Featured ELOKA Communities

ELOKA is currently collaborating with indigenous community members of the Hudson Bay region, Baffin Island, and Greenland. Not only are they observing and reporting changes in their environment, they are also sharing wisdom that has long been gleaned from generations of living in an Arctic environment, thereby providing a valuable link to science.

Inuit of the Hudson Bay Region

Sanikiluaq is a small community of the Belcher Islands located in Hudson Bay, and is part of the larger Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. Since the early 1990s, the indigenous peoples of Sanikiluaq and the Hudson Bay region have participated in and have led community-based monitoring initiatives. Through these observations, Inuit have helped observe, interpret, and document the changes occurring in their environment. As participants in the Hudson Bay Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Management System (TEKMS) study, for example, Inuit and Cree hunters, trappers, and elders from around the bay shared their observations regarding rivers, sea ice, weather, animals, human health, the effects of development, and traditional knowledge management. Twenty-eight native communities from Sanikiluaq and the Hudson Bay region, 15 of which were Inuit and 13 Cree, participated in the TEKMS study. This effort led to a valuable collection of traditional ecological knowledge, as documented in Voices from the Bay, and has helped set important precedents for using indigenous knowledge to inform public policy and environmental decision-making. Visit the Municipality of Sanikiluaq Collaborator page to learn more about current projects underway in this region.

Inuit and Inughuit of Baffin Island and Greenland

When Local and Traditional Knowledge (LTK) is integrated with interdisciplinary studies of science, the result is a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. In this case, it is the Monodon monoceros species, more commonly known as the narwhal. As participants in the Narwhal Tusk Discoveries project, Inuit and Inughuit from Baffin Island and Greenland are currently sharing their knowledge and observations of narwhal anatomy, migration, population, distribution, and behavior. As these indigenous elders and hunters have both admired and subsisted on narwhals for centuries, it is no wonder that their insights, perceptions, and observations are profoundly valuable to scientists. Further, their knowledge has inspired a dialogue that extends from graduate students in evolutionary biology programs to grade school students around the globe as a future generation contemplates the wonder of the narwhal. In the broader context of the International Polar Year (IPY), this study will leave a legacy of scientists, young investigators, and indigenous peoples who share a common interest in understanding how this unusual marine mammal fits into the puzzle of its arctic environment.