2.1. OHMi Nunavik: an integrative research matrix for the study of indigenous urban complexity

In the Anthropocene era and during its acceleration [Steffen et al., 2015], understanding complexity in a “single EcoSystem – Single ES” [Chenorkian, 2020b, p. 280] such as Nunavik requires “joint and convergent approaches to ES that interact (Environmental Sciences, i.e., earth, life, human and social sciences) and […] a systemic study process, i.e., one that takes into consideration the objects involved and their organization, and the nature and dynamics of the interactions they develop between them.” [Chenorkian, 2020b, p. 279].

The thirteen observatories constitute critical case studies, expressions of “anthropized sites hit by a ‘disrupting event’ which has upset the ecological, economic and social balances that have developed over decades in the local socio-ecological conditions” [Chenorkian, 2020a, p. 292]; “[…] a ‘social-ecological framework’, which is the socioecological context of the place, a ‘disrupting event’, which disrupts it, and a ‘focal object’, the product of the first two elements” [Chenorkian, 2020b, p. 280; Chenorkian, 2020a, p. 294] constitute the OHM ternary.

For OHMi Nunavik (Figure 1), the relevant disruptive event is the North Plan (2011), a mega-program for the economic development of Quebec’s far North over a 25-year period launched by the Jean Charest government in Quebec City in 2011. At the time of its launch, however, the 2011 North Plan aroused a great deal of emotion and opposition [Simard, 2017, p. 284] due to the postcolonial context in Nunavik, leaving little room for local indigenous consultation. The political tribulations of the 2011 North Plan prompted an immediate reaction, leading to the creation of an Inuit action plan in 2014: the Parnasimautik Plan [Administration Régionale Kativik (ARK), 2014]. Similarly, in 2020, the Quebec government scaled back some of its ambitions with a new, more measured northern action plan, proposed over a probationary period from 2020 to 2023. Although the 2011 referendum on self-determination proved to be a negative initiative, the “march towards Nunavik self-government” is the cornerstone of the new Makivik government and its President, whose “main interest is to help my Inuit family control its own development” [Pélouas, 2022, p. 8].

OHMi Nunavik aims to better understand the cumulative impacts of the 2011 North Plan and its successors, including the Parnasimautik Indigenous report [Decaulne et al., 2020]. However, it is important to emphasize that this disruptive event for OHMi Nunavik is the result of a more global process (Figure 1), linked to the joint acceleration of demography and sedentarization since the 1950s that has profoundly transformed the Inuit relationship to the territory and prefigured its urbanization.

To ensure that OHMi Nunavik resonates with indigenous communities, the name Tukisik (Tukisigasuaqatigit: Understanding together) was adopted by the local partners as a translation of its more complicated acronym. This “knowledge-sharing” name in Inuktitut—the Inuit language—highlights the research effort in partnership with Nunavik’s indigenous peoples; it counters the notion of unilateral observation, denied in this territory that massively rejects domination from the South. As a result, OHMi Nunavik has been set up as part of a multilateral partnership that includes French (CNRS) and Quebec (Centre d’Etudes Nordiques, CEN) research institutions collaborating with Inuit scientific and political institutions (Kativik Regional Government, Makivik Corporation and its Research Centre). Through this goal of co-constructing research, OHMi Nunavik is engaged in the indigenization and decolonization of research in the Arctic environment [Smith, 2021, Radcliffe, 2017]. Scientific projects are evaluated by a Franco-Quebec-Inuit committee and approved by Nunavik authorities (Kativik Regional Government, Makivik Corporation), which “aims, in a process of reciprocal knowledge, to co-create and value local scientific knowledge and know-how in order to better understand and raise awareness of the Arctic socio-ecological system at different scales and for different audiences (Indigenous people, Euro-Canadians, scientists, political decision-makers and the general public).” [Decaulne et al., 2020, p. 3].

