International Polar Day - People at the Poles

Transcription prepared by Media Q Inc. exclusively for INAC

DATE: September 24, 2008

LOCATION: Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, Quebec

PRINCIPAL(S):
Patrick Borbey
Pitseolalaq Moss-Davies
Crystal Lennie and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory
Dr. Claudio Aporta
Dr. Patricia Sutherland
Geoff Green
Adamina Partridge
James Kuptana

SUBJECT: A web cast of the "International Polar Day People at the Poles" event held at the Canadian Museum of Civilization on September 24, 2008.

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Patrick Borbey: Good morning. My name is Patrick Borbey. I'm the Assistant Deputy Minister for the Northern Affairs Organization and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada here in Ottawa. I will be your host today. I would like to thank everyone for attending this morning. It is a very special day in the International Polar Year of IPY. It's the largest ever international program of scientific research focused on the arctic and antarctic regions. Thousands of scientists and researchers from more than sixty nations around the globe are conducting research in the polar regions during the twenty four month period for IPY and this began in March 2007. Canada is playing a lead role in arctic research during IPY.

(Inaudible) of this IPY polar days and these are meant to focus our attention, this particular one is meant to focus our attention on education and outreach activities about polar research. The theme for this polar day is people, the human dimension of the extensive research being carried out in the antarctic and the arctic. Today you will hear about important, ongoing IPY research projects about, and involving people in the north. You will hear today from IPY researchers about the Inuit health survey, the largest comprehensive survey of health conducted in the Inuit regions of Canada's north.

You will also hear about the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study in the Beaufort Sea, and particularly about a component of this study linking Inuit traditional knowledge and climate change research. Other IPY researchers will tell you about their projects involving traditional knowledge, Inuit peoples' use of sea ice and the history of climate change from an Aboriginal perspective. We also have representatives from two educational programs, Students on Ice and Schools on Board. These two programs provide opportunities for students to travel to Canada's north to experience and learn about the arctic. You'll hear about their recent voyages and opportunities to get involved in the future.

I would also like to acknowledge some of the other audiences who are watching this event via the live webcast. Thank you to the students and instructors who are taking part in this event from Nunavut's Arctic College Campus in Iqaluit. Also, thank you to those who are watching from the Waterloo Children's Museum in Kitchener Ontario. And hello to everyone else who's watching via the web. We encourage you to email your questions this morning and we'll try to answer them during the webcast. You can ask questions in the official language of your choice. For any questions we do not answer this morning during the presentation, we'll have answers posted on the website very soon after.

(Inaudible) researchers on the panel. Two of Canada's major IPY research projects on the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, also referred as the CFL and the Inuit Health Survey which were both conducted aboard the Canada Coast Guard Ship, the Amundsen over the past year. To talk about the CFL and the traditional knowledge component of the project, I'd like to introduce Pitsey Moss Davies. Pitsey is a Research Coordinator for the Inuit Circumpolar Council of Canada Office, a partner of the CFL. I'd also like to introduce right after Pitsey, Laakkuluk (ph) Williamson and Crystal Lennie. Laakkuluk is a member of the Nunavut Steering Community for the Inuit Health Survey. She has travelled here from Iqaluit. Laakkuluk is a member of the Nunavut Steering Community for the Inuit Health Survey. She has travelled here from Iqaluit. Crystal Lennie is a member of the Inuvialuit Steering Committee for the Inuit Health Survey and she is here today from Inuvik in the North West Territories. Welcome to our speakers. First of all, Crystal will speak to us.

Pitsey Moss Davies: Good morning. Yes I'm Pitsey Moss Davies and I'm from (inaudible) Nunavut. And as Mr. Borbey explained, I'm the Research Coordinator at the Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada Office based here in Ottawa. Just before I get into our work with the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, I'll just give you a little bit of information about ICC Canada and what we do. ICC Canada is one of four Inuit Circumpolar Council Offices and we have offices in Greenland, Alaska and Chukotka, Russia.

So ICC was founded in Barrow Alaska in 1977 by an Inuviat named Evan Hobson. And he initially invited other Inuit to discuss ways to have a common response to common issues of importance to address what they considered were increasing a tax on the way of life and environment. So it was realized early on that in order to survive in our circumpolar homeland, that we have to speak with a united voice on these issues of common concern and combine our energies towards protecting and promoting our way of life. So across the circumpolar arctic are about a hundred and fifty five thousand spread across Canada, Greenland, Chukotka in Russia and Alaska in the United States.

So ICC is a partner is a partner in the CFL and the IPY and arctic climate change research that it's supporting is important in order for us to make sound decisions on how to adapt to the changes, climate changes as well as some other areas where climate change is exacerbating the situation or you know, causing some new changes that we haven't seen before. Because climate change is happening now in the arctic as you may have heard many of our leaders explaining. And as I mentioned, there are other changes as well such as resource development, we have our land claims agreements within the four Inuit regions which are in the west, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region where our CFL study is based s well as in, sorry, the other regions are Nunavut, Nunavik which is northern Quebec and Nunavuat which is the north coast of Labrador.

And so land claims agreements have been signed within all those regions as well. So we have some social issues such as poverty, poor health status and education issues which are all interconnected issues with the other ones that I mentioned earlier. So on, in the CFL project which is comprised of ten teams, nine of them are natural science teams and our team is the traditional knowledge study.

So along with the traditional knowledge study, our team ten lead by ICC has also, is also responsible for a few other components including community based monitoring assessment, the, we held our circumpolar Inuit climate change policy workshop in April which all of our circumpolar leaders attended and at that workshop we were able to share with each other some of the climate change issues, some of our ways forward and some of the challenges that still lie ahead. And we came out of that with a roadmap to the post Kyoto UNFCC process as well called the Amundsen Statement.

And of course, we also worked with and assisted the Schools on Board Program which is an outreach and education program based within the Arctic net network. And with them we helped to design and facilitate a circumpolar Inuit field program which is different from the usual schools on board which usually select students from across Canada and they go through the high schools. And with our Inuit field program, we had youth from Alaska, Russia, all the regions, all the Inuit regions of Canada and Greenland. So I'll let Adamena and James speak to that a little later on. But I just wanted to touch on the fact that, you know, this was one of the components of our team ten.

So the largest component would be the traditional knowledge study in which we'll integrate western science with what we call Inuit science or what is commonly known as traditional knowledge. We are working with the communities and the regional Inuit organizations along with all the other researchers in the other nine teams to achieve this integration. Our community involved and arctic research including the incorporation or a consideration for indigenous knowledge is becoming more of a goal and expectation among northern research organizations, government, Inuit organizations, research networks, funding agencies and northerners ourselves. So some progress has been made in terms of improving community researcher relationships and developing unique approaches to community based and community driven research in about the past decade.

