Inuit economic adaptations for a changing global climate

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a v a i l a b l e a t w w w. s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m

w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n

SURVEY

Inuit economic adaptations for a changing global climate Timothy B. Leduc Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3

AR TIC LE I N FO

ABS TR ACT

Article history:

Based upon climate change research conducted with Inuit from Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut

Received 5 November 2005

and a philosopher from Iqaluit, Nunavut, this paper proposes that market economic

Received in revised form

rationality limits the general Western approach towards climate change and indigenous

27 January 2006

knowledges. Building upon ecological economic research which indicates that there is little

Accepted 2 February 2006

difference between the economic assumptions which are related to the onset of human-

Available online 30 March 2006

induced climate change and those underlying the proposed solution, these Inuit voices

Keywords:

categories of ecological knowledge and traditional understandings as a means for

Inuit Qaujimaningit

economically adapting to climate change. It is suggested that Inuit knowledge of climate

Traditional ecological knowledge

change offers a challenge to economic rationalization if researchers move beyond a mere

Climate change

documentation of ecological knowledge and engage the interconnected cultural

Fallacy of misplaced concreteness

understandings. The conclusion proposes that the relation between culture and ecology

Gift economies

should be of significant interest to ecological economic thinking that aims to consider

critique the separation of their knowledge—Inuit Qaujimaningit—into the research

economic rationality, the global economy, and its climatic impacts in the context of bioregional adaptations. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The email on the computer screen reminded me of Daly and Cobb's (1994) fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Drawing from the philosophy of Whitehead, they describe this fallacy as referring to times and places where “thinkers forget the degree of abstraction involved in thought and draw unwarranted conclusions about concrete actuality” (1994, p. 36). Daly and Cobb are concerned about an economic view of environmental issues that neglects “aspects of concrete experience… in such a way as to minimize restructuring of the basic theory” (1994, p. 37). While their critique suggests that environmental impacts are related to the prevalence of this Western economic fallacy, the email from Jaypeetee Arnakak of Iqaluit suggested that similar economic assumptions are limiting Western understandings of indigenous knowledges like Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ). In his words (Arnakak, 2004 July 8, 2004): One of my criticisms of the treatment of indigenous knowledge and IQ is that it's a thinly veiled corporatist

agenda regarding the environment. It's way too specific to corporate style resource development and management to really be considered indigenous knowledge. As with Daly and Cobb's concern, this Inuit critique suggests that IQ is being treated as another economic variable when developing approaches to environmental management based on Western economic assumptions. Within the context of climate change research, these parallel critiques offer two hypotheses. First, Western models will tend to represent an economically rationalized climate change that can utilize Inuit ecological knowledge to promote Western economic adaptations. At the same time, that which is denied in IQ may provide a cultural screen for envisioning a way of dealing with this fallacy. In fact, reconciling the incongruency between economic representations and ecological reality is perhaps a central goal of ecological economics, and IQ may be able to support this project.

E-mail address: [email protected]. 0921-8009/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2006.02.004

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Towards the end of 2003 I attended a lecture given by Jaypeetee on the philosophy and policy implications of IQ at a York University indigenous speaker series. I was drawn to his lecture because of the increasing body of research that displays science and IQ as offering complimentary ecological observations on northern climate changes (e.g. Krupnik and Jolly, 2002). An Inuit policy worker and philosopher, Jaypeetee came to influence my thought on IQ through two years of email dialogues. IQ is a local knowledge that has adapted Inuit to diverse northern ecologies for generations. At a 1995 conference, Inuit described their knowledge as (Emery cited in Berkes, 1999, pp. 5–6): practical common sense; teachings and experience passed through generations; knowing the country; being rooted in spiritual health; a way of life; an authority system of rules for resource use; respect; obligation to share; wisdom in using knowledge; using heart and head together. More recently, an Inuit-directed compilation of cultural knowledge defined IQ as “knowledge that has been passed on to us by our ancestors, things that we have always known, things crucial to our survival—patience and resourcefulness” (Bennett and Rowley, 2004, p. xxi). Jaypeetee adds that IQ is not simply an ecological knowledge for managing relations with the environment or a traditional knowledge isolated in the past. Talking about this point in relation to defining Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, he wrote (Arnakak, 2004, p. 1): The fact remains that Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit is a semiliteral translation of the original term in English—and in the passive tense at that. I have suggested on a number of occasions taking out the reference to “old” in Qaujimajatuqangit, and making the term an infinitive—Inuit Qaujimaningit—or simply, Inuit knowledge. This dynamic can be seen in climate change research with IQ, such that Inuit ecological observations have become a dominant interest while traditional cultural understandings have been marginalized. It is proposed that this cross-cultural interaction maintains the fallacy of economic rationalization through the acceptance of knowledge that can work with familiar Western categories and the denial of that which is problematic. With climate change, an environmental force adds support in clarifying the interconnected cultural and ecological dimensions of this fallacy. Climate change highlights the strength of this fallacy as market failure has brought the benefits of economic growth to some while externalizing the costs onto others. The answer to this problem is to increase economic rationalization through a proper accounting and managing of the world's goods and services. In this analysis, economic rationalization refers to a way of living that is based in the cost of choosing one thing and denying another, increasing technical efficiency so that satisfaction and profit are maximized, as well as the formulation of policy that is meant to deal with the social and environmental impacts of this way. It is a significant factor in the mental make-up of Western climate research and policy that climate change is viewed as something that can be responded to by cost–benefit analyses, mitigation strategies, and market-