By integrating academic and indigenous approaches to the co-production of knowledge, OHMi Nunavik adopts the integrative “global ecology” approach [Chenorkian, 2020a, p. 294] in both senses of the term: on the one hand, the integration of diverse scientific disciplines around projects that respond to issues identified by Inuit communities [Decaulne et al., 2020]; and on the other hand, through the integration of different players from different cultures (researchers–inhabitants–political decision-makers, Western dualist culture and indigenous holistic culture). Beyond the scientific and applied research that meets the expectations of Inuit society, OHMi Nunavik aims to “advise political or economic decision-makers and social participants as fully as possible when they come to make their choices. In this way, the OHM position researchers within society” [Chenorkian, 2020a, p. 294], in synergy with the inuit new health research framework (Inuit Tapiriit Katanami) signed with the Government of Canada in 2018, and the Memorandum of Understanding signed between OHMi and the Kativik Regional Government, the Makivik Research Centre in 2016.

2.2. The urban in Nunavik, through the prism of some OHMi research projects

The various research projects carried out by OHMi Nunavik help create greater understanding and unravel the complexity of socio-ecosystems disrupted by the founding event, the North Plan. This vast development plan helped to establish and develop the urban phenomenon at the forefront of the sedentarization process completed in 1986 (see above). OHMi Nunavik’s research has been conceived within a panarchic model that considers the different temporalities that express themselves on a territory, as well as the multiscalar nature of different processes that question both the local and the global [Decaulne et al., 2020].

In this sense, the urban phenomenon is part of a complex system that OHMi Nunavik can help to describe and interpret. Quoting Jacobs [1993], who saw the city as a complex but organized whole, Desbiens [2017, p. 152] states that: “even if they are much smaller in size (than American cities), the northern villages of Nunavik also present such complexity” (translated from French). This Arctic urban complexity is the product of colonial history, different settlement phases, mobilities including traditional nomadism, and is fundamentally marked by the cold [Vaguet, 2016, 2019]. Chartier [2020] adds that “Nordic cities are multicultural laboratories”, and refers to Zamyatin (2020), for whom the heterogeneous character of these Nordic cities is conducive to “the possibility of the emergence of new geocultural images that link experience, culture and climatic conditions […]. The ‘insular’ character of northern cities thus makes it possible to define oneself in relation to the territory and in opposition to the rest of the world, which is more densely populated.” [Chartier, 2020, p. 28, translated from French].

This complexity of the urban will be investigated here through the prism of various OHMi Nunavik research projects (Figure 2), which, as part of an interdisciplinary dialogue initiated by the various teams, aim to decompartmentalize the research conducted in “enlightened disciplinarity” [Chenorkian, 2020b] and articulate it around the urbanity issue.

Thus, the rapidly expanding Inuit urban phenomenon involves a combination of two processes inherent to sedentarization: fixity (in contrast to the seasonal mobility of nomadism) and population concentration (in contrast to the dispersal of camps). Cause and effect relations generate another process, that of adaptation to a new way of life and the upheaval of mobility. Itinerant mobility by dog sled or boat has been largely replaced over short distances by snowmobiles, quads and 4 × 4 vehicles, and over long distances by airplanes between villages and connections with the South [Joliet and Chanteloup, 2020].

It is worth noting that in just over thirty years, an archipelago of fourteen coastal urban communities has been created from scratch (today numbering between 400 and 2700 inhabitants). They are connected by air travel, as arctic physical conditions make it impossible to build roads between them. Reciprocally, these new forms of mobility are transforming territoriality between generations, as well as between families, according to each individual’s networks, standard of living or professional and family activities (Nuna project). This urban archipelago (as well as the extraction of natural resources) supports and is complemented by the protection of nature, with the development of a matrix of national parks anchored to the villages of Nunavik (Nuna project).

These renewed territorialities take place in an environment that is itself subject to major changes, such as climate changes that have led to increased avalanche risks threatening urban extensions (Kinngaq project). Finally, every urban core is based on energy dependence or autonomy (Siqiniq project) and food self-sufficiency (Niqiliriniq project).

To fully understand the complexity of the urban phenomenon in Nunavik, as studied in OHMi Nunavik’s research projects, we approach the phenomenon through a diachronic analysis of urbanization (urban facts) and urbanity (urban effects).

3.1. Urban fact constitution in Nunavik

The urban process that has been developing in Nunavik since the mid-twentieth century is a recent phenomenon that has been co-constructed by combining external Euro-Canadian state impulses and Inuit adaptation (Figure 3). Inspired by Desbiens [2017], the urban fact is defined here as the morphological characterization of the urban archipelago and its typical urban core.