So the argument is that, you know, only a truly cooperative approach to the work, drawing on the best available knowledge, that's that hand, can many of our complex arctic environmental and health issues be adequately addressed? So our engagement in the research is critical important (inaudible) that there is a need for more recognition of the contribution of local and traditional knowledge. As I mentioned, for us traditional knowledge is Inuit science . It's knowledge gained from lifetimes of observations passed from one generation to the next and certainly drawing from that integrated knowledge, the very best of it will contribute to sound policy and decision making and actually address the issues of concern at the community level to help the community changes adapt to the changes that are happening already.

Some of the other benefits of integrating the two knowledge systems is the preservation of traditional and cultural knowledge through the documentation. And Inuit have a largely oral tradition in passing on knowledge. We don't have reports and journals and documents, you know, to draw from. It's all from the people, from our elders, and our hunters. So one of the other issues that we're dealing with which is very much a social realm is the disconnect between elders and youth, very much connected to things like the loss of language. Many elders still speak Inuktitut and you know, the youth are speaking less and less. So the inter generational transfer is being affected that way and by documenting some of that traditional knowledge through research, can we preserve some of that knowledge and our culture at the same time.

The community ladder, community based research initiatives is very important in our engagement in identifying our issues of importance with regards to how climate change is impacting our lives and helping to design the research projects or programs is integral to getting this best knowledge. There' s also a two way communication because we can learn from the research and researchers can also learn from us. So if communities were engaged from the beginning from the planning of the projects right to the end to receiving the results as well, you know being engaged at every level of the research process certainly helps to address those issues and really make a difference at the community level, make a difference in people's lives.

So with our CFL study, some of the things that we have made efforts to achieve is to involve, you know, the various sectors of society especially having the exchange between elders and youth. And they have a lot of knowledge to contribute and we've found that they also enjoy learning too and they do learn from speaking with the youth and the researchers. And as well, we're trying to build some capacity and our work through the Schools on Board or with the Schools on Board on the Inuit, sorry, Circumpolar Inuit Field Program, is one of those opportunities that we were very pleased to be working on, so that youth can discover scientific and policy interests and you know, build on that experience.

As you know, the Circumpolar Flaw Lead is a study of the sea ice as Mr. Borbey had explained. The Flaw Lead itself is a unique characteristic of the sea ice. It's where the central ice pack which is mobile moves away from the coastal fast ice. And these flaw leads are biologically rich and important to the eco system and therefore to Inuvialuit. I don't know if I mentioned that we're very much marine culture and peoples, ninety eight percent of our Inuit communities are along the coastline. So the sea ice study as well as Inuvialuit knowledge integration into it is critically important.

Our team also has a traditional knowledge steering committee which includes members, community members from Sax Harbour, Polatuk (ph) and Aluuhaktuk (ph) which are the three closest communities to the flaw lead and so therefore the most impacted by the systems and how they behave in that region. We also have regional Inuvialuit coordinator based in Inuvik and of course we have a junior research position to which James will speak to as he is our junior researcher for the traditional knowledge study. And of course, our work with the Schools on Board on the Inuit field program.

So not only do we have you know, an excellent exchange between researchers and community people where sound policy decisions can be made but we have, you know, some other benefits as well where communities can benefit from some of the other unexpected knowledge that is gained such as economic development opportunities. This as well as other issues to address things like poverty and health status and education are all addressed through our team ten activities. As I mentioned, we do have some involvement with the community based monitoring assessment and that' s plugged into the arctic councils, sustaining arctic observation network initiative. And you know, that's a circumpolar initiative involving not only Inuit but also other arctic nations such as Norway and Iceland, among others.

And so there are, there's certainly a large push towards monitoring what's happening in the arctic, using instruments and natural science methods but there's also a very component, very important component which is the local and traditional knowledge that the people of the north hold as well. And that concludes my perspectives on our work within the IPY program and how we stand, not only to contribute to science but also to gain from the integration as well. Thank you.

(Applause).

Patrick Borbey: Thank you Pitsey. I'd like to now invite Laakkuluk and Crystal to take the podium please.

Unidentified Female: The Inuit Health Survey (inaudible). The principal investigator of the Inuit Health Survey is Dr. Grace Eelan from McGill University and the co principal investigator is Dr. Que Young from the University of Toronto. The project is funded by the International Polar Year, Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Northern Contaminants Program, Health Canada and Arctic Net.

Unidentified Female: So the Inuit Health Survey is a project that kind of, it grew out of an idea that we really needed to have Inuit specific health data. You know how we have statistics all across Canada for things like diabetes and cholesterol and all sorts of different health indicators. And you can split it up amongst regions and the different ethnic groups but we don't have very much information on Inuit health indicators. So this is where this project grew out of. And the first one that came about was in Nunavik which is in Northern Quebec and they had a project called (inaudible) which means how are we. And this was organized by the Nunavik health board. And then a number of years later.

Grace Eelan who's the principal investigator of our survey here, came to Nunavut and asked a number of Inuit partners and Inuit partners if they'd like to be involved in a project called (inaudible) which means how about us, how are we. So that grew into the Inuviatut settlement region also asking to have the health survey done and their version of the name is (inaudible) which is how are you, the Nunavuat region which is in northern Labrador also asked to have the survey and it's called (inaudible), how are you.

Unidentified Female: There will be an international Inuit follow up, collaborations to compare and combine data with approvals from each jurisdictions, Inuit health survey steering committee. The follow up will be with Alaska, Greenland, and the Canadian Arctic, the Nunavut study.

Unidentified Female: So the overall mission for the Inuit health survey is to improve public health for Inuit and Inuviatut in the Canadian north. So they used the very best health survey and research techniques that are available in Canada. The survey has been responsive to Inuit and Inuviatut needs and priorities. It has adapted to become culturally appropriate and acceptable and has been developed with particpatory partnership which means that all of the partners, Inuit and territorial and all sorts of difference groups are involved in a process where they have a lot of say and direction in how the survey takes place. And in the end, all of the data that comes out of the Inuit health survey is going to be owned by Inuit as well as community representatives and the territorial government, so it's a shared activity which is a really important thing in the long run.

So the process of getting the Inuit health survey was actually kind of a real roller coaster for people like me who work for Inuit organizations because it happened so quickly. An awful lot of money, I could never imagine having that money in my pocket, but an awful lot of money, not enough time and it all happened really well in the end. So it was a long process developing relationships and actually, even though the field seasons have already happened, we are still developing these relationships in terms of memorandums of agreement and community university agreements and licenses and all these kind of very technical details of creating a relationship between researchers at universities and community members.

Unidentified Female: The Inuvialuit Settlement Region Steering Committee work many hours going over the surveys to make them Inuvialuit specific and there, I'll list later in the presentation, the number of surveys that we did. But the steering community consisted of myself, Crystal Lennie, I work for the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, Susan Chatwood from the Arctic Health Research Network, Jane Smith from the Beaufort Delta Health and Social Services Authority and seven community corporation representatives, Lucy Kokney from Tutoyaktuk, Donna Kiogak from Sax Harbour, Joshua Luktuak from (inaudible), Glen Gordon from Aklavik (ph), Ethal Gruben and Veronica Kasuk from Inuvik and Paula Tuk was represented by Fred Bennett.