based mechanisms. Consequently, economic rationalization comes to deeply influence adaptation policies despite this assumption being one significant factor—with science, technology, and politics—in the onset of climate change. What follows is an ecological economic analysis of climate research as it is represented within the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), focusing on that which is embraced and denied in IQ by science as a means to clarify the cross-cultural dimensions of this fallacy. My analysis is based upon what qualitative researchers refer to as “triangulation”. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2005), triangulation utilizes multiple methods as “an attempt to secure an in-depth understanding” that is “an alternative to validation” in its ability to add “rigor, breadth, complexity, richness, and depth” (2005, p. 5). In this analysis three approaches are brought together so as to clarify common patterns that reveal an IQ understanding of climate change and critique of economic rationalization. As already touched upon, the first approach critically analyses northern climate research related to IQ for the assumption of economic rationality. The other two methods are based upon different engagements with IQ. These two methods will now be briefly described before continuing the analysis. Jaypeetee's emails also guided my research to the Nunavut community of Chesterfield Inlet on the Hudson Bay's West coast. In October of 2004 I delivered a two-day workshop, which is the second method of this research. Following the decolonizing methodology of Smith, this method attempted to share Western perspectives on climate change with the IQ understandings of eight elders and hunters. Smith's approach subverts traditional research that would examine IQ for useful knowledge, into one of dialogue that provides space for Inuit to respond to Western knowledge on climate change. According to Smith, this method “is responsive to the marginalized contexts in which indigenous communities exist” and aims to demystify knowledge (1999, p. 160). It was this methodological spirit of research as sharing knowledges that I brought to Chesterfield Inlet. Given the methodological limitations of a two-day workshop, its findings are brought together with other research on IQ observations of climate change that have uncovered similar dynamics (e.g. Krupnik and Jolly, 2002). The final method is situated around my email dialogues with Jaypeetee. While Chesterfield Inlet offered two days of climatic observations, the years of emailing with Jaypeetee offered time to build the required trust to more fully engage with a different culture from my own. These emails examined ethnographic accounts, the words of elders, science, policy, and climate change from both Western and IQ views. As well, the workshop participants consented to having Jaypeetee read and guide my understanding of the transcripts. These discussions offered a deeper understanding of Inuit terms and assumptions, with the patterns and contrasts of the three methods interacting to offer a richer perspective on IQ, climate change, and Western economic assumptions.

1.

Rationalizing northern climate change

The IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) indicates that the importance of the Arctic to climate change is related to the

