One IPY-sponsored project that is especially exciting for bringing indigenous knowledge into polar science is Sea Ice Knowledge and Use (SIKU) project: The ice we want our children to know.

A hunter leading the way onto uiguaq (newly formed ice lip extending out from the floe-edge) and testing the ice. Photo courtesy of G. J. Laidler.

The SIKU project is one of several IPY projects aimed at documenting indigenous observations of environmental changes in the polar areas. This initiative brings together anthropologists, human geographers, sea ice and climate scientists, marine and ecosystem biologists from the U.S., Canada, Russia, Greenland, and France in partnership with almost two dozen indigenous communities in Alaska, Arctic Canada, the Russian Chukchi Peninsula, and Greenland in a concentrated effort to document use and knowledge of sea ice in the Arctic.

Qanngut (crystallized frost formations that form on thin ice) up close. Photo courtesy of G. J. Laidler.

Claudio Aporta, Assistant Professor at Carlton University and a researcher on the project, described how Arctic people depend on sea-ice for their persistence. “People are born on the sea ice, they build summer camps to live on the sea ice, they hunt on the sea ice, even kids play on the sea ice,” he said. People regularly cross the sea-ice and recreate trails year after year. It is these pathways, and people’s knowledge of their ice environment, that Aporta and his team are working on documenting. They use this knowledge in creating an atlas and database that Aporta described as “a new conception of map showing all dynamic features.”

Hunters wait at the edge of a polynya (an area of open water surrounded by sea ice) near Cape Dorset, Nunavut, discussing a seal hunt. Current strength and direction is an important consideration, since seal retrieval is made with small boat launched off the ice edge. Photo courtesy of G. J. Laidler.

Local residents, elders, and community experts work together in the SIKU research. Collectively, they record daily sea ice and weather observations, collect local terms for sea ice and weather phenomena, document traditional ecological knowledge related to sea ice and sea ice use from local elders and experienced hunters, and search for historical records of sea ice conditions. Documenting these factors allows the researchers to interpret shifts in ice use patterns that may be caused by social and climate change. Most importantly, “Local people are taking a very active role in documenting their own use of the sea ice,” Aporta said, “ and securing knowledge for future generations.”

Hunters in a retrieval boat launched from the ice edge. Photo courtesy of G. J. Laidler.

COLVILLE RIVER, ALASKA– We awoke this morning to rain, wind, and 35? F temperatures. Immediately the remaining sampling lost most of its appeal, but we inhaled our coffee and oatmeal and staggered forth through the wet brush and tussock tundra. Though we are weary of the repetitive sampling, the ideas and importance of vegetation change in the arctic are still alive and inspiring.

For example, certain vegetation communities are more apt than others to foster alder shrub seedlings, and there is agreement between our observations on the ground and the sites identified as expanding or stagnant using the photos. This is a pattern we’ve observed, or moreso absorbed unavoidably, by traversing across and spending time in the various shrub communities. It is a visceral mode of learning that relies on observation and experience to reveal patterns and correlations, not unlike the development of indigenous knowledge. In that sense, I think all of us on the trip are getting a little flavor of indigenous knowledge by being out here and basing critical logistical decisions on wilderness properties like weather patterns, game migration routes, and vegetation patterns, much as the Inupiat have done for thousands of years. It strikes me that the Inupiat dependence on the landscape (and seascape) for survival fostered a close relationship between man and landscape, one that relied primarily on a catalogue of observed patterns.

Two bull caribou grazing, and several more lying down in the background.

The young leaves are eaten in salads or cooked like spinach and frozen to eat in the winter months. The leaves are also chopped and cooked with a base of lard and sugar to make a dessert called ‘Eskimo ice cream’.

Sour dock has a tall inflorescence (stem of flower clusters) of reddish-brown flowers. The long narrow leaves at the base of the plant are gathered, boiled and preserved by the Yup’ik.