Advisors to our committee were Alana Murrow and Paulo Flag from the Row Research Institute, Dr. Andre Koreobu (ph) from the Government of the North West Territories and Professor Gray Segland and Que Young. The Inuvialuit Settlement Region consists of work in six communities and make up the Inuvialuit regional corporation and the survey went to all six, to the coastal communities of Tuktoyaktuk, Sax Harbour, Polatuk and (inaudible). It was, it's now being done by a land based survey in Inuvik and Aklavick and it's still ongoing, the land based portion will end this Wednesday.

Unidentified Female: I don't think we actually mentioned that the entire survey is taking, for the most part, taking place on a Coast Guard ship because as was mentioned in the last presentation, most of our communities are along the coast, so it made sense to use a ship to go to each of the communities except for a couple that are inland that we have to fly to.

So the Nunavut steering committee, as I was mentioning, is made up of different community organizations. We have the Nunavut Association of Municipalities which is an association of mayors all across Nunavut; the Department of Health and Social Services, Nunavut (inaudible) Incorporation which is the place that I work. It represents Inuit according to the Nunavut land claims agreement as well as the Professors Eelan from the University of McGill and Que Young from University of Toronto.

So the kind of things that we worked on as a steering committee to make the survey happen was working on logistical needs like hiring people, the timing of when the ship is going to arrive in communities, exciting things like logo design and questionnaire development. Our questionnaire is based on a number of standard surveys from across the world but also based on things that we as Nunavunian really wanted to find out about the health of our people.

We also worked on making sure that the survey was culturally appropriate which includes the way that you deal with people on a day to day basis like saying hello and thank you and politeness and courtesy and that kind of thing. But then also something very special which is the language needs in Nunavut. We have a mostly Inuktitut speaking population and Inuktitut isn't just one language, it is made up of many, many different dialects. So the survey had to make sure that the whole idea of the survey came across and the information that was coming back was in the appropriate dialect in each region of Nunavut.

So Nunavut, the Nunavut Inuit Health Survey came in two stages, two years basically. Last year the ship travelled to eighteen communities and this year travelled to seven communities including our one inland community, Baker Lake which they're going to fly to, I think they might have just finished flying there actually.

Unidentified Female: The survey is also going to be taking place in Nunavuat and many people may not know what Nunavuat is. It's a newly formed self government. It was formed two years ago from the Labrador Inuit Association and their steering committee members consists of Dr. Noreen Bakee (ph), Northern Community Health, Carol Bryce Bennett, Labrador Grenville Health, Michelle Kinney from the Nunavuat government, also Gail Turner, Nunavuat government, Marina Biate Brown (ph), Tina Buckle, Michelle Wood, they're all from the Nunavuat government and the two principal investigators. The survey will take place in Nane, Hopedale, Postville, Mackavic and Rigolet (ph).

Unidentified Female: So there's a number of sort of key phrases, catchy phrases that you all will be exposed to once you finish high school on a daily basis and you'll come to love them dearly like we do. Things like community engagement, what the heck does that mean? It means that, as I was saying, it's a group of people coming together to understand what the survey is about and agree on things and make sure that everything passes with consensus.

Capacity building is another thing that this project has involved which means that, in Nunavut, at least last year, there were a hundred short term employees hired in the territory to help out with the survey doing everything from bringing participants to the ship, to welcoming them to organizing the nurses to do the different survey or the tests and the surveys and whatnot to asking the questionnaires, looking at charts, those kind of things. So it was an awful lot of training involved in actually having the survey happen in Nunavut and the other Inuit regions as well.

And then another key thing that the project involved was building awareness regarding health status. And as I mentioned earlier, there isn't a very big stock of Inuit specific statistics which is really needed to make sure that our health systems reflect Inuit needs and Inuit realities. So in that, we are finding out an awful lot about Inuit specific health data. We're going to be able to plan into the future and to what kind of health interventions are needed for example. If diabetes is really going up in Nunavut, then we are going to find ways of intervening and stopping that from happening or making sure that we don't operate on an emergency basis from day to day, people coming in with terrible illnesses. But we're planning to make healthy people, healthy children in the future.

Unidentified Female: Okay, the process, participants randomly selected from a list of households within each region or else from a beneficiary list. The project was explained by a DVD and consent form. So each participant watched a fifteen to twenty minute DVD in their dialect or language of their choice. Every, we have fasting participants come on the ship in the morning and they started their fasting the night before the appointment at 11:00 p.m. and participants travelled to the barge, to the ship by barge or helicopter and the survey portion on the ship lasted about three to three and a half hours.

Unidentified Female: So the kinds of things that were tested in the Inuit Health Survey were blood pressure and pulse, just the basic things that you'd get when you do a medical check up but it all kind of adds up into something quite important. So blood pressure and pulse, body measurements like your waste and your height and that kind of thing. And then they also did a glucose tolerance test which means that you get to drink this really fizzy, sweet drink to see how much blood sugar you have to see if you're actually diabetic or not.

They also found out information about nutrition. So that meant a twenty four hour recall. So remembering everything that you ate and drank in the past twenty four hours, which is actually quite a bit harder than you think it is. Also finding out about traditional, traditional food and market food, how frequently you eat traditional food like beluga and seal and caribou and fish and that kind of thing, and how frequently you eat food from the market, like from the grocery store like ham and lettuce and tomatoes and that kind of stuff. So, and also they checked for different bio markers of nutritional status so checked on peoples vitamin D, iron, folate, selenium, fatty acids and oxidative stress markers.

They also checked for various kinds of infections, four different kinds of parasites, H Pilori which is a kind of stomach infection that is kind of popping up in higher frequencies in various Inuit communities and something called HSKRP which I don't know. They also tested for contaminants such as persistent organic pollutants, different kinds of metals and brominated flame retardants which you find in the seats that you're sitting on and your computer and your hair spray and everything like that.

Unidentified Female: Okay, the questionnaires that people had to ask were based on food security, access to country food, household size, overcrowding, smoking, water sources, mental well being, physical activity, healthy history, self reported health, social support and they had an optional questionnaire that covered depression, alcohol, substance abuse and violence.

Unidentified Female: There were also a number of specialty tests for people who were over the age of forty. They attached a heart monitor on that person for the time that they were on the ship, I think for two or three hours. They also checked, in women over the age of forty, for their bone health to see if women were prone to osteoporosis which means their bones are thinning and easy to break. They also did an ultrasound of the care to arteries in peoples ' neck to see the thickness of the artery to see how much blood is flowing through there. And they also did an abdominal ultrasound which is what I get when my baby gets checked but also for fat density.

Unidentified Female: So since the survey has already taken place over two years, a lot of people are curious about findings but one of the very important things about the Inuit Health Survey is that we are not going to share findings until all the communities in all the regions have received the results which, the individuals get the results first and then there' s a community discussion of those results and then finally, it'll go out to the general public and everybody will be able to share this information. But in general, there has been one thousand, nine hundred and twenty nine participants in the survey so far from ages eighteen to ninety and everybody is slowly getting results letters and so are community health centers and fact sheets for hamlets.