Breton and Cloutier [2017] identify three phases in the socio-spatial organization of urban development in Nunavik. Each of these phases saw the emergence of new facilities and services, shaping today’s urban landscape. The first phase, from 1960 to 1975, accelerated the sedentarization of families residing near trading posts and certain services implemented by the federal and provincial governments. Semi-permanent infrastructures were created [Roy, 1971] by a federal program of one-room ‘matchbox’ housing, launched in 1959. The international context of the Cold War extended certain services in alignment with military resources such as airports and community radios [Brière and Laugrand, 2017].

The second phase, from 1975 to 2000, was marked by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA). This phase led to the emergence of Inuit institutions such as the Makivik Corporation and the Kativik Regional Government. The JBNQA created fourteen municipalities and their municipal councils, with a land regime organized into three categories of land ownership and associated rights, including Category 1 that was reserved for the urban location of new villages. In 1981, the federal government transferred the housing stock to the management of the Société d’Habitation du Québec. The latter then modernized housing with dedicated services. These developments extended the municipal model of southern Quebec into the north.

The third phase identified by Breton and Cloutier [2017] began in the 2000s, when development was taken over locally. The 2000s saw the creation of the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau, which managed 93% of Nunavik’s housing stock. At that time, housing consisted mainly of social housing. Parallel to this, the Makivik corporation set up a Construction Division to help develop the Inuit housing stock. The Land-Use Committees were established to promote local involvement in the development of municipalities and villages.

The work of OHMi Nunavik shows that a fourth phase could be added to the three previously identified: with the introduction of the North plan in 2011, the existing socio-system experienced a transformation that continues to this day. Its voluntarist development policy, the massive investments associated with it and the counter-plan proposed in response to the Inuit (Parnassimautik) have generated strategies of adaptation, resilience and new aspirations. This current period suggests that the urban fact and the indigenous urban effect may be in sync or out of sync, thanks to self-determination based on a quest for cultural, food, energy and environmental sovereignty, to which the OHMi Nunavik has responded with a number of research projects.

At the level of each urban entity, the typical urban pattern imported from the South is transposed to Arctic conditions and adapted to community lifestyles by the Inuit. This pattern is currently characterized by:

• coastal location and stilt architecture. The ground and climate do not allow running water to be incorporated into the dwellings. The fourteen villages were built on the coast or a few kilometres back along the larger coastal rivers close to Indigenous camps (as was also true of trading posts).
• dense settlement, consisting of a rental park of single-storey double dwellings, one or two churches (Protestant and sometimes Catholic), a town hall, a school, a dispensary, an oil tank, a community freezer, a general store (Co-op), a hotel (Co-op), an airport (Air Inuit), a drinking water supply station, and a fire station. The typical village is often complemented by a second Northern chain general store (heir to the Hudson’s Bay Company store).

Many more new facilities and services are being developed, such as a youth center [Blais and Vachon, 2020, Antomarchi, 2021] or intergenerational house, a gymnasium and skating rink (outdoor or indoor), school transportation and a greenhouse [Lamalice et al., 2016]. In the immediate or relative periphery, each village has a harbor protected by riprap, one or two roads to the harbor, an airport, a waste disposal center, a wastewater treatment plant and basin, a cemetery, and even mining sites and the entrance to national parks.

The emergence of private services (grocery store, restaurant, bar, inn) and the purchase of homes by individuals are features of the two largest urban communities: Kuujjuaq and Kuujjurapik.

For the architecture, prefabricated wood construction prevails, clad in colored or varnished facades, with colored metal for the two general stores and the fire station. With regard to urban planning, the choice of the site and layout, as well as the orientation of the buildings, respond to an evolving functional logic. Openings have been enlarged, bay windows have been created, and buildings and openings are oriented towards the surrounding landscape.

The exponential demographic growth of Nunavimmiut (Nunavik’s inhabitants) has led to a major urban and peri-urban phenomenon: peripheral expansion and de facto exposure to hazards (landslides, permafrost subsidence, avalanches and landslides), studied by the Kinngaq research project. The deployment of a greenhouse network and an ad hoc energy resource in the villages is a second original urban fact that the Siqiniq and Niqiliriniq scientific projects are investigating.

