The Life of Field Stations: a History of Community Participation in Scientific Practice at the Igloolik Laboratory (1974-2004)

关于气候变化对北极因纽特土著人影响的新闻广播越来越为人所熟知。最近的一份报告描述了因纽特长老聚集在一起创造新的术语来描述天气的变化。随着奇怪天气的出现，传统词汇已不能完全胜任精确描述变化模式的任务。优秀的新闻报道没有告诉我们的是，因纽特长老如何能够获得专业的科学知识，并组织他们自己的政治和文化反应，以应对气候变化等问题。因纽特人设法将自己的传统知识与科学结合起来的故事可以追溯到他们与19世纪的科学旅行者的相遇。然而，当各国政府在因纽特人社区开设了半永久性的科学实地站时，知识系统之间真正对话的时刻开始了。随着时间的推移，因纽特长老成为野外站生活的常规特征，他们管理自己的项目，并为来自遥远大学的访问研究人员提供建议和协助。今天关于因纽特人和北极科学的新闻背后，隐藏着一个鲜为人知的故事，那就是了解因纽特人如何转向野外站，以保存甚至提高他们对自己高度精确的环境词汇的掌握。这个项目是对Igloolik野外站的研究，Igloolik是加拿大努纳武特高北极地区的一个小而有文化弹性和创意的社区，有1200人。1974年向研究人员开放的这个野外考察站的一个显著特点是，政府从一开始就希望因纽特人参与科学项目/但“参与”意味着什么？为了回答这个问题，该项目围绕三个历史阶段的调查进行组织。在第一个或“创始”阶段（1974-1985），参与意味着协助来访的专家，并找到使他们的科学对当地社区有用的方法。在第二个或“社区参与”阶段，社区发起了自己的项目，并与本身也是社区成员的实地站管理人员合作。其中最令人兴奋的项目之一是一个新的传统知识，口述历史项目，该项目设在车站，由伊格卢利克长老协会管理。生活史和对长老的采访，总共有几百个，涵盖了因纽特人天文学或传统司法等各种主题，被记录和转录（一个熟练和劳动密集型的过程），产生了因纽特人生活的档案，其词汇和关于他们的价值观、知识和技能的历史细节前所未有的丰富。结果是一部独特的“活词典”和“传记词典”的结合。在第三个或“传统知识”阶段，新成立的努纳武特因纽特政府（1999年成立）要求所有政策都要以传统的因纽特价值观为依据。他们越来越多地提到Igloolik长老的项目是唯一系统地记录传统知识的档案。尽管取得了显著的成就，但Igloolik实地站于2004年关闭，长老项目没有在其他社区复制，而是在没有资金和志愿者的情况下继续在Igloolik进行。因此，该项目试图澄清是什么条件使社区在实地站的参与如此成功，政策制定者可以合理地期望对基于社区的知识项目提出什么要求，以及作为回报，需要什么样的战略资助方法才能使这类项目在其他地方扩散。

Project SummaryNews broadcasts about the impact of climate change on the indigenous peoples of the Arctic Inuit are increasingly familiar. One recent report described Inuit Elders gathering to create new terms to describe changes in the weather. With the onset of strange weather, traditional vocabulary is no longer fully adequate for the task of offering precise description of changing patterns. What the excellent news coverage doesn't tell us is how Inuit Elders have been able to gain access to specialised scientific knowledge and organise their own political and cultural responses to issues like climate change. The story of the Inuit finding ways to bridge their own traditional knowledge with the sciences can be traced back to their encounters with the scientific travellers of the nineteenth century. However the moment of real dialogue between knowledge systems began when governments opened semi-permanent scientific field stations based in Inuit communities. Over time Inuit Elders became regular features of field station life, managing their own projects as well as advising and assisting visiting researchers from distant universities. Understanding how Inuit turned to a field station to preserve and even increase their mastery of their own highly precise environmental vocabulary is the little known story behind much of today's news about the Inuit and Arctic science.This project is a study of the field station in Igloolik, a small but culturally resilient and creative community of 1200 people in Canada's High Arctic territory of Nunavut. A distinguishing feature of this field station opened to researchers in 1974 was that from the outset the government hoped that Inuit would take part in scientific projects / but what did 'taking part' entail? To answer that question, the project is organised around an investigation of three historical phases. In the first or 'Founding' phase (1974-1985), participation meant assisting visiting experts and finding ways to make their science useful to the local community. In the second or 'Community Engagement' phase, the community initiated its own projects and worked in collaboration with the field station managers who were themselves also members of the community. One of the most exciting projects was a new traditional knowledge, oral history project based at the station and managed by the Igloolik Elders' Society. Life histories and interviews with Elders, several hundred in total, covering topics as diverse as Inuit astronomy or traditional justice, were recorded and transcribed (a skilful and labour--intensive process), producing an archive of Inuit life unprecedented in the richness of its vocabulary and historical detail about their values, knowledge, and skills. The result was a unique blend of a 'living dictionary of words' and a 'biographical dictionary'. In the third or 'Traditional Knowledge' phase, the newly created Inuit government of Nunavut (f.1999) required all policies to be informed by traditional Inuit values. They increasingly referred to the Igloolik Elders' project as the only systematically recorded archive of traditional knowledge. In spite of its remarkable achievements, the Igloolik field station was closed in 2004 and the Elders' Project, rather than being replicated in other communities, is now continuing in Igloolik unfunded and staffed by volunteers. The project therefore seeks to clarify what conditions enable community participation at field stations to be so successful, what policymakers can reasonably expect to ask of community-based knowledge projects, and in return what approaches to strategic funding are needed for projects like these to proliferate elsewhere.