Projects
ECOTRAD stemmed from the unexpected meeting of Vera 
Avaala and Sylvie Blangy’s family in the Nunavut territory during a kayak trip. Vera was very affected by the significant social and economic changes happening within her Inuit community since a couple of years. Providing her professional experience, Sylvie Blangy proposed to build a community-based research project to understand how Aboriginal tourism could contribute to the well-being of northern communities, preserve and enhance their traditional cultures, sustain their natural resources, and help community members face the challenges of climate change and economic dependency.
TUTKU is the flagship project of Sylvie Blangy. It had been set up collectively by and for the Inuit community of Baker Lake to address the major challenges the community is facing. “Tuktu” means “caribou” in Inuktitut language ; it constitutes the keystone of the traditional livelihood, providing food, clothes, tools, and by the way health and well-being. The project has been redefined each year to stick to the community current concerns. This led both the researchers and the community to gather the body of all the aspects that contribute, positively or negatively, to a whole individual and community wellness.
PA
UKTUUTIT is the association of the Inuit women of Canada. For their work on the impact of resource extraction on Inuit women and families in Qamani’tuaq, they collaborated with Nadia Aaruaq from Qamani’tuaq, Sylvie Blangy from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and two members of the University of British Columbia, Karina Czyzewski and Frank Tester.
Inuit-Saami Youth E
xchange is an original idea from Sylvie Blangy. Her previous life experience in Norway came back to her while she was coordinating TUKTU. The Saami traditional livelihood is largely based on reindeer farming ; nowadays, such activities are in competition for the natural resources with industrial activities. The shared concerns on the one hand and the differences on the other hand between the two native communities Inuit and Saami promised a fruitful exchange which could bring a lot to each community members. The youths of Qamani’tuaq and Övre Soppero have already shared many letters and drawings …
BOAZU is the logical pursuance of TUKTU : meaning “reindeer” in North Saami, it focuses on the challenges that are facing reindeer herders today such as climate change, land access and young calves predation, in order to understand how the cumulative effects of these changes are affecting reindeer herding economy and lifestyle. This will permit to evaluate the cumulative impacts of all these changes and to discuss and imagine future scenarios, along with youth and adults of the community.