Young members of the community of Umiujaq run on spring sea ice in eastern Hudson Bay. (Photos by Megan Sheremata)
October 9, 2019
Alexa Battler
For decades, the environment in the eastern Hudson Bay region of the Canadian Arctic has been changing, yet very little direct environmental data has been collected from Arctic regions in Canada.
“A lot of the observations that people living here have made are the only consistent and reliable observations we have about changes,” says Megan Sheremata, a PhD candidate in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at U of T Scarborough.
“It’s really valuable to have those out there and published.”
For her doctoral research, Sheremata is collaborating with four Inuit communities in eastern Hudson Bay: Kuujjuaraapik; Umiujaq; Inukjuak of Nunavik (the Inuit territory of Northern Quebec) and Sanikiluaq, on the Belcher Islands of Nunavut.
Her work, developed in partnership with the Arctic Eider Society, centres on engaging with Inuit knowledge of environmental change. Her goal is to work to mobilize Inuit knowledge so policy-makers and researchers can better support Inuit priorities in the region.
“Environmental change happens to communities, so you really need community perspectives to shape how meaningful policy responses are developed,” Sheremata says. “There is a lot of robustness to Inuit knowledge, because Inuit rely on it for food security, community wellbeing and survival.”
Her interviews with elders and younger hunters focus on Inuit knowledge of environmental changes since the 1970s, in the wake of the James Bay Project.