Fish-WIKS News

Hard to pronounce and even harder to define, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) is a term one cannot evade when doing research in the Territory of Nunavut, as the two are intrinsically tied. Coming from the Inuktitut verb root “qaujima-“, meaning “to know”, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit is often translated as “Inuit traditional knowledge”. But what is IQ? Very early on during my field work it became clear that IQ means very different things to different people. As I immersed myself in data transcription and analysis, I thus first focused on specifically analyzing the various answers to the question What is Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit?. Working with just a subset of my data at first was a safe way to get to know the qualitative data analysis (QDA) software while still advancing my analysis. Using frame analysis, I evaluated how my research participants understand Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. From their data, four different frames emerged: a bygone knowledge perspective, a traditional ecological knowledge perspective, a holistic, yet today rudimentary Inuit worldview perspective and a universal guiding principles perspective.

In December 2017, I was able to present these findings in both an oral and a poster presentation at Arctic Change 2017, the largest multidisciplinary international Arctic research conference held in Canada. This year, almost 1500 delegates convened in Québec City to share and discuss their research, among them other members of the Fish-WIKS team. It was wonderful to reconnect with them in person.