Inuit and Saami schools are now connected and we have submitted an extension to this programme to NORDRIGO, the Norwegian research source of funding, including a school in Northern Greenland in the exchange.
Based on these results and outcomes from previous field trips, the TUKTU project continued in 2017 with improved methodological tools and a focus on strategic planning for future mining scenarios. The logical focus for 2016 was the fast-approaching scenario “closure of the gold mine and opening of a uranium mine”. For 2017, scenarios have changed since the gold mine is no longer closing and the uranium mine has left.
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