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Aboriginal Participation in Global Change Research in Northwest Territories of Canada

Chapter
Part of the Ecological Studies book series (ECOLSTUD, volume 124)

Abstract

This chapter is about people. People in Canada’s North, who are neither statistics nor passive recipients of policies developed by governments on the basis of scientific research, nor, most importantly, people disconnected from the Arctic and Subarctic terrestrial, marine, or aquatic ecosystems. In contrast, Inuit (formerly called Eskimos) and Dene (Athapaskan Indians), the aboriginal peoples of Canada’s Northwest Territories, are active participants in these ecosystems. They react to the research process and to the policies that are developed from research results. Unlike scientists, they do not traditionally separate their land, sea, and freshwater worlds into discrete ecosystems. Both conceptual and practical problems with global change research occur whether aboriginal people are advisers to scientific research projects, subjects in such research, participants in research, or affected by policies for response to global change. The following touches upon some human aspects of global change research in the circumpolar region.

Keywords

Aboriginal People Traditional Knowledge Indigenous Knowledge Participatory Action Research Aboriginal Land 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 1997

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