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major influence it has on the global ocean, such that changes in this area can influence the global climate (Anisimov and Fitzharris, 2001). While these regions are expected to experience the impacts of climate change first, the IPCC and ACIA make it clear that these areas are harbingers of the ecological and cultural disturbance that will eventually impact other regions of the world. For example, the TAR states that climate change will “affect some key polar drivers” that “will be selfamplifying and, once triggered, will affect other regions of the world for centuries to come” (Anisimov and Fitzharris, 2001, p. 829). Likewise, the ACIA warns that while the North provides “an early indication” of climate change, its impacts “will also reach far beyond the Arctic, affecting global climate, sea level, biodiversity, and many aspects of human social and economic systems” (ACIA, 2004, p. 125). The ACIA and TAR describe the scope of impacts observed in the Arctic thus far, as well as projecting future trends. Some of ACIA's findings include a speeding up of warming; shifting northward of vegetation zones and animal species; increasing storms in coastal communities; melting of permafrost which results in increased GHG emissions and a disruption of infrastructure; and the melting of sea ice that is impacting marine life. These projected impacts are also expected to be costly for people living in the North. The TAR questions the general long-term effectiveness of indigenous knowledges and adaptation strategies in the face of climate change. The promise of IQ for facilitating local adaptation to the effects of climate change may be frustrated by factors beyond “the management of small, isolated communities” (Anisimov and Fitzharris, 2001, p. 827). Migratory animals, transnational commercial interests, and the global population are but a few identified factors that may impact northern adaptations. Both the IPCC and ACIA suggest that the global nature of climate change will eventually limit the effectiveness of traditional Inuit responses. But it is not simply Inuit adaptive practices that will be impacted by these changes, for the TAR also notes that there will be difficulties for economic institutions such as mining and oil extraction. Mitigating issues, such as erosion and coastal instability, will require great engineering ingenuity and expenditure. Economic impacts of this nature are related not only to resource extraction, but also the increasing infrastructure costs that will be required to continue transporting resources to world markets. Despite these potential impacts, the TAR tempers the extent of climate change's costs since “the populations of humans and other biota within polar regions are low, impacts may be relatively minor” (Anisimov and Fitzharris, 2001, p. 814). While the economic costs may be minimal according to the TAR, it also reports that “the possibility remains that predicted climate change eventually will increase the overall productivity of natural systems in polar regions” (Anisimov and Fitzharris, 2001, p. 831). The ACIA also found that there may be potential economic benefits, such as melting sea ice that could open a Northwest Passage and decrease shipping costs, agriculture benefits that may accrue due to “longer and warmer growing seasons” (2004, p. 57), or the potential of increased access to oil and mineral reserves. This economic view on the benefits of climate change existed as early as 1993, when Meyer-Abich (1993, p. 73) suggested that “towards the

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northern edge of current core agricultural and forestry regions, warming may enhance the productive potential in climatic terms”. The ACIA adds that while agricultural growth is a possibility, the realities of limited “infrastructure, small populations (limited local markets), and long distances to large markets are likely to continue to be major factors limiting” this progressive trajectory in the Arctic over the short-term (ACIA, 2004, p. 57). Where this economic rationality leads is not all that surprising in light of Daly and Cobb's fallacy. After assessing the inflationary economic impacts of disrupted transportation routes from the South, the TAR continues by stating that “new transport opportunities, growing communities, and easier mining will create new wealth—but only for those who move away from traditional lifestyles” (Anisimov and Fitzharris, 2001, p. 831). The ACIA similarly suggests that indigenous knowledges are being threatened as the changing weather transforms “species range and availability” and “weather conditions present serious challenges to human health and food security, and possibly even the survival of some cultures” (ACIA, 2004, p. 11). Returning to the TAR, it compares the adaptability of indigenous and technologically developed communities (Anisimov and Fitzharris, 2001, p. 831): For indigenous communities following traditional lifestyles, opportunities for adaptation to climate change appear to be limited. Long-term climate change, combined with other stresses, may cause the decline and eventual disappearance of communities. Technologically developed communities are likely to adapt quite readily to climate change by adopting altered modes of transport and by increased investment to take advantage of new commercial and trade opportunities. While IQ may continue in an evolving form, as a knowledge that informs daily ways of living in “technologically developed communities” it will likely take a back seat to economic rationality in its structural forms. Most certainly, Western knowledge will be defined as the primary option for future adaptation. Rogers et al. (2004) provide an ecological economic critique of this dynamic that utilizes climate change as a means to expand the scope of Western economic practices. They argue that environmental issues are extending the influence of economic rationality through a dynamic that increases the scope of generalized economic scarcity on both the individual and global political scales. In other words, the generalization of limited means to meet desired ends is translated to a global scale as environmental issues are utilized to progress other cultures into Western ways. Rather than climate change making apparent the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, the review of common environmental economic analyses of Rogers et al. suggest that the belief in the substitutability of human ingenuity for natural processes maintains the reduction of environmental issues to “one more subjective consumer choice” in a global market (2004, p. 184). There are a number of ways that the theory of Roger et al. resonates with these economic discourses on IQ and climate change. First, the projection of the market economy as the primary adaptive response to climate change in the North typifies the extension