The Yup’ik believe the leaves, or the vegetative part, of the sour dock plant are female. In contrast, the inflorescences, or reproductive structures, are male. Our aim was to collect young green leaves: female sour dock.

To do so, we traveled up the Kanektok River with Gloria and Jackie, two students in the class. The Kanektok River flows about ninety miles from its headwaters through the nearby Ahklun Mountains. It joins the Bering Sea at the village of Quinhagak.

Cecilia awaits our put-in in Jackie’s little boat.

Jackie is a native of the village and we were grateful to have her as our guide. Both her and her grandmother collect sour dock along the river in mid-summer.

Sour dock is but one food Jackie and her grandmother gather. Here, king salmon harvested from the Kanektok River dries in the sun beside Jackie’s grandmother’s smokehouse.

Jackie recently cut salmon strips from their smoked fish to eat during the winter months.

Armed with our plastic grocery bags for collecting, we journeyed up the river. We were fortunate to find two places where sour dock was abundant among the riparian vegetation (plants by the river).

Me standing among the riparian vegetation with gathering bag in hand. Tall red sour dock plants in flower are visible in the foreground.

Cecilia and I vigorously collected leaves at the first area until we came upon a very recent (and tremendous!) grizzly bear track. We swiftly joined the other two and convinced them to set out on the river to collect elsewhere.

A Grizzly bear track in the mud along the river bank.

Together, Cecilia and I gathered three overflowing bags of sour dock leaves.

Beautiful Cecilia takes a break from collecting. A tributary of the river is visible in the background.

The typical vegetation of the wetter sites along the river. The yellow flowered plant with rounded leaves is marsh marigold (Caltha palustris).

A bouquet of handsome flowers from the wintergreen plant (Pyrola asarifolia).

Bringing monitoring equipment out on to the sea ice on an Inuit sled.

Many partnerships have already formed, or are forming. Some are practical—such as pairing indigenous guides who understand polar bear behavior with scientists who need bear protection. Some are more profound. For archeologist/anthropologist Anne Jensen, who often collaborates with Iñupiaq Elders, Iñupiaq people often fill in the gaps in research. In 1994, for example, the body of a young girl from about A.D. 1200 surfaced on a bluff near Barrow. Jensen was called to examine it and discovered that the girl had been buried with some pieces of skin. The Iñupiaq Elders were able to identify the skin as part of a kayak cover by looking at its shape and its stitches, drawing on their traditional knowledge.

In Canada’s Ashkui Project, Environment Canada scientists collaborate with Innu Elders to gain understanding of the area’s ecology. Here, both parties discuss the results of water chemistry tests.

Increasingly, there are more formal partnerships between researchers and indigenous people as well. For example, geographer Shari Gearheard is heading a three-year National Science Foundation–funded project in which scientists and Inuits in Canada, Greenland, and Alaska form a research team to study sea ice. According to Gearheard, scientists know relatively little about the small-scale and regional processes and changes in the sea ice, while the Inuit have a very detailed knowledge of sea ice at the fine scale. “This is useful for scientists, who study sea ice mainly from satellite imagery, so they have complimentary perspectives,” she notes.

Shari Gearheard with Ilkoo Angutikjuak, Inuit Elder and hunter from Clyde River, Nunavut, with whom she has worked closely since 2000 on environmental change research.

These partnerships are not without problems, however. For example, scientific data and indigenous knowledge can conflict, and collaborations have raised the issue of indigenous knowledge as intellectual property. Also, it’s not always easy for indigenous people to trust scientists; they’ve been burned in the past. As scientist Glenn Sheehan notes, “Local people that I know were treated with radioactive iodine in a “zany” experiment to see if it would affect their susceptibility to cold. These people did not speak English at the time, and they were not told what was happening; in fact, they were given lies. Now when some of them get cancer they are convinced, perhaps rightly, that it was scientists who did this to them.”

Despite these issues and obvious past abuse, the collaborations between scientists and indigenous people are increasing, providing a more complete picture of the Arctic and climate change than either perspective could offer alone.