First Scientists: Ashkui Project
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NARRATOR:
These Environment Canada scientists are in Labrador to study Ashkui. Something they never even heard of until five years ago.
They're part of a joint research project with the Innu Nation, Saint Mary's University and Natural Resources Canada.
It's based on the philosophy that western science doesn't have a monopoly on knowledge.
That sometimes the best way to find out about a place is to ask the people who have lived there for thousands of years.
The team is heading into the heart of Nitassinan, the ancestral home of the Innu.
This is more than a physical landscape. It's a cultural landscape too. Every hill and valley is full of history and meaning for the Innu.
The long term goal of the project is to map all of Labrador from a cultural perspective. Under the guidance of the Innu they have identified "cultural landscape units" that they will study one at a time.
The first stop on this research trip is the Innu Spring camp at Seal Lake.
This is not their first visit.
Since the project began Environment Canada scientists have been meeting regularly with Innu elders to share information and generate research questions.
GEOFF HOWELL:
What we've been able to do this project is essentially take the questions that the elders are giving us about these sites and try to wrap our western science around that so we can start to address those questions.
NARRATOR:
Jack Selma speaks for the team.
NARRATOR:
He tells the elders about the research that has been done so far on Ashkui.
Ashkui are the cultural landscape unit the elders directed the scientists to study first.
GEOFF HOWELL:
Super: Geoff Howell, Environment Canada
So the idea of the Ashkui really came from the elders and the Innu people as being important to them in terms of their survival on the land during the spring of the year.
NARRATOR:
