International Research Fellow Awards: A Survey of Living Conditions of Canadian Inuit

Searles, Edmund Q, Chevy Chase MD

Investigators

Abstract

0002402 Searles The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will provide Dr. Edmund Q. S. Searles support for twenty-four to work with Professor Gerard Duhaime at Laval University in Quebec, Canada on a survey of the living conditions of Canadian Inuit. This project is being co-funded by the Arctic Social Sciences Program of the Office of Polar Programs. The Inuit people of northern Canada are in the process of transformation, shifting from small extended family settlements to larger towns. Additionally, there is a trend of Inuit becoming increasingly linked with southern Canadian society. Other groups of indigenous peoples in other parts of the Arctic are undergoing similar changes. There have been no studies available which can identify how living conditions in the north, as defined by a broad range of cultural, social, economic, and cultural factors, are affecting choices the Inuit are making as well as influencing the health and sustainability of remote settlements in the North. An international team of social scientists from the United States, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Russian Federation decided to develop an international survey of the living conditions of the indigenous peoples of the Circumpolar Arctic. Dr. Searles will act as assistant to Professor Duhaime, who is the Coordinator of the Canadian portion of this study. Their project will design and implement a questionnaire-based survey that will be used to measure a broad range of indicators affecting the living conditions of 50,000 Canadian Inuit, ensure that this survey instrument is comparable to studies to be conducted in other regions of the Circumpolar North, including those to be used on Inuit living in northern Alaska, Greenland, and far eastern Russia, and with Saami (another indigenous group) living in northern Scandinavia and parts of Russia and they will work with indigenous peoples and organizations not only to ensure that the study reflects their interests and realities, but that it creates a framework for enabling indigenous peoples to design, implement and analyze their own scientific studies. This project will build strong partnerships between indigenous communities and academic researchers. The results of the study will be used to provide a basis for a wide range of scientific studies investigating human-environment interactions, social, economic and political change, and the overall health and sustainability of towns and settlements in the Circumpolar North. ***