New northern research based on a decade of collaboration with community

Library and information studies professor Ali Shiri has been conducting research on cultural heritage preservation and access in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR) of Canada’s north for more than a decade. With help from a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), he’s preparing to return to the region to continue the project started in 2012.

But just as important, he says, is continuing the collaboration with the residents of the ISR while continuing to grow his own knowledge of the culture and of ethical research practices with Indigenous peoples. An important part of all these projects has been the sustainable partnership and close collaboration with Ethel-Jean Gruben, manager of the Inuvialuit Cultural Centre in Inuvik throughout grant-writing, project work and community engagement.

“We work very closely with those communities. All the work has been community-driven,” Shiri says. “We’ve built trust. A major part of that is the sustainability of our relationships over the past 10 or 12 years. We didn’t just appear in the community, gather our data and disappear forever. That’s not how you conduct research with Indigenous communities. You really need to build respectful partnerships and sustain and maintain your relationships through cultural relationality, respect and consideration for existing and emerging community needs.”

Digitally empowering Indigenous communities

The foundation of the project is the Inuvialuit Digital Library, an online repository of digital information artifacts such as oral history, elders stories, early literacy materials, maps, photographs, audio and video recordings that document the traditions, language, dialects, and culture of six communities in the western Arctic — Aklavik, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, Paulatuk, Ulukhaktok and Sachs Harbour — that was launched in 2014 after extensive consultation and testing with community members. Based on their feedback, a subsequent project that started in 2019 and wrapped up earlier this year saw Shiri and his team work with these communities to develop a web-based platform for recording elders’ stories for preservation.

“Computers and various digital devices have been around for decades,” Shiri says. “What’s not done extensively is accommodating and digitally empowering Indigenous communities to be able to preserve culture, history, language and heritage, and make it accessible for the community and the general public.”

The newly funded project, entitled Intergenerational Digital Storytelling for Inuvialuit Cultural Heritage Preservation starting this year, will draw on community input to develop a mobile application that will promote digital literacy and will enable users to record and upload elders’ stories directly to the digital library. The intergenerational aspect of the project was prompted by input from community members, Shiri says.

“When we talked to them about the system, they said for Inuvialuit communities in the western Arctic, the dynamics are so that elders talk to different generations when they tell stories among themselves, so we want to see how a mobile app would facilitate that,” he says. “That’s important because that would help with intergenerational knowledge transfer and language learning, revitalization, and preservation.”

Shiri added that creating a smartphone app will help mitigate issues related to digital connectivity and availability of internet access in the far north. It will also allow users who might not be familiar with navigating a multilevel website to interact with the storytelling system on the devices they use every day.

“The gist of this project is to transfer and preserve that knowledge and heritage and culture. They use digital technologies in a very savvy way. Why wouldn’t we use that to sustain the cultural heritage aspect?” he says. “They can download an app and start using it — it’s much easier than using a desktop or laptop computer to try to find a website.”

Centring the community’s knowledge and culture

Shiri and his longtime collaborator Sharon Farnel at the University of Alberta Libraries plan to be Inuvialuit-bound to start gathering system requirements and input from community members for the new project in early 2025. It’s hard to imagine anyone relishing the idea of a trip to the western Arctic in the heart of winter, but Shiri says it’s part of being mindful of the culture they’re working with, a key consideration that many new researchers of the north may not think about during the proposal development of a project.

“What we have done in the past, we have a drop-in open house at the Inuvialuit Cultural Centre where people can have some soup and bannock with us, and they can try out the technology, then we can ask what they think can be improved or would make it easier for a user to use it on regular basis,” he says. “We hold various gathering and informal conversation sessions to make sure we reach out to as many community members as possible. When we talk about timing, we try to be respectful of, for example, in the summer they’re mostly on the land.”

Centring the community’s interests, needs, knowledge and culture is key to the success of the research, Shiri says, and ensures the integrity of the final result, which is of benefit not only to the residents of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region but to all prospective users of the library.

“These projects also offer educational opportunities for us as Canadians and the global community. It’s part of our citizenship to know this country is massive, from coast to coast to coast — a lot of people don’t think about that third coast and its Indigenous communities,” he says. “So it’s about informed citizenry, fostering an inclusive and relational society that respects all cultures and languages, and most importantly people who have been here since long before we were here.”