Unidentified Female: (inaudible).

Unidentified Female: (inaudible) thank you.

(Applause).

Patrick Borbey: Thank you Laakkuluk and Crystal. Lots of very interesting information. I did mention that there's a test at the end of this session, so I hope you're paying good attention to all of the information you're receiving. I'd like to now move on and we will have a question period after the next two speakers and I'd like to first introduce Claudio Aparta (ph), a professor at Carleton University and his IPY project is called the Inuit's sea ice use and Occupancy Project. It is investigating Inuit knowledge and the use of sea ice in the arctic and how this is being affected by environmental change. Right after Claudio, we'll have Patricia Sutherland who is a researcher here with the Canadian Museum of Civilization and she will talk today about her project, Inuit History, Climatic Change and Historical Connections in Arctic Canada.

(Applause).

Claudio Aparta: Thank you, good morning. We have a nice mix of people I think today in the audience. I'm sure some of you have never been north of sixty and I'm pretty sure some of you actually have been born north of sixty and that accounts to perhaps different perceptions of the arctic. For those of you who have never been to the arctic, it might be a difficult to understand why the sea ice is so important, so significant for Inuit. I am originally from Argentina so imagine I was a complete outsider going to the arctic a few years back and in the year 2000, I spent my first winter in this beautiful place called Iglolik (ph), an island, about twelve hundred people living there, beautiful place.

About eight months of the year, the sea ice actually attached to the land so the land actually becomes, or the ice actually becomes part of the land which I thought it was pretty amazing at the time. And I was travelling with a friend of mine and a guy, an Inuit, Maurice Arnuktiuk (ph). We were doing a survey of place names, basically mapping traditional Inuktitut names, you know, creeks and boulders and hills that actually had Inuktitut names. I remember we were on an island called (inaudible). It's, Iglolik is pretty flat, I don't know if there's anyone from Iglolik, you don't see much, you don't see a lot of hills or anything like that.

And I remember asking my friend, I mean what about that land feature that I see on the horizon. I mean I couldn't see any land feature on my maps so Maurice laughed at me. He asked me if I wanted to follow him. So we went by snowmobile and arrived there and it was actually, it wasn't a land feature, it was a nice ice feature. It was an ice reach. And what amazed me was that that feature actually had a name. Maurice told me that people knew it as (inaudible) and that it happened on the same location every year, the same as ice leads and (inaudible), open water.

So there was actually a topography of the sea ice and I thought it was quite fascinating. And then talking to some elders back in town, I realized that people had been, used that place for generations and that they use to live in a town on the ice, about a hundred people of course, maybe for only a month or so, and then, there's no archeological records of that because the ice will melt or break up and then the whole town will actually disappear. But people were born, some people were born on the ice, a lot of things happened on the ice. So I thought it was a really interesting research topic.

As Potse was saying before, I mean there is certainly an Inuit science and I think us, most of us southern Canadians don't know enough about this Inuit science. So I talked to some other researchers that were doing similar projects so had similar interests in different regions of the arctic and we put together this project that we call Inuit Sea Ice Use and Occupancy. And basically what we are trying to do is to document the way Inuit people use and have used the sea ice, what they know about the ice.

We basically map the topography of the ice that they know, for instance ice reaches, ice leads, open water, areas that are actually risky, safety concerns. We ask about changes. We put together this proposal and we were lucky enough to get funded by IPY Canada. And of course before that we went to communities and put the project to the table and I should say that we're working with a few communities in Nunavut, west, east and south of Baffin Island and a few communities in Nunavik in Northern Quebec. And everybody was pretty excited actually about the possibility of documenting the sea ice.

Some of the elders were worried that younger people were actually going through the ice. They said that the younger people, because of the use of new technologies, so because they are not learning the traditional knowledge, they would actually not be confident on the ice. So some people would claim that accidents are happening more and more often. So everybody was really excited about the possibility of doing this. So we put together this project and we are basically using different methods. We are using for instance, we go to the ice with a nice group of researchers and northern researchers working with us. We go to the ice with knowledgeable hunters, we ask questions, we take GPS units with us and map important significant features.

We also have mapping sessions. So we go to communities and again, when I say go to communities, you might say it' s a southern researcher going to a community and bringing elders, etc. But we have people actually in each community working in the project, northern researchers that we call the Inuit Researchers that are helping to collect the data, to conduct the data. So we bring people, the elders on the table, we put maps and we ask them to tell us what they know about the ice.

So that, you see, when you see a topographic map of arctic Canada and even this globe in the whole, the students on ice have put, what you see on the ocean is actually a blue, blank space but there's a lot of information that you could put on that blue blank space. And this is what we are doing. We're kind of populating this really dynamic, to some degree, predictable environment and trying to understand how the Inuit experts know is complex environment and it's quite fascinating.

One of the things, we're very concerned about leaving the data or making our research available and useful to a community. So instead of actually bringing the data down south and putting everything into an archive or writing a technical report that nobody will read, we are creating with the help of the geometric center at Carleton University, we're creating an interactive atlas of sea ice. So all the data, so basically GPS coordinates geographic information, all the recordings with elders, video tapes, etc., everything goes into this atlas that eventually will be available, at least to communities and perhaps available to everyone. It depends on each community. And you will be able to see those features on the sea and you will be able to click on a feature and maybe her or see an elder talking about it. We are very worried about integrating Inuit and leaving our legacy there.

Just to finish, one of the, basically we're now at the stage of collecting the data, the data is coming from the north, etc. one fo the things that people are saying is that the sea ice is changing, that they find it less predictable than before, that it would form later on, it would actually break also later on. So the sea ice travel season is actually shortened and they have been for instance obliged to change some of their hunting patterns. You must know that Inuit hunt mostly seals and walrus, at least in Iglolik on the ice.

So you know, some have changed their hunting patterns and their travelling patterns also. So it's, I believe a really interesting project and we hope that we will be, some how a breach between the Inuit scientists and the western scientists when I call them that way, so that people can, (inaudible) can actually understand what the Inuit know about the sea ice and the Inuit can have a reliable source of documentation that they can use for instance in schools, formal location, etc. Thank you.

(Applause).

Patrick Borbey: Thank you Claudio, merci Claudio. Now over to Patricia.

Patricia Sutherland: I guess we need to put up the next Power Point. Thank you. Inuit history is part of an international IPY project involving research in northern Scandinavia, Greenland and Arctic Canada. Recent advances in both human and natural sciences have radically changed our perception of arctic history and this project is based on the idea that an understanding of present day arctic societies requires a recognition that their pasts were richer, more complex and interconnected than previously assumed.

The arctic has traditionally been thought of as a very marginal and isolated region, a part of the world that was only penetrated by southerners in recent centuries. It has been assumed that the area before that time was occupied by Aboriginal peoples who had little or no contact with the outside world and who 's ways of life had not changed significantly for thousands of years. The Inuit of Arctic Canada were thought of as being among the most isolated of these peoples. Their unique culture and technology were seen as having been developed through long term adaptation to the arctic environment.

