And So It Begins
Over the past year, Zacharias Kunuk and his team at Igloolik Isuma Productions and I have been collaborating on developing an Inuit knowledge and climate change project in the Canadian Arctic. We have completed all the necessary fundraising and with generous grants from Health Canada, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, The Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and The David Suzuki Foundation, we are finally embarking on this exciting and unique project. Today, our team from the South is meeting in Ottawa, and tomorrow we fly to Iqaluit to meet Zacharias and the northern crew, and we will jointly travel to Pangnirtung to begin shooting for this research and filmmaking project.
Our goal is to document and communicate Inuit perspectives on how climate change is affecting the Arctic, specifically taking into consideration health and wildlife issues, and to explore how northern communities can adapt. Inuit have intergenerational, place-based knowledge about their environment, which has allowed them to thrive in the Arctic ecosystem for millennia. Inuit are experts at predicting the weather, given that their daily hunting-based lives are predicated on having intimate knowledge of the land and elements, which allows them to reflect on longer-term climate change. Their observations and experience can help society to better appreciate how climate change is affecting the north and indeed the world as a whole. Our approach is community-based and we will be developing this project in a participatory manner with the focus communities of Pangnirtung, Resolute Bay, Igloolik and Arviat.
We will document this Inuit knowledge of climate change and communicate it using our video-based approach. Our project team, with cultural, academic and filmmaking sensibilities, is uniquely positioned to carry out this project. Building on Isuma's over two decades of northern filmmaking and my social and environmental research background we are at the forefront of merging art, science and culture to tell this important story. Please join us on this voyage.
In the next year, our team will be traveling throughout Nunavut documenting Inuit perspectives on climate change, and we will be posting video content here on this website. We will be blogging about our experience as we go. Using satellite technology, we will be transmitting live video from the tundra, the floe edge and where ever we find ourselves, connecting the world in ways never thought possible. Consider for a moment that many of the elders we will speak with will have been born in an igloo or sod house and, now, we have the capacity to transmit their message to a global audience over the internet using digital technology. What a mind bender! Importantly, with IsumaTV's interactive website, we encourage you to follow us along and provide comments about what you're seeing. We want your input, tell us what you think, and tell us what you want to see. Become part of a conversation and movement that includes marginalized yet important voices in the global debate regarding climate change, the paramount issue of our time.