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of economic rationality. Moreover, the characterization of IQ as a knowledge that is under threat, and yet still has information that is useful to research, further supports the claim of Rogers et al. that “When economic and ecological scarcity become “permanent features” of modern life, the ability to ‘wonder’ about other forms of social exchange are more difficult” (2004, p. 183). This extension of Daly and Cobb's fallacy to an economic end for all cultures now facing global changes is not new, but merely the extension of Western dreams of instituting an economically rational Enlightenment on a global scale. According to Berkes, this “belief in the ultimate and final victory of Western science has been accompanied by the belief that all cultures would merge into one “correct” way of thinking about human development and well-being” (1999, p. 178). Based upon research with indigenous knowledges, Berkes finds that environmental issues are in fact challenging this assumption. For example, the objective validity of climate science is, as Riedlinger and Berkes note, “complicated by insufficient scientific knowledge… of physical and ecological processes in the Arctic, and by the lack of historical baseline data against which to measure data” (2001, p. 315). Simultaneously, Berkes uses the analyses of Daly and Cobb to suggest that neo-classical economics is running up against “biophysical limits dictated by ecological considerations” that make the ideals of development increasingly precarious (1999, p. 178). In his words, “ecology and economics are in a state of flux as new paradigms threaten to take over the old” (1999, p. 178). His analysis makes it clear that the fallacy is not limited to economic rationality, but is also interrelated with scientific methods and global development. As a means for responding to these difficulties, Riedlinger and Berkes suggest that IQ can be helpful to scientists as Inuit “assessments of change are based on cumulative knowledge of local trends, patterns, and processes, derived from generations of reliance on the land” (2001, p. 315). For Riedlinger and Berkes, through joining “the knowledge and skills of western science with local Inuit expertise” it is possible to “translate global processes such as climate change into local-scale understandings of potential impacts” (2001, p. 316). Similarly, the ACIA states that indigenous knowledges provide “an important source of information about climate change” which complements scientific research in indicating “that substantial changes have already occurred”. As such, IQ has become of increasing interest to climate change researchers for documenting observations that confirm model projections.

2.

Climatic ecological knowledge

Upon arriving in Chesterfield Inlet I looked for a possible community co-facilitator of the workshop. The Hamlet Council suggested contacting Simionie Sammurtok, the president of the local Hunter and Trapper Organization. Within an hour of contacting him and explaining the purpose of the workshop he came to my hotel room and talked about his concerns with regards to climate change. As we went over the materials and workshop configurations, he was struck by a

map of Canada with colour coded projections of average temperature changes. He described seeing the impacts of these changes in many locally specifiable ways, and felt that showing this overhead would prompt the participants to describe climate changes based on their own experience and knowledge. Inuit ways of living have provided elders and hunters with a detailed ecological knowledge that has allowed them to notice the local impacts of historical climate changes. For example, Caleb Pungowiyi talked with elders in his Alaskan home town about climate change, and had the following to say (cited in Krupnik and Jolly, 2002, p. 7): My aunt, Mabel Toolie, said [to me]: “The Earth is faster now”… Back in the old days they could predict the weather by observing the stars, the sky, and other events… Not anymore! And my aunt was saying that because the weather patterns are so fast now, those predictions cannot be made anymore. The weather patterns are changing so quickly she could think the Earth is moving faster now. Similarly, another elder by the name of Aqqiaruq described the changing weather as uggianaqtuq, a term which means that the weather is “acting unexpectedly or in an unfamiliar way” (Fox, 2002, p. 44). These unfamiliar climatic changes are also documented in the research of Riedlinger and Berkes (2001) and Berkes and Jolly (2001), both of which study observations from Sachs Harbour in Canada's Northwest Territories. In this research, Inuit came to understand these changes through fluctuations in ice and open water, the melting of permafrost, precipitation increases, warmer summers and shorter winters, unpredictable seasons, new species of fish and birds, shifting population of polar bears, and the unpredictable increase of thunder and lightning (Riedlinger and Berkes, 2001). Focusing on the human dimensions of these changes, Berkes and Jolly (2001) found the impacts on people to be related to access (e.g., snow is soft making it harder to travel); safety (e.g., unpredictable ice); predictability (e.g., strange weather); and species availability (e.g., less summer ice impacting seal hunt). This is the IQ understanding of climate change that is familiar to the research literature, and I expected to hear much the same in the workshop. It was a cool October day, and the sky was overcast. Sitting around the table were a few elders, hunters, and a Northern Ranger. On the screen was a map of Canada's projected average changes in temperature over the next 50 years. The voice of Simionie explained that their community is on the cusp of experiencing the most significant warming in the country, somewhere between 4 to 6 °C. The first to respond to Simionie's introduction was Eli Kimmaliardjuk. Rather than beginning with the expected description of his comparable ecological observations, he offered words of concern about the lack of knowledge sharing that has shaped the relation between scientists and Inuit. Eli expressed frustration: Through news the scientists and politicians could let people know what is happening in the past and the present. If they did this then people would know more. They know what they are doing, but they did not even make reports to work with the people.