3.2. Assessing the vulnerability of urban development and deploying greenhouses

3.2.1. Monitoring and anticipating arctic risks and urban vulnerability in Nunavik

The emergence of urban development in Nunavik, and a fortiori its sprawl over an open territory, is accompanied by its corollary, the emergence of the notion of risk in the face of the multiplication of fixed developments (Kinngaq project). This is an important bifurcation in Nunavik’s socio-ecosystem. Risk is understood here in its general sense as the consequence of a natural hazard in a population, its infrastructure and its territory, depending on the vulnerability of the society and territory concerned [Léone and Vinet, 2006]. The appearance of fixed, perennial stakes, such as villages and all associated anthropogenic constructions, is an essential element of the new vulnerability of the Nunavik population, which has become urban even though it lives in “small” villages [from 209 to 2754 inhabitants according to Statistics Canada 2016, in Duhaime et al., 2021]. Natural hazards are not new elements in the Inuit landscape; the work of Veilleux et al. [2020], Bhiry et al. [2019] and Decaulne et al. [2018] demonstrate that slope processes, for example, have been active on Nunavik’s slopes since the start of the last major deglaciation, which began between 8500 and 6000 BP depending on the specific location in Nunavik. However, until the 1950s, the Inuit populations that had been living in the Arctic for around 6000 years, and in Nunavik for around 4500 years [Bhiry et al., 2021], were nomadic. They moved in small family groups between summer camps that were located in the valleys drained by the small coastal rivers (up to around 40 km from the coast) and winter camps located on the coast or nearby islands, depending on their needs (Figure 4A) Each of the camps brought together only two to three families. From the 1800s onwards, Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts were monopolies that established the fur trade (mainly in the form of bartering), and became general retail stores after 1870. The transition to Inuit sedentarization began through the dependence that developed between Indigenous peoples and the Euro-Canadians who offered manufactured goods (Figure 4B), which led to a contraction of the space covered by the Inuit populations [Heyes, 2007]. However, while the trading posts were attractive and tended to unite the population that settled nearby, the traditional way of life was maintained until the 1950s to 1970s. It was then that the various villages were successively created (Figure 4C) in a process that lasted until 1987 when Umiujaq, the fourteenth and last village, was assimilated as a “northern village” [Kativik Environmental Quality Commission, 2009].

The work of Grenier [2022] and Grenier et al. [2023] focuses on the weather conditions preceding the onset of avalanches at Umiujaq, pinpointing the periods of greatest potential danger for traffic on the portion of the trail most likely to present a hazard to winter or spring traffic at the foot of the slope. It is therefore the trail leading from the village to Lake Tasiujaq that represents a major concern for traffic around Umiujaq, which is used by local populations to access traditional activities on the territory (fishing, hunting, trapping on the shores of the lake and adjacent waterways). This road is all the more important for traffic and access to the “land”; it furthermore represents the gateway to Tursujuq National Park, created in 2013 and used by tourists on their way to “nature” activities.

The notion of risk, as it relates to slope processes and avalanches in particular, is even more visible in Kangiqsualujjuaq. In the early hours of 1999, the village was devastated by an avalanche that partially buried the gymnasium where villagers were celebrating the New Year [Decaulne et al., 2021]. This event forced a spatial reorganization of the community, which had to retreat from the slope at the foot of which dwellings and activities had been established since the village’s creation and initial expansion (Figure 5).

Geomorphological studies on the slopes of the central islands of Lake Wiyâshâkimî, in the southwestern part of Nunavik, highlight the importance of evidence of avalanche activity on slopes corresponding to current dynamics [Decaulne et al., 2018]. These findings are reinforced by the results of work by Veilleux [2019] and Veilleux et al. [2020], concluding similar avalanche dynamics from morphometric analyses of slope deposits near Umiujaq. Through the analysis of images from self-triggering cameras, Veilleux et al. [2021] revealed the frequency of avalanche processes during winter and spring, linked to the breakup of a summit snow cornice on the slopes near the village of Umiujaq. The avalanche deposition zone occasionally comes dangerously close to the road when avalanches have a long travel distance [Veilleux et al., 2021].