And environmental change was seen as the major factor producing alterations in the Inuit way of life. For example, when ancestral Inuit moved eastward from Alaska to Arctic Canada and Greenland, it was generally thought that this migration was in response to a warming climate and a consequent reduction in sea ice that occurred about a thousand years ago which allowed the expansion of sea mammals into regions further to the east.

Archeological discoveries that have been made very recently suggest a much more complex picture of arctic history during the past millennium and the International Polar Year provides a timely opportunity to assemble several research projects that are contributing to this picture. The questions that are being asked include, is Inuit history as simple and environmentally driven as we have assumed or have the Inuit been in greater control, sorry, greater contact with other societies and have they long participated (inaudible) process of globalization reached the arctic a thousand or more years ago. The project involves collaboration of archeologists as well as palea environmental researchers who are investigating archeological sites chosen in order to provide information on the nature of human occupation, interaction and environmental conditions across Arctic Canada during the centuries between approximately AD 1000 and 1500.

Historians working with both Euro Canadian historical records and Inuit oral history are assembling information on the interaction between Inuit and European cultures between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. We are also collaborating with international climate change projects and examining the links between human history and environmental change in the region over the past thousand year. The development of this IPY project grew out of the discovery made a few years ago in the collections of this museum and which developed into the Helluland (ph) archeology project. Helluland was the name given by the Norris to the most northerly of three lands that were discovered to the west of Greenland and most probably represent Baffin Island and adjacent regions of northern Labrador.

During most or all of the time that the Norris colonies existed in Greenland, this region was inhabited by Dorset culture palea Eskimos, a people who occupied Arctic Canada for centuries before the Inuit arrived from the west. Over the past few years, I have been excavating and examining collections from Dorset sites on Baffin Island and in nearby northern Labrador. These sites have produced a variety of objects closely resembling those of Viking and Medieval periods in northern Europe and Greenland or exhibiting the use of European techniques and workmanship. They include lengths of spun cordage, comparable to that which was spun and woven into cloth by Norris women. They also include pieces of distinctive bar shaped wet stones for sharpening metal tools and fragments of tally sticks for recording trade transactions that are comparable to those found in Norris sites in Greenland elsewhere.

For four summers with a crew of local students from Kim Root (ph) and some students from the south, I've carried out excavations at the Nanuk site on South Baffin Island which has produced many of these objects as well as other archeological evidence which suggests that the Norris may have spent significant amounts of time at this location.

Another aspect of the work at the Nanuk site as well as at other arctic sites has been palea ecological analysis as a ways of detecting environmental changes in the local regions at the time the sites were occupied. By examining the micro fossils preserved in pond sediments immediately adjacent to the archeological sites, it is possible to characterize past environmental conditions and to make temporal correlations with periods of site occupation.

A few of the objects that have been found at the Nanuk and the other Helluland sites can be considered trade goods. Instead, the lengths of spun yarn, broken wet stones and bits of worked wood look more like occupational debris. Did the medieval Norris establish shore stations in Arctic Canada perhaps in order to engage in exchange with the Dorset people? Walrus ivory, narwal tusks, walrus hide and bear skins were extremely valuable items in the Norris Greenlanders commerce with Europe during the medieval period.

Like the Inuit of later centuries, the Dorset were probably willing to trade these commodities for small pieces of metal for arming weapons and tools. Whatever form the European presence took on Baffin Island and in Labrador in the centuries around AD 1000, it suggests a more extensive and complex relationship between the Norris and the Dorset people. The apparent existence of such a relationship was not previously suspected and it's discovery adds a new and potentially important chapter to the history of arctic North America. It also provides a new understanding of what might have brought the Inuit to Arctic Canada and Greenland about eight hundred years ago.

Rather than a slow expansion of population responding to a warmer climate, the Inuit migration now seems to have been a very rapid movement from Alaska to the eastern Arctic and the earliest Inuit sites have produced European metals and other materials that indicate contact with the Norris. It is now becoming more apparent that the Inuit's ancestors were not a simple hunting people who lived in Arctic Canada since time and memorial influenced solely by processes of adaptation to environmental change. Instead, they now seem more likely to have been an entrepreneurial society of people who were capable of long distance travel, undertaken in order to participate in the global economy of the day and who may have been partners in this economy ever since.

In summary, the Inuit history project is a collaborative effort between archeologists, palea environmental research and historians designed to increase our understanding of how arctic societies have developed over time. The results to date have suggested that we must re evaluate the traditional image of Inuit as the inheritors of an ancient and primitive culture, as well as revising our image of Arctic Canada as a region that was isolated from world history. The way that a society is perceived and the way that it sees itself is closely tied to it's history. One of the outcomes of this project should be a more accurate perception of Inuit society today. Thank you.

(Applause).

Patricia Sutherland: Before I leave the podium I've been asked to make an announcement, a brief announcement in partnership with the Polar Continental Shelf Project, the Canadian Museum of Civilization is hosting a lecture series, the Out of the Cold Lecture Series is in recognition of International Polar Year and the 50th of anniversary of the Polar Continental Shelf Project. There'll be six lectures between the end of October and early March which will examine scientific exploration and discovery in the Canadian Arctic and we hope that all of you will be able to attend at least some of the talks. Thank you.

Patrick Borbey: Thanks Patricia. We now have time for a few questions before we move on to our two next speakers. So are there questions in the audience that you'd like to come forward and we do have microphones somewhere. Microphones are where? While someone looks for a microphone, perhaps I will go to some questions that we received from Iqaluit actually. It 's the Arctic College Environmental Technology Program has sent two questions.

And so maybe I can start with one of those while we're looking to see if anybody in the audience wants to ask a question. The question is, many IPY research proposals included statements about incorporating IQ or traditional knowledge, local capacity building and sharing findings with communities. What review process is in place to ensure that researchers follow through with such statements. Does anybody want to take a stab? You can stay from the table and address your answer to the question.

Patricia Sutherland: I can take a stab at this.

Patrick Borbey: Hold on, we don't have a mike.

Patricia Sutherland: Get it closer. There are permitting agencies regulating researchers in the territories and one of the things at least as far as archeological permits is concerned, deals with community visits involving local people in the work and follow up of course with results from the projects, putting exhibits in the communities and finding ways of making the information available to the local people.

Claudio Aparta: We also just to add, I mean as researchers, every, we're accountable of what we do so basically every, at the end of every year we have to make a report on what we are doing and that is, I believe that's the, the spot where IPY would tell us well, what about what you promised. So in that sense, we have that responsibility to actually do what we are actually promising to do.

Unidentified Female: For the, sorry, for the CFL, of course we adhere to the research protocols but as I mentioned, we have traditional knowledge steering committee as well which has community members from the three closest communities to the flaw lead who not only provide us guidance but you know, they also take information back to their communities. And you know, they do bring any questions or concerns back from their communities to our team as well. So it's a two way exchange, you know, for us to be able to give them information to take back to the communities and for the communities, for them to bring the information in question back from their communities as well.