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Moments later Louie Autut added: We really don't believe scientists anymore because they never report anything. Why don't they give information to us and why don't they want to know from us? Both Eli and Louie were expressing a common sentiment of the participants: environmental researchers in general have not shared knowledge with Inuit. Climate change is more than an academic concern for many Inuit—it challenges how they live in the North. In the estimation of the participants, most of the community received 75% of their food from hunting, fishing, and gathering. Because of the needs of this way of living, the participants wanted a more equal exchange, a relationship where knowledge, understanding, and adaptations could be transformed through dialogue. It was a point that was continually clarified, one which I attempted to attend to by supplementing their questions and observations with similar IPCC findings. The lack of previous access to this knowledge led many of the participants to be frustrated by what they saw as the unwillingness of scientists to share knowledge about an ecology that is central to their sustenance. The Chesterfield Inlet participants also offered ecological observations that were similar to those predicted in the TAR, documented in the ACIA, and reported in other indigenousbased research (e.g. Wohlforth, 2004; Krupnik and Jolly, 2002; Riedlinger and Berkes, 2001). These observations included: declining water levels in rivers and lakes that in turn impacts the spawning of arctic char; a warming of weather over the past ten years that is changing seasonal onset, effecting the laying of eggs by birds, reducing sea ice, and increasing polar bear frequency around the community; northern migration of insects, birds, and animals from the tree-line, including a recent observation of the first grizzly bear; and increased frequency of extreme cold days in winter, hot days in summer, and snow storms; and warming weather. Recognizing that these climatic patterns are observed both in IQ's ecological observations as well as by Western science suggests that there is potential for the partnership desired by the workshop participants. It also raises the spectre of a less respectful historical relation between science and indigenous knowledges. According to Berkes (2002), researchers often engage indigenous knowledges so as to access information which can then be confirmed through Western scientific methods. Warren Matumeak, an Inupiaq elder from Alaska, spoke to Wohlforth about this practice (2004, p. 90): “I've been telling them, this is how it is. They go do scientific study and do a lot of work to prove it, and they come back and say, ‘Warren, you were right.’ It's just common sense. They use science to prove things we already know”. Adding to his concern that scientists are not sharing knowledge, Eli also felt that researchers may even use IQ without giving people proper credit. In his words: After he dies, the scientists will take what he says and use it, but they will not give credit to the elders. That happens,

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the scientist and elders don't agree all the times… The elders try to say something to the scientists, but they won't agree. This kind of statement appears to be common. After their study, Riedlinger and Berkes (2001, p. 326) concluded that communities are frustrated “over the lack of useful feedback from scientists or input into research and decision-making”. Through this methodology, IQ's ecological knowledge is interpreted from a Western economic rationality that is oriented towards scientific assessment and adaptive management. This assumption may be left unquestioned despite the impact climate change is having on the Inuit way of life. At the same time, Inuit are left in the dark concerning potentially useful scientific knowledge. In response to this situation, Riedlinger and Berkes state that progress has to be made “in accepting traditional knowledge as a source of knowledge and understanding, not in the abstract, but in practice”.

3.

Changing traditional knowledge

From the indigenous perspective of Smith, research is historically grounded in an Enlightenment view “which assumes that Western ideas about the most fundamental things are the only ideas possible to hold” (1999, p. 56). Continuing, Smith states that this research “is imbued with an ‘attitude’ and a ‘spirit’ which assumes a certain ownership of the entire world”, and “which from indigenous perspectives ‘steals’ knowledge from others and then uses it to benefit the people who ‘stole’ it” (1999, p. 56). From this critical indigenous view, climate change research that utilizes IQ's ecological knowledge is not merely enacting the fallacy of misplaced concreteness—but is one aspect of a lengthy cultural tradition. In describing an elders' story about caribou migration, Cruikshank (2004) shows that which is deemed acceptable in traditional Western research. While ecological knowledge within the story may be codified and used by scientists and managers in a way that does not confront their own cultural conceptions, she says the story itself “would be ignored because it confuses rather than confirms familiar categories” (2004, p. 24). She goes on to state that categories “like TEK tend to work with surface features and are inclined to stagnate and to drain the content—and the life—from their categories” distancing “people from lived experience” (2004, p. 25). As such, indigenous knowledges are studied through categories of utility and non-utility, or ecological knowledge and tradition, largely confirming Western assumptions. Beyond this traditional way of researching IQ, Berkes also describes a postmodern approach where “Western science is but one knowledge system among many, even though it happens to be the dominant knowledge system by far” (2002, p. 341). Recognizing the contextual nature of knowledge, this methodology questions the research tradition of isolating information and using it within foreign knowledge frameworks. He suggests that the integrity of any knowledge is threatened when removed from its cultural context. In fact, ecological knowledge is explicitly understood to be a subset of indigenous knowledge (Berkes, 1999). As such, Berkes asserts