3.2.2. Arctic experimentation with greenhouses and a specific local energy source

The aim of greenhouse farming is to enable Nunavik communities to grow their own food and strengthen their food self-sufficiency, while reducing their dependence on imported foods [Lamalice et al., 2016]. In this remote and isolated region, fresh plants are indeed scarce and expensive, or even totally absent for part of the year. Greenhouse farming thus makes it possible to produce fresh vegetables locally that have a higher nutritional quality than processed or canned foods, while limiting greenhouse gas emissions linked to transport.

The greenhouse concept (Figure 6A) does have one drawback, however. It is a model “imported” from the milder climate of the south, and therefore poorly suited to Nunavik, since the growing season is only about four months, from late May to late September.

The Siqiniq projects led by OHMi Nunavik were developed to study the thermal behavior of greenhouses and identify avenues for improvement. A measurement campaign (June 2016 to May 2018) initially showed that the growing season was reduced due to too low temperatures at night, while paradoxically daytime temperatures could be very high (even too high) and require ventilation [Piché, 2021]. This initial observation led to the design and installation of an energy storage system that it is based on a unique low-tech approach using simple technologies, local material and human resources. The system is based on rock beds placed beneath the cultivated areas, which are elevated in a manner that facilitates the work of the gardeners, but also isolates the soil from the ground (Figure 6C,D).

A comparison of the growing seasons before and after the system was installed showed a reduction in the temperature amplitude inside the greenhouse (i.e., a better decoupling between the greenhouse’s internal and external climates), as well as an increase in the growing period [Piché et al., 2020].

This work to adapt the greenhouse was constrained by the need to preserve the existing structure, i.e., a conventional temperate-zone greenhouse that is not optimal for cold climates. There are, however, structures that are much better adapted to these climates, such as Chinese greenhouses (Figure 6B), also known as “passive solar greenhouses”: these are structures specially designed for cold climates that can be an interesting alternative to greenhouses imported from the south, which are not adapted to Nunavik’s climatic conditions. These greenhouses are designed to maximize the use of solar energy while minimizing heat loss. In particular, they have a sloping south face to enable better sunlight capture. The main advantage of Chinese greenhouses is their ability to store heat on sunny days, thanks to the thermal mass of the north wall, which acts as a heat accumulator. This heat is then redistributed at night to maintain an optimum temperature inside the greenhouse, reducing the need for an additional heating source.

The integration of renewable resources (wind and solar) is also a way of extending the growing season and working toward energy autonomy, by enabling supplementary heating (solar thermal) or by providing the electrical consumption essential for ventilation, for example [Kumar, 2022]. It is also possible to implement longer-term (seasonal) storage strategies to store surplus summer energy and further extend the growing season [Giordano et al., 2021].

The Niqiliriniq project has demonstrated that greenhouse farming represents an opportunity to diversify the diet and produce fresh, high-quality vegetables locally, while reducing dependence on imported food [Lamalice et al., 2018]. However, for this practice to be adapted to northern climatic conditions, it is necessary to develop greenhouses specially designed for these regions, that consider the constraints associated with cold, wind, snow and low winter light. The development of this type of northern greenhouse farming therefore requires specific research and technological development, as well as consideration of traditional knowledge and practices of local populations in terms of cultivation and natural resource management.

In this way, the Kinngaq, Siqiniq and Niqiliriniq projects have provided relevant data to meet the urgent needs of northern villages, particularly in terms of exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards for more appropriate territorial planning, and also to promote energy security and food sovereignty.

4.1. Urbanity, a reinvented territoriality?

In Nunavik, traditional territoriality is being disrupted by urbanization. The holistic indigenous conception of Mother Earth endures, as a Kuujjuarapik elder testified: “So, I grew up in the camp for 10 years […] we didn’t have TV, no iPad, no radio. Just pure Earth.” [Land is Home, 2016, Chanteloup et al., 2018, p. 375]. Similarly, all the generations of the village of Umiujaq evoke the presence of different types of spirits both in town and on traditional territory [Spirits Around Us, 2019]. Yet many adaptations attest to the reinvention of Inuit territoriality since the creation of the villages.

The five participatory videos (Nuna project) made by Nunavimmiut pupils show how the students and adults adopt strategies for appropriating urbanity (Figure 7A) [Herrmann et al., 2023, Joliet et al., 2021, Chanteloup et al., 2018].