Patrick Borbey: Okay, thank you. Can I maybe just add very briefly, we do have northern coordination offices that have been set up in the north, in the regions, and one of their roles is to ensure good linkage between researchers and local communities and making sure that information is shared and results become available to those communities. We also have an upcoming workshop for IPY researchers which will be held in December and this is an issue that we will certainly have on the agenda for that discussion. Have we got any questions in the audience? Okay, there's one in the back but we, are we still looking for a microphone? Go ahead and I'll repeat it for the webcast.

Unidentified Female: (Inaudible)?

Patrick Borbey: Okay, the question is, with respect to how do the Inuit know that it's safe on the ice and it's safe, how do they adapt in terms of navigation and use of sea ice?

Claudio Aparta: It's an interesting question and I think that there are different answers to that question. I mean we are living in a process of climate change as the question suggested. But also of social and cultural change because Inuit in the past for instance used to use dog sleds and some people would say that dogs actually would sense where the dangerous spots were. It's not that they rely a hundred percent on the dogs but there was that perception that having a dog team ahead of you would help you. And also if the dog team actually went through the ice, you still have time to maybe jump off the sled.

And of course if you are driving a snowmobile, the first thing that goes down is yourself with the machine. So those are concrete situations. I think people are still largely using their Inuit science for that but they are also incorporating new pieces of technologies. I mean some people are using GPS units, hunters. We are actually implementing a flowidge satellite system where hunters in some communities in Nunavut can actually go to a particular location, the community can check how the ice is, where the flowidge is and supplement information with what they know. So that is a new way. Some people, you know, they take a plane, they are arriving, before landing they take a look at the ice and then they tell the rest of the community what the ice looks like. So those are different ways I think which Inuit have been adapting to these changes.

Patrick Borbey: And there are certainly new tools as well such as radar sat too which increasingly, the Inuit people are asking well how can we access that data and how can we make sure that we can use it with, to combine with our traditional knowledge. There's a question in the front here. Go ahead.

Unidentified Female: (inaudible).

Patrick Borbey: Good question. So the question for everyone is, if the Inuit travel, the early Inuit travel from west to east for commercial purposes with, the connection with the Scandinavian, the Norris people who had settled in that region, why is it when the Norris seemed to have disappeared from those regions, that the Inuit stayed? So I think this is for you Patricia.

Patricia Sutherland: More Europeans came after the Norris, I think about the expeditions in the sixteenth century, Martin Frobisher and so on and one of the pictures I had was sort of, a creation of contact on ship board between the crew of the Martin Frobisher expeditions and the Inuit. So we think that there was continuity of contact even though the Norris Greenlanders returned home, some of them would have returned home to Iceland, some of them died off because they hadn't adapted very well to arctic conditions. But we think that there was probably continuity in terms of this commerce and connection with European explorers.

Patrick Borbey: I think we have a future archeologist here in the making. Thank you for the question.

Unidentified Female: Speaking as a Greenlander with no bias whatsoever, it's because Greenland is so beautiful.

Unidentified Female: Yes, I would concur.

Patrick Borbey: Other questions? Yes, in the back here.

Unidentified Female: Do you have any specific data?

Patrick Borbey: Okay, the question is, is there data that could be shared with the students in physics here about changes in the sea ice in terms of density?

Claudio Aparta: Not us because we are mostly focusing on the Inuit tradition and knowledge. So we're mostly trying to document what they know. We are using some monetary systems to measure ice but we basically are mostly basing our research on what the Inuit know, the traditional knowledge.

Patrick Borbey: (inaudible) perhaps you . . .

Unidentified Female: Yes, well all of the field research for the natural science teams has just concluded and so the researchers are working up their data now. I would recommend, you know, visiting our CFL website. Depending on, I'm not sure exactly when that data will be made available but it will certainly be up on the website as soon as it is.

Claudio Aparta: There is also some part of our project that you might be interested in. So also I would say check the website but we can talk about that later if you want. Thanks.

Patrick Borbey: Okay, and Kathleen Fisher is also available here or do you have a question?

Unidentified Female: (inaudible).

Patrick Borbey: Okay, so for those of you on the webcast, we will be following up here after the session on more data sources in terms of changes in the ice conditions. We have another question, a couple more questions. There a person called Ali Winton (ph) from Winnipeg who sent a question with respect to Circumpolar Young Leaders Training. I 'm wondering about the accessibility of interactive atlas for Inuit elders and community members considering internet and computer access.

Claudio Aparta: Yeah, it's a very good question too. Most communities in Nunavut have, I think all communities have the internet access. Their speed is, differs actually from community to community but the internet access is actually good enough to, you know, to be able to access to the atlas. The elders, I mean we're mostly thinking about younger people than elders that will actually benefit from the sea ice project, from the sea ice atlas. Thinking mostly, I mean the alternative to that would be to again, write up the results of our research, publish a book and it would take away a lot of the context of the conversations and the interviews. The Inuit is mostly (inaudible) culture so we thought that an interactive atlas would be actually a better medium but it is actually an important question. Yeah, thanks.

Patrick Borbey: Okay, we're going to have to move on. There's another question that came in from the Arctic College. We will provide an answer on the internet and please, those of you who have questions who are following the webcast, send us your questions and we'll make sure they get answered after. And for the people in the audience, you have the benefit of having the researchers as a captive audience right after the session. I'm sure you can spend a bit of time with them asking follow up questions.

So moving on, now I would like to introduce the next speaker who will talk about Students on Ice and Student on Board. Student on Ice is an organization offering unique educational excursions to the arctic and the antarctic. Geoff Green founded Student on Ice in 2000 and has since that time, there's been more than nine hundred students from what I understand, maybe he's got an update on the numbers since last summer, and educators that have taken part in their voyages of learning and discovery. Jeff himself has been part of more than a hundred expeditions to the arctic and the antarctic and he 's such a young man, and his passion and knowledge for these crucial parts of the planet is clear, only rivalled by his desire to share his experience with others. So now Geoff Green will talk about Students on Ice.

(Applause).

Geoff Green: Thank you Patrick. Good morning everybody. Hello to all of you. It's great to be here with you today and with this wonderful panel to help celebrate the International Polar Year. I don't know if everybody realizes how special this International Polar Year is but they don't come along very often. The last one was fifty years ago. So it's, I feel privileged to be a part of one and hopefully maybe the next one. And for those of you, it's great to see so many young people here. Yeah, you guys are having this experience at a stage in your life where this International Polar Year could perhaps shape your decisions and your career choices. I certainly hope it will.

I have been very inspired by the polar regions from getting the opportunity to go to the Antarctic now seventy four times. The penguins recognize me when I arrive on the beach. I've also had the great privilege to go to different parts of the arctic in Canada and Russia and Greenland many, many times. They're incredible parts of our planet. They are home to of course Aboriginal cultures that have been there as you've just learned, from Patricia, for hundreds of years, thousands of years and they're still there today and I'm inspired by the people of the north.