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that in conducting place-based research science needs to shift its view “away from expert-knows-best science, and towards accepting indigenous knowledge as a source of knowledge that complements science” (2002, p. 340). In relation to climate change, much of this postmodern research has focused upon the adaptive capacity of IQ. For example, Berkes and Jolly (2001) have defined two components of Inuit adaptation. They first identify “coping strategies” which are largely emergency responses to changes of an often short-term nature (e.g. abnormal season). With phenomena that are more persistent there are longer-term responses, which Berkes and Jolly define as “adaptive strategies”. These strategies are “ways in which individuals, households, and communities change their productive activities and modify local rules and institutions to secure livelihoods” (Berkes and Jolly, 2001, p. 3). Adding another dimension, Krupnik (1993) finds that these cultures have to be particularly flexible and adaptive because the natural environment itself has cycles that are of far shorter intervals and greater amplitudes than those found in more temperate regions. These ecological realities privilege those who can adapt to environmental disruptions while being opportunistic in times of abundance. Based on this understanding, Berkes and Jolly define IQ in the following way (2001, p. 12): (1) mobility and flexibility in terms of group size, (2) flexibility with regard to seasonal cycles of harvest and resource use backed up by oral traditions to provide group memory, (3) detailed local environmental knowledge and related skill sets, (4) sharing mechanisms and social networks to provide mutual support and minimize risks, and (5) intercommunity trade. Their analysis takes IQ beyond ecological knowledge by recognizing the interconnected economic and cultural adaptations for living in the North. And while some of these adaptive capacities are no longer practiced in the modern context of settled communities (e.g. mobility), and ecological knowledge has been degraded amongst the younger generations (Berkes and Jolly, 2001), the continued practice of sharing in a mixed economy that includes country food and the cash economy reveals the continued dynamism of IQ. This postmodern view of IQ does not deny the existence of economic rationality, but, as will be seen, realizes that both ecological knowledge and economic rationality are embedded within cultural understandings of the ecological context. According to Sahlins (1999), anthropologists throughout much of the 20th century conceived themselves as social scientists working with dying knowledges because of the global impact of Western society. He argues that contrary to expectations, economic globalization has not resulted in the monoculturing of the world's indigenous people into developmentally inferior Westerners. The more common result has been the proliferation of indigenous activities that have seen the incorporation of Western technological advantages into subsistence practices. Sahlins finds that research with Inuit is a perfect case study in this process, where the culture has transformed much more than expected “because of the large influx of productive technologies and domestic conveniences”, but much less than expected because these tech-

nologies have often been “deployed to the subsistence life style and manipulated through its customary relations of production and distribution” (1999, p. viii). In fact, during the workshop Louis Autut explained that the majority of their limited money is used to buy oil or technology because this is more sustainable for them than buying food: We still get some things from the Northern or Coop stores for whatever is needed, but 80% of our money, or maybe even more, is used for gas and oil so that elders can eat more country food. It is also true that the cash economy and store bought food are not shared in the same traditional ways, revealing the coexistence of two cultural systems, but this also exemplifies indigenous knowledges' dynamic quality. This quality also presented itself in the Chesterfield Inlet participants' desire to engage a sharing between IQ and science.

4.

An economic climate for sharing

Taking stock of the workshop's progression, it became clear that what was being offered by these participants was distinctly different from the understanding offered by Jaypeetee over an extended period of emails. While a two day workshop could provide a sense of the ecological changes occurring around Chesterfield Inlet and comments on Western research ethics, it was far too short a timeframe to build the trust needed for engaging IQ understandings of climate change. Complimenting these observations was Jaypeetee's insights on IQ. His words culturally contextualized what was being heard during the workshop. For Jaypeetee, IQ is a practice of living in a context of interacting familial, community, and ecological relations, all of which inform the social and economic organization of Inuit communities. As part of his policy research and concern for creating avenues of philosophical dialogue, he developed a model of IQ that is based on four assumptions. First of all, “the extended family is the primary life support system”. Second, each family belongs to the larger social structures of the community and ecology, and as such actions are oriented toward social optimization as opposed to individual selfinterest. Third, “the family is the means of transferring knowledge and skills that make sense, and are sustainable in the context within which they arose”. Finally, he says that the extended family “is the basic economic unit of society”, and that its actions are based on egalitarian sharing where people have the right to food and basic human needs (February 26, 2004). There are similarities between this view of IQ and that outlined by Berkes and Jolly, but there is a slightly different orientation. While they both talk of knowledge and resource sharing networks that presuppose a detailed understanding for living in place, Jaypeetee's philosophy focuses on the contexts within which skills, knowledge, and resources are shared. From Jaypeetee's perspective, one of the central aspects of IQ is its relevance to social organization and the networks of sharing which define the community within its broader context. Complimenting this view is Wenzel's (1995)

