See Inuktitut version below. Translation by Kivalliq Inuit Association.
In Nunavut’s Kivalliq region, on the western edge of Hudson Bay, municipalities draw on some of the freshest water in the world to supply their communities. Nonetheless, many residents follow the traditional ways and collect water from rivers and streams that have been used for thousands of years.
So, when Baker Lake community members gathered at a mining development hearing a few years ago, they had two questions. Is the water safe to drink? And are the fish safe to eat?
Governing institutions of the North couldn’t provide answers. “We didn’t have enough information about the water resources and fish and other elements,” explains Luis Manzo, the Director of Lands for the Kivalliq Inuit Association (KIA). To get those answers, he and his colleagues began bringing together partners and securing funding for an aquatic monitoring program to assess the cumulative effects of mining, melting permafrost and other changes.
Jamie Kataluk (KIA) chipping a hole for under-ice sediment sampling at Whitehills Lake.
Integrating Inuit insights
Part of that program was the One Voice initiative — a unique effort that drew on both Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), also referred to as “Inuit Traditional Knowledge”, and other science to determine freshwater quality.
Initial interviews with local Elders identified community concerns, landscape changes rooted in oral history, and the most important sites to monitor. While Elders shared their knowledge, scientists collected samples to measure pH, temperature, metal content, and other parameters.
The program started in Baker Lake and Rankin Inlet, later expanding to cover all seven communities across the Kivalliq.
Sampling in the North isn’t simple, according to Prairie Scientific co-founder Matt McDougall, who heads up the program’s field testing. Sample bottles must be carefully secured before traversing rough tundra on an ATV, while monitoring teams have to be equipped to survive for several days if bad weather blows in. Wildlife can also be a concern; polar bears and other large animals can pose a threat to those unprepared.
But together with KIA staff and local community members, his team was successful in gathering data over several years.
Sipujjaqtuuq, a water sampling site near Naujaat
Sharing data to shape decisions
The results revealed that the water at all sites was safe to drink. In some instances, however, scientists detected nutrient loading created by upstream mining. Presenting that data convinced the mining company to change its water management practices, resolving the issue.
It’s just one example of how Manzo, McDougall and other project partners have been sharing the findings with stakeholders and informing decisions around licensing, mining and broader policies.
“It has an impact, the work that we’re doing,” says McDougall.
To create an even bigger impact, they wanted to make their findings available online. The insights from their IQ interviews have been posted on the KIA website. But developing a platform to share the scientific data proved more complicated.
“There were significant challenges in turning basically a gigantic spreadsheet into something that’s user friendly,” McDougall explains. That’s when they turned to DataStream. “DataStream had an excellent setup,” he says. “It was basically exactly what we were looking for.”
Today, the One Voice team is busy uploading both historical and recent data — all in an accessible, open-access format — so that researchers and community members alike know how Kivalliq’s water is doing.
View Dataset: https://doi.org/10.25976/zjzl-nj18
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