These videos reveal some striking urban effects: a divide between generations born before and after the creation of the villages; a shared sense of modernity and spatial confinement; the hijacking of certain “urban objects” (the kitchen, the dressing room, the municipal freezer, the construction of cabins around the village).

4.2. The reinvention of a food landscape? Between food imbalance and food sovereignty complementary to country food

The Inuit urban effect is also visible in the brutal nutritional transition that has taken place, with a kitchen equipped for cooking and a store for shopping, with major health repercussions for Inuit populations. As a result, the traditional Inuit diet from land and sea-based resources (“country food”) has evolved towards the integration of market food products imported from the South [which currently contributes up to 72% (elders) and 89% (youth) of energy intake in Inuit diet, according to Blanchet and Rochette, 2008, p. III]. These are typically ultra-processed foods: “I don’t want to be left behind, with my veils, my food, with my store-bought food, I rather eat store-bought food than country food now today. Because country food is mostly boiled, mostly fried, there is no mix, it’s always those three. No spice, no mixed, strict boiled, strict fries, so maybe I got tired of that” [Interview 2022].

This “westernization of the diet” [Counil et al., 2011, p. 238] has led to a decline in the contribution of traditional foods to energy intake in favor of grocery-bought products, particularly among young people: “I rather go with store-bought food. But the further north you go, like in Sannikiluak, if you put a seal meal all the children will go there. But here, if I put it on at my grandkids, they said what’s the heck is that, I don’t want to see it, it looks terrible, that’s their attitude today, the kids” (op cit).

This context has prompted residents to look for solutions to regain food sovereignty in the village. Thus, the actionresearch carried out as part of the Niqiliriniq project addresses the major challenges of food security in the Nunavik communities of Kuujjuaq, Umiujaq and Kangiqsujuaq, through the development of northern agriculture.

Gardening initiatives (Niqiliriniq project) in greenhouses, cold layers or even at home, aim to enable Nunavik communities to grow their own food and strengthen their food self-sufficiency, while reducing their dependence on imported food [Lamalice et al., 2018]. As noted above, fresh plants are scarce and expensive, or even totally absent for part of the year. Greenhouse farming and gardening thus make it possible to produce fresh vegetables locally, of higher nutritional quality than processed or canned foods, while limiting greenhouse gas emissions linked to transport [Lamalice, 2019].

This local cultivation, especially of green vegetables, enables residents to gather around an activity that promotes social cohesion and strengthens community ties [Lamalice et al., 2016]. Two community greenhouses have been built in Kuujjuaq to fulfil these various roles. Plots of land are allocated to village residents by lottery, and everyone is free to grow their own vegetables.

5.1. Adapting the research methods to the Nunavik context

One of OHMi Nunavik’s challenges is to integrate the complexity of knowledges. Hybridizing Indigenous [Chilisa, 2012] and Western research methods to co-construct knowledge is one of OHMi Nunavik’s aims. Members of the communities in which the projects take place are involved at various levels, with the dual aim of benefiting from the project implementation from an educational and societal point of view on the one hand, and ensuring adequate data acquisition on the other, the latter objective serving the former. Implementing hybrid methodologies between Western and indigenous knowledge is a complex and time-consuming process, requiring respect, listening and shared practice to build mutual trust and forge more egalitarian collaborations between Nunavimmiut and non-native academics. This is clearly an effort redundant with the one building up interdisciplinarity, or “enlightened disciplinarity” within all OHM devices [Chenorkian, 2020a]. Ongoing communication between indigenous partners and non-indigenous researchers has opened up innovative avenues and new universes for concrete engagement in the co-construction of knowledge, with the researcher questioning the applied scope of his data (and its concrete use by communities), and the indigenous population being presented with the practical benefits of research findings by interacting with the researcher and questioning the investigations he hosts on his territory. In this way, learning is reciprocal and multidimensional: between disciplines within the same project, between different projects and between Nunavimmiut and French and Canadian researchers.