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research in Clyde River, Nunavut, where he documented ningiqtuq as an Inuit term that describes their way of sharing resources. Ningiqtuq refers to a web of social mechanisms that act to ensure that food and other resources are distributed from the individual, to extended families, and the broader community. According to Wenzel, ningiqtuq is primarily a social rather than economic process, such that the greatest amount of sharing occurs within the immediate social context of the extended family, and from there radiates out to less immediate relations through activities like communal meals. Rather than being conceived as a system of generalized reciprocity, Wenzel describes ningiqtuq as a socially complex economy that consists of balancing reciprocal relations through a knowledge system for inclusion and sanction. In other words, there are formal and informal rules informing reciprocity—just as there are in Western economic transactions. Sharing is an adaptive response to what Krupnik already described as the North's “natural cycles that are of far shorter intervals and greater amplitudes”. In a world that is always changing, it makes good survival sense to be sharing knowledge, food, and relations. This is not only a rational economic adaptation, but also a practice that is meant to imitate a cosmic sharing principle. Jaypeetee states that “sharing and reciprocity are matured traits of a socialization process that is diametrically opposed to the individualistic market economy in that it works with nature to produce something spiritual” (Arnakak, 2004 July 12, 2004). Sharing would seem to re-produce that spirit of what Nuttall (2000) describes as the “giving cosmos”, which is a vastly different law of nature than that assumed in economic rationality's attempt to internalize climate change and ecological knowledges as means to progress this Western adaptation. As an alternative response to the prevalence of economic rationality in environmental thought, Rogers et al. analyze alternative forms of social exchange in the anthropological (e.g. Bird-David, 1992; Mauss, 1990; Sahlins, 1972) and philosophical (e.g. Godbout, 1998; Hyde, 1979) literature on the gift economy. In many ways their analysis of the gift parallels IQ, especially in its “recognition that gift exchange is not separated from other activities in society” (2004, p. 185). They see this as a basic challenge to a market economy that structurally separates itself from other social institutions so as to be objectively self-regulating. In terms more familiar to market economics, this is a challenge to the assumed position of objectivity from which the internalization of certain externalities is instituted. Contrasting this approach, gift exchange is primarily concerned with social exchanges, including all of the positive and negative aspects that interconnect the human to a cosmos of animal, vegetable, mineral, and divine forces (Rogers et al., 2004). Nuttall's research led him to conclude that for northern indigenous peoples “animals and all other aspects of the natural world, such as lakes, rivers, the sun, the moon etc., have souls, just as humans do” (2000, p. 392). Sharing with “animals and natural phenomena… reminds human beings that they are not unique, but are part of a transcendent universe in which everything emanates from the same spiritual source” (2000, p. 392). As other researchers of hunter–gatherers have found, close daily contact with other

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beings provides experiences of being involved in sharing relationships that have spiritual depth (e.g. Ingold, 1999; BirdDavid, 1999). Responding to the claim that this conception of indigenous sharing typifies a Western romanticism, Cruikshank says that in a worldview “where animals and humans share common states of being” there is a “mutual responsibility” for maintaining this shared world, and “social relations are rarely straight forward” (2004, p. 27). Clarifying the complex reality of social relations, Krupnik's (1993) research with the Asiatic Eskimo makes the point that at the beginning of the 20th century there is evidence of “excessive natural resource exploitation” which calls into question the romantic view that “traditional Arctic maritime hunters” could not destroy “the ecological balance of their environments” (1993, p. 79). There is a substantial body of research which can be used to question the validity of this romantic assumption of Noble Indian cultures (e.g. Krech, 1999). What should be recognised here is that conflicts inevitably abound in all social relationships, especially in a world where bodies survive through the killing of other bodies. While Western economic rationality projects individual self-interest as the answer, in a giving cosmos the focus is on how to mediate those relations in a way that attempts to respect shared realities. As Jaypeetee clarified, social optimization as opposed to economic maximization is IQ's focus. This sharing cosmos is revealed in Inuit mythological, oral, and community stories that nurture a worldly respect and provides the basis for the ecological knowledge that is reflected in the words of Inuit elders and hunters. While the ACIA notes that “mythologies, vivid oral histories, festivals, and animal ceremonies illustrate the social, economic, and spiritual relationships that Indigenous Peoples have with the arctic environment” (ACIA, 2004, p. 100), this note is the only step this lengthy report takes into what Inuit cultural traditions can offer to an understanding of climate change. None of these traditions are documented within the report's scientific frame of reference that largely utilizes indigenous knowledges to document and confirm changes and project possible adaptation scenarios. This is the process of Western research that led Eli, Louis, and others to be critical of the lack of sharing on the part of researchers. The sharing cosmos of IQ is distinct from that economic rationality which analyzes climate change as an externality that has not been properly priced. There is much in common between IQ's sharing cosmos and the biospheric vision proposed by Daly and Cobb as a means to deal with the economic fallacy. They suggest that many scientific disciplines, like climate science, reveal a biosphere consisting of an “internal relatedness” that “forbids thinking of it as composed of self-contained individuals” (1994, p. 202). These sciences reveal a social cosmos where the “biosphere is a society, or rather a society of societies” (1994, p. 202). For these authors, a blending of science with Western religious understandings provides the basis for a biospheric vision that “is richly inclusive and transformative of human perceptions” (1994, p. 383). In concert with climate change and IQ's sharing cosmology, Daly and Cobb's “biospheric vision” confronts the fallacious assumption that the ultimate basis for economic adaptation requires an individualized self-interest that can