There are people in the Antarctic as well but there's never been an Aboriginal culture there. Just scientists and explorers and now even tourists that go to the Antarctic. But it's the people, it's the landscape, it's the wildlife, it's the ice that you just heard about from Claudio, it's the icebergs, there are unbelievably beautiful parts of this beautiful planet earth. Why are they so important and why should we care? Well think about your car or your parents car that still has a battery to start it and it has two poles, doesn't it. And if both those poles are not connected, your car doesn't start.

Well planet earth is very much the same. The polar regions are the cornerstones of our global eco system. They make our planet what it is. They drive it's climate and they're symbols of how everything on planet earth is interconnected. Even though they're at opposite ends of the earth, they both work together to make our planet the way it is. And as you know, with changes such as global warming, they're being felt, those effects are being felt most at the polar regions and that means it affects everybody no matter where they live on planet earth. And that's why we need to be really looking at the polar regions. They're windows to our world, they are symbols of peace, understanding, conservation.

The Antarctic is the only continent in the world that nobody owns. Imagine a continent dedicated to peace and science. If only we could expand the borders of Antarctica, the world might be a better place. And the Inuit have been really the first conservationists and have lived in harmony with the natural world for so many years. And we can learn a lot from the traditional knowledge that they have as we move forward into the future.

Well it's also important to Canada. We're a polar nation. We're one of the greatest polar nations in the world. And I don't know how many Canadians really appreciate that. And I hope this International Polar Year is playing a role, especially for all of you here and all of you young people out watching today. As a polar nation, that gives us a responsibility. We need to get more engaged, more involved. The polar regions are going to be at the forefront of many things happening in the years to come whether it's science, whether it's climate change, whether it's sovereignty and exploitation of natural resources and on and on and on. I hope that one of the legacies of IPY is going to be that you guys are getting involved.

And the Arctic probably shapes who we are more than we realize. If we had another country above us, a border instead of this arctic stretching all the way to the North Pole, we wouldn't be who we are as Canadians. So let's celebrate that and learn about it. And because of all these things and more, one day, I thought, I'd been a school teacher and I thought, imagine if we could take students your age to the Arctic and the Antarctic and how that might change your perspectives and define your futures.

So we started a program called Students on Ice nine years ago and it's been an amazing journey, a great success. As Pat said, we've taken now, I think over one thousand students and scientists and teachers and artists and musicians and Inuit elders and you name it, journalists to both the Arctic and the Antarctic. We just came back actually from our last expedition. We had sixty six students from ten countries. We had twenty two northern Aboriginal students from the Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunavuat participating and it was an incredible, incredible, experience, quite life changing.

And on these expeditions with Students on Ice, we're teaching and learning about history, flora, (inaudible), culture sciences, traditional knowledge, contemporary issues, politics but also, you guys are seeing these things first hand. When you see a glacier that' s literally disappearing because of climate change, in that moment, climate change becomes real and very personal for everybody. And that hands on learning is something we really, really believe in.

We are very excited and I want, something to share with all of you today is that thanks to the Government of Canada' s International Polar Program, we had ten fully funded scholarships this year, we have ten fully funded scholarships for our expedition next summer and ten the next year. And anybody here in this room between the age of fourteen and eighteen or out there on the internet, can apply for one of those scholarships and join us next summer on our arctic expedition. And I really, really encourage you, if you 're interested at all, to check out our website, studentsonice.com, find out how you can get an application form and apply. And that's for students from every single part of Canada. But students from around the world can also participate.

I could tell so many stories, I just want to share one quick one. We were up in the arctic three years ago and it was the end of the expedition. We were on the sea ice and everybody was, didn't want to leave. It was a beautiful day and well, we were late. And I was come on, we've got to go. And then all the students said well let's have a group hug. So we had a group hug which is a tradition and in the middle of the group hug, somebody yelled, whale. And we turned and right there at the edge of the ice where the frozen Arctic Ocean meets the open Arctic Ocean, a Bowhead whale had surfaced like a submarine right beside the ice, this giant black body. And we all slowly went over to the edge of the ice, our Inuit guides making sure we didn't get too close.

And we could hear this whale breathing and we just shared this moment. I think the whale was as curious about us as we were about it. You know, it was like a needle in a haystack for that whale to show up just when it did. And all of a sudden it took a deep breath that you could feel in your bones and it arched it's back and disappeared under our feet, right underneath the sea ice. And some students were crying, some were laughing, some were hysterical. But suddenly everybody thought, that whale came for a reason. It came to give us a message that we need to go home and take this motivation and inspiration that we have and make a difference on this planet. And I really believe that's the case. We believe in something called good karma and karma I think brought that whale that day.

Well as I said at the beginning, we really hope that this IPY is going to inspire a lot of you and there's so many things you guys can get involved in no matter what your interests. If it's science, great. If it's art, if it's culture, if it's politics. You name it, there's so much that you guys can get involved in. Just ask around. We have a booth outside here. Nicky and Jesse from our office are here to answer some questions. I also wanted to quickly mention, we have a new program for university students launching this year. Students on Ice for university students and it's a credit course program in partnership with the University of Ottawa, University of Alberta, University of Northern British Columbia as well as several other university partners.

Another event happening across the country coming up in October and November is Polar Perspectives and we hope many of you across the country will join and participate in the youth forums and the lecture series happening at the natural history museums in every province and territory in Canada.

Well I want to, I think we have a video, we made a little video for you guys, especially for today and if it's ready to go, I'll just say merci beaucoup, (inaudible) and thank you very much you guys. Enjoy our video. Maybe if we could just bring the lights down in the front too up there, that would be terrific. Merci beaucoup, thank you.

(Video)

Patrick Borbey: Thank you Jeff and I'm looking forward for the time when you're going to create an alumni program for former students like me. Our next, last presentation is from Schools on Board. It's an educational outreach program from Arctic Net that's run out of the University of Manitoba. This program brings student aboard Ice Breaker Amundsen that you've seen pictures of earlier to work alongside researchers, allowing them to take part in the research activities of the Arctic Net science team. Students learn first hand about the exciting world of polar research. And I have two speakers. First, Adamena Partridge is from Kujuak (ph) in Nunavut and she is currently studying biology at Concordia University in Montreal and working to graduate in 2009. Adamena participated in the Circumpolar Inuit Field Program of the CFL that we've heard about before.

James, the other speaker is James Kuptana and James is from the Inuvialuit region. His family is from Sax Harbour. He's currently studying at Trent University in the Indigenous Environmental Studies Program. James is also a research, a junior researcher with the CFL's Team Ten Traditional Knowledge Study which began this summer. Over to you.

(Applause).

Adamena Patridge: Hello. I just first want to mention that, what Jeff brought up sounds really exciting and I think that any opportunity you get to go to the Arctic or Antarctic for that matter, you should definitely take it because it's one hundred percent worth it. And this is coming from someone who is not only from the Arctic but I had the chance to go on the School's on Board trip and I really thought that it was a trip of a lifetime. I learned so much. I made so many good friends, good contacts. It was really, really great. So if you get the chance to go up north, really take advantage of. And don't just go, breath it all in and you'll learn a lot from it.

So I participated in this program and we started off in the North West Territories in Inuvik and from there we went to Kuglutuk in Nunavut and we embarked on the Amundsen Ice Breaker Ship for five or six days and then we landed on Banks Island in a place called Sax Harbour where there are about a hundred people living there. It's a really small place but even though I spent my childhood or most of my childhood in Kuguak and in the Arctic and I was very familiar with the climate, I had never been to the western Arctic. And it was really exciting for me because I saw that there were some differences and it's a place that's really far from my original home. But despite differences, I really found that there were more strong similarities and even though it was thousands of kilometers from my home, I still felt the sense that I was among family and home which was a really strong feeling for me and I remember it very well.

It was really nice to have to explore the towns of Inuvik and Sax Harbour and that's really where our program started. We all met each other there. The students from Greenland, Russia, Alaska and Canada. We all got along very well right off the bat but we really got to know each other in this community and it was nice to take time before we actually went on the ship, even though I was really eager to get on the ship. And we really got to kind of brainstorm our ideas for what we were going to present.

And what we did is before going on this trip, we kind of gathered information from elders from each of our regions and we really brought forth a lot of knowledge from each of our regions and we found that though we're from very different areas of the world, all over the world, we're really suffering the same effects, we're going through the same challenges and we're really one civilization, one people and that was really great to see. And I think that really played into the theme of the whole trip, seeing the different circles of the world can really come together and act as one, which really was the theme of the trip.

And I think it was kind of the epitimy of integration, integrating all these different aspects together, science, traditional knowledge, with youth, Inuit youth who are bringing knowledge from, based on studies they did with Inuit elders. So I think it was a very beneficial program because it addressed the importance of kind of combining all of these aspects. And seeing that we kind of, we're all moving to the same goal and that it's not science versus traditional knowledge, that it's really science in co operation with traditional knowledge and that if we work together in harmony, then that's really the only way we can come up with a solution.

So based on our presentation, the students, I think it was very well received by all, everyone involved in the program. It was really, really fun to be on the ship, once in a lifetime experience and like I said, if you get the opportunity then take it because it was really fun. And the ultimate message is that you know, people of the Arctic are all suffering the same effects but it's not just in isolation to the Arctic. I think that what's going on at the poles is really an implication of what can happen all over the world, because really all of these systems are tied together, and that's what I learned really from the trip. So I hope, I really relish having been on the expedition, especially first of all with other youth who are interested in what I'm interested in, but also to be with other Inuit, my Inuit peers was really great. So I hope that this will kind of pave the way for other student programs, especially Inuit student programs.

James Kuptana: I think this was a pilot project so it was the first of it's kind. The Circumpolar Inuit aspect of the schools on board was to have exclusively Inuit involved in this program. So it was nice to see how these types of programs are evolving, to have more representation of Inuit and more inclusion of Inuit in science and in research projects that are happening predominantly in Inuit lands. And like Adamena was saying, to have representatives from around the Circumpolar regions was very dynamic, diverse group.

Even though we were all Inuit and of the same or similar background, we came with our own perspectives and our own ideas and concepts from our communities and brought that onto the ship. It was really interesting to do the traditional knowledge studies within our communities. It was predominantly up to us as to the way we wanted to form our questions and interviews with our elders and knowledgeable community members. And then I felt really privileged to be able to represent my community and bring that on a, to bring that forth to scientists on the Amundsen and to share that knowledge with them and to hear the feedback from them was, it was really inspiring.

After we gave our presentation on the Amundsen, I had several of the scientists come up to me and say how it really brought them back to a better understanding or a better view of the bigger picture of how everything is connected. Because it showed how what they 're studying can help people in the real world sort of sense, how I guess because they get very concentrated on specific studies, like amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or in the water or, you know, you get very focused in your area of study. So what we did really helped them come back to a view of the bigger picture and bring those community concerns and ideas and concepts onto the ship.

And I mean it was a really profound experience, it was dynamic and I really hope there are programs like this in the future and opportunities like this for Inuit and non Inuit youth alike. It's good to see lots of people here today, lots of youth interested and involved in these types of issues and it's ever evolving. I mean knowledge basis are not static and I think this program was a really good example of how the knowledge basis and the way in which we are coming to know what we know is evolving. So that was really good to see. So thank you (inaudible), merci beaucoup.

(Applause).

Patrick Borbey: Thank you James and Adamena. Unfortunately we're out of time in terms of taking questions but what we certainly will be able to do is, Jeff, Adamena and James will be able to answer questions after in the foyer, after this event. But also, those of you who are following via the web, please send in your questions and we'll make sure we give you the best answers possible as quickly as possible. So before closing the event, I would like to invite some very special guests for us.

These are the students from a program that's based here in Ottawa called Nunavut Sivunut Savuk (ph) Training Program. It's an eight month program located here in Canada that teaches about Nunavut culture, government and land claims and students from this school will now perform two songs. So I would invite the panellists to leave the stage and bring our performers on the stage please. And to introduce the songs, I would like to welcome Natasha Mablik who is a student from the school. Natasha.

(Applause).

Natasha Mablik: (inaudible). Hi, my name is Natasha Mablik. I'm from Pondamlet (ph). Like Patrick said, we're from all across Nunavut and we're taking part in the Nunavut Sivunut Savuk program. We will be singing two songs. The first one is called (inaudible). And for us who live in the northern part of Nunavut, get twenty four hours of darkness in the winter for three months. And we also get twenty four hour daylight for three months of the summer. And this song was made to warm up the souls in the winter cause it was so cold and some, with the oil lamps, for some families that didn't provide enough heat. And the second song is a song to, it's a song to celebrate, it's a song that shows pride in our culture of who we are and honours the past, celebrates the present and supports the future.

(Applause).

(Singing).

Patrick Borbey: Thank you very much. (Inaudible). This is a wonderful and excellent way to bring a close to our Polar Day presentations today. I'd like to thank the students of Nunavut (inaudible) and thank all our presenters, our panellists this morning for the excellent presentations. The panellists will be available after today session if you have any questions to ask them. And I would like to thank all of you here for having attended in person or via the webcast. (inaudible) set up for information and other items that you can take away.

Make sure you pick up a map of the Arctic and there's also IPY pins that are available. And as I mentioned, there is a bit of a test because some of the staff at the tables will be asking questions about today's presentation and if you answer correctly, you may win an IPY toque or scarf. (Inaudible) part in other Polar Day activities such as a live radio program that is being broadcast out of Yellowknife in the North West Territories and that will reach all around the world. It will feature more IPY researchers and participants. I invite you to visit the website and participate in many other activities on our website that are associated with today's International Polar Year Day.