Of course, the various projects in which OHMi Nunavik researchers are involved consider multiple space and time scales, and, in some way, all inform the implications of urbanization on the socio-ecological system under study, from instant (i.e., thermic values in a greenhouse) and seasonal observation (i.e., vegetable yield informing nutrition facts in a community) to that spanning over several centuries (i.e., geomorphic impact of snow avalanches on a slope segment). Similarly, approaches can be highly naturalistic, or on the contrary based on narrative and iconographic sovereignty. Participatory methods are thus a strength of the researches carried out in Nunavik, paralleling all the disciplinary methods deployed. Research in the social sciences and humanities allows for the involvement of indigenous communities, and is in line with their choice of sovereignty; on the other hand, it allows for the precision, adaptability and acceptability of research in the natural sciences. Participatory methods have been specifically developed in the context of Nunavik communities (e.g., participatory videos, researcher-inhabitant interviews based on personal snapshots).

5.2. Conducting scientific researches in Nunavik context

One of the strengths of OHMI Nunavik’s research lies in the interdisciplinary nature of its French-Canadian scientific expertise (engineering sciences, nutritional sciences, geomorphology and human sciences). Priority research themes are defined with local partners, making it clear that not all research topics can be developed outside the agreed framework. Unlike many disciplinary research projects on urbanization in Inuit territory following sedentarization, results are cross-disciplinary.

At the end of the 20th century, the establishment of research protocols and frameworks encouraged, then made mandatory, fairness, reciprocity and transparency in research with the communities involved [Regan, 2010, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2018, First Nations Information Governance Centre, 2014]. This recent ethic has emerged as a reaction to the scientific behavior of previous decades: for much of the 20th century, most research in arctic regions was carried out without the agreement or cooperation of the indigenous populations; the results of the research carried out were disseminated without the clear and informed consent of the holders of the knowledge intended for Western societies. The abusive repetition of this unilateral Western research was experienced as an usurpation or dispossession by Inuit, a clear colonial domination [Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2018]. Since then, the decolonization of research is a recognition of indigenous knowledge and its modes of production as heuristic potential equivalent to that of Western science [Wilson, 2008, Tuhiwai-Smith, 2012, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2018].

OHM’s scientific dynamic is increasingly interdisciplinary: after eight years of funding targeted programs, the development of intra-OHM cross-disciplinary research projects and inter-OHM programs reinforces this reflexive dynamism. The visibility and invisibility of flows (HYDECO cross-disciplinary program), nutrition (SASI cross-disciplinary program) and contaminants (collective work by LabEx DRIIHM on contaminations), for example, enable multi-disciplinary teams to target specific issues. For instance, “rivers”, or “urban nutritional patterns” in a Nunavik village, are currently research themes in development, enabling a focus supported by prior research, combined and compared with the results of research carried out in other OHM.

The development of such interdisciplinary research in an indigenous environment presents challenges. The confrontation of different scientific cultures reflects divergent interests in developing research in the arctic environment: academic institutional holders, political partners, inhabitants, researchers and students. Solutions, such as the development of Memoranda of Understanding, agreements between regional and academic partners, are a slow process in which power relations must be balanced and multiple levels of recognition intertwined. Another challenge is the complex reconciliation of knowledge. Finally, a number of challenges are intrinsic to the Nunavik system, such as the history of research carried out in this area, which has not yet been appeased: even if OHMi Nunavik researchers are trying to proceed differently, the indigenous perception is not necessarily so, as they are once again non-indigenous researchers involved in the study of this area. That is a process experienced by some as another form of colonization by research. The actual relationships in the field are often more personal than institutional; however, these good individual agreements and their durability are essential, and are facilitated by the long-term nature of the OHM system [“multi-year projects”, as underlined in Chenorkian, 2020a], which represents a uniquely active research device in the Nunavik territory. At the local and regional institutional level, the very high staff turnover rate in this isolated environment complicates the coherence of research conducted over the long term, as much as the relationships of trust between partners. This is counterbalanced by the bi-national nature of the research teams, with Canadian experience in indigenous research, facilitating French inclusion in this context.

Unfortunately, the small scale of Nunavik’s communities makes it difficult to conduct an interdisciplinary field campaign involving all OHMi Nunavik members. This is certainly a hindrance, which, over and above questions of the researchers’ schedules, poses logistical problems: it is impossible to accommodate a large number of people in most communities, which would exert an undesirable form of pressure on the population, and create a climate of over-solicitation unfavourable to data acquisition. On the other hand, the organization of multiple data acquisition campaigns is organized upstream between the research teams, and the interpretation of cross-referenced results a posteriori provides interesting perspective and hindsight.