Co-producing Knowledge with a First Nation: Reflections on Research with the Gwich'in of Canada’s North
15 November 2024
Seminarraum 3.03, Global South Studies Center (GSSC)
Classen-Kappelmann-Straße 24, 50931 Köln
Attempts to enable symmetrical forms of knowledge production that minimize epistemological as well as other hierarchies between researchers and research participants take many forms. In Canada and elsewhere, Indigenous groups have established institutions for managing research activities in their territories and with their members. For example, the Dinjii Zhuh – also known as the Gwich’in –inhabit a large area in what is today north-eastern Alaska, USA and the Yukon and Northwest Territories in Canada’s North. In particular on the Canadian side of their lands, the Gwich’in of the Northwest Territories have formed the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute (GSCI) for governing social research. The GSCI was established in 1993 after the successful Gwich’in land claim negotiations with Canadian governments that resulted in the Gwich’in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement in 1992. More recently, the GSCI has been transformed into the Gwich’in Tribal Council’s Department of Culture and Heritage, while it continues to manage research with and about Gwich’in people, their culture, indigenous knowledge and lands.
This workshop brings together a prominent Gwich’in researcher and long-time GSCI director, Alestine Andre, with four researchers who have collaborated with her and the Institute over the years. Alestine Andre will speak about her work, between coordinating various projects and conducting her own research, and the researchers will present some things they learned through this collaboration. Together, the five will discuss the potentials and problems of this form of co-producing knowledge.
Programme
09.00 Welcome and introduction
09.15 Alestine Andre (Retired, GTC Dept. of Culture and Heritage): Gwich'in Elders Sharing Stories with GSCI/DCH and Outside Researchers over the Decades
09.45 Peter Loovers (University of Aberdeen): 'You Have To Live It': Gwich'in Education in Research (and Life)
10.15 Tea/Coffee
10.45 Barbara Schellhammer (Munich School of Philosophy): Body, Place and Story – Who am I Doing Philosophy with Indigenous Peoples?
11.15 Wayne Horowitz (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Fragments of Memories: The Boy in the Moon and The Babylonian Hero in the Moon (ONLINE)
11.45 Franz Krause (MESH/GSSC): Delta Ethnography and First Nation Institutions - Research Collaboration across Scales
12.15 End
Panelists:
Alestine Andre is Gwichya Gwich'in from Tsiigehtchic, in the Gwich’in Settlement Area in Canada’s Northwest Territories. From 1994 to 2022, she has worked for the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute (GSCI, later renamed Department of Cultural Heritage), as Cultural Director, Executive Director, and Heritage Researcher. Alestine has a college diploma (1987) in Public Administration from Camosun College, a Bachelor of Arts degree (1994) in Anthropology and Women's Studies from the University of Victoria, and a Master’s degree (2006) in Ethnobotany from the University of Victoria. Her master’s thesis was based on the traditional plant knowledge of Gwich’in plant specialist Mrs. Ruth Welsh and her work with the GSCI and the Aurora Research Institute (with Alan Fehr), which resulted in the book Gwich’in Ethnobotany: Plants Used by the Gwich’in for Food, Medicine, Shelter and Tools (2002). In 2005, Ms. Andre was awarded a Gwich’in Achievement Award by the Gwich’in Tribal Council in the career category of Gwich’in Culture. In March 2007, Ms. Andre was awarded a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in the category Culture, Heritage and Spirituality at a ceremony in Edmonton. In 2012, Alestine was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. In her lifetime, Alestine has travelled to many countries around the world. Today, Alestine returns every August to her family's fish camp at Diighe'tr'aajil along the Mackenzie River with her husband Itai.
Jan Peter Laurens Loovers is a Research Fellow in the CINUK Inuksiutit: Food Sovereignty in Nunavut project at the University of Aberdeen. He is interested in the Arctic, colonialism and decolonialisation, climate change, ecology, education, imperialism, Indigenous Peoples, museums, philosophy. Much of his interests and understandings in life have been informed by the education he has received from working with Teetł'it Gwich'in. Since 2005, he has visited various parts of the Gwich'in Nation but lived most extensively in and around Fort McPherson, Canada, with Gwich'in. His most recent publications include the monograph Reading Life with Gwich’in (Routledge, 2019) and the co-edited books Dogs in the North (Routledge, 2018), Arctic: culture and climate (Thames&Hudson/The British Museum, 2020) and Sentient Entanglements and Ruptures in the Americas (Brill, 2023).
Barbara Schellhammer holds the research chair for “Intercultural Social Transformation” at the Munich School of Philosophy and is the director of the Center for Social and Development Studies. She studied social work and philosophy, she lived and worked in Canada for about 15 years and did field research in the NWT. Her main fields of interest are (inter-)cultural philosophy, philosophical anthropology, peace studies and phenomenology of the alien. Pertinent publications are: “Dichte Beschreibung" in der Arktis. Clifford Geertz und die Kulturrevolution der Inuit in Nordkanada (transcript, 2015); Indigegogy. An Invitation to Learning in a Relational Way, co-authored with the Cree Scholar Stan Wilson (wbg, 2021); “Reading Split Tooth - Lessons of the Sovereign Erotic I take away and still grapple with” (Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien, 2023)
Wayne Horowitz is Professor of Assyriology at The Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. His main research interests are Ancient Astronomical Texts written in cuneiform, cuneiform tablets from the Land of Israel, and more broadly the interplay of religion and science in the Ancient World. A decade ago, Professor Horowitz visited the Yukon and Northwest Territories in Canada and began conducting Ethno-Astronomy research with the Gwich'in First Nation.
Franz Krause is Professor of Environmental Anthropology at MESH (Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities) and the University of Cologne’s Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. His research and teaching revolve around the role of water in society and culture. Since 2015, Franz has been working with Inuvialuit and Ehdiitat Gwich’in inhabitants of the Mackenzie Delta in Arctic Canada. Franz is co-editor, with Mark Harris, of Delta Life: Exploring Dynamic Environments where Rivers meet the Sea (2021) and co-author, with Nora Horisberger, Benoit Ivars and Sandro Simon, of Delta Worlds: Life Between Land and Water (2022). He has written about his former research in Finnish Lapland in Thinking like a River: An Anthropology of Water and its Uses along the Kemi River, Northern Finland (2023).
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Organized by the thematic area Co-Producing Knowledge.