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progressively internalize all externalities as a means to correct market failures. The complex uncertainties surrounding climate change suggest that the integrity of economic rationality may depend upon its contextualization within cultural conceptions that resonate with science. For Daly and Cobb, this ecological economic project entails a historical and religious analysis of the economy and science. Meanwhile, IQ's critique of Western knowledge suggests that an answer to the challenge of global climate change may be less related to increasing ecological knowledge as a means for developing rational economic policies. Rather, this research proposes that the scientific engagement of IQ as a means for clarifying climate change is merely a first step which ecological economics can extend by examining the role of culture in facilitating a sustainable society. In other words, the relation between culture and ecology should be of significant interest to an ecological economic thinking that aims to consider economic rationality, the global economy, and its climatic impacts in the context of unique bioregional adaptations.

5.

From research to sharing

IQ's dominant conceptualization in academia sums up the vestiges of a Western paradigm that judges between that which is of value and that which is valueless. Ecological knowledge provides researchers with local data that can fill in the gaps not easily addressed through Western science. It is also an aspect of Inuit knowledge that can be easily slotted into market economic models that are concerned with internalizing externalities. Simultaneously, all those spiritual cosmologies, economic practices, and oral stories are lumped in the category of tradition—that which is irrelevant to a rational valuation of the world. In contrast, this analysis suggests that for IQ to be properly engaged the assumptions which limit the inclusion of indigenous knowledges will have to be confronted. The indigenous scholarship of Smith (1999) provides a critical perspective on research which accords well with IQ's sharing cosmos. Beginning with an overview of the colonial tradition of researching indigenous people, Smith points out that for many indigenous people the term “research” is associated with “the continued construction of indigenous peoples as the problem” (1999, p. 92). As an indigenous response, Smith re-envisions research as a sharing of knowledges that is not limited to disconnected points of information, but rather includes theoretical understandings that give a broader sense of how information is “constructed and represented” (1999, p. 16). Knowledge can provide people with a basis to be responsive, while information has no orienting context. An example of the latter is to give specific information from the ACIA or TAR, without a culturally understandable analysis of its assumptions and how they can impact IQ. This indigenous challenge resonates with the challenge of climate change so as to confront the Western assumption that its economic organization and rationality is the progressive destiny for all cultures. It is this assumption of pre-destination that supports the Western researcher's own historical tradition of not including its economic assumptions

and religious beliefs in the research. What climate change makes apparent is the inextricable impact of these Western traditions on global developments that have brought about these changes. As such, it is important that both these traditional understandings—Western and Inuit—are included in a critically respectful dialogue that is concerned with adapting to climate change. At the end of their analysis on the gift and ecological economics, Rogers et al. (2004) ask the following question: “What would an economics of abundance look like?” In as much as IQ and the analysis of gift exchange coincide, Inuit would appear to have something important to contribute in answering this question. But to get a full grasp of what IQ can offer for understanding and adapting to climate change, a sharing methodology needs to be fostered so that Western categories of ecological and traditional knowledges can be reintegrated. By engaging dialogue with that which is obscured in the concept of tradition—such as animistic cosmology, oral stories, prophetic visions, and spirited understandings of the weather—and allowing it to intermingle with science, it may be possible to imbue IQ's ecological knowledge with critical cultural understandings that could offer a wider spectrum of potential adaptations to climate change. This approach may bring forth solutions that are unique to each bioregion and culture in its integration of relevant scientific, economic, and management knowledge, while providing critical perspectives that are meant to keep economic rationality and global economic structures socially embedded.

Acknowledgements I wish to thank workshop participants from Chesterfield Inlet and the guidance of Jaypeetee; the reviews of C. Lessels, R. A. Rogers, and S. Pegg; the research funding of SSHRC/OMRN; and the three reviewers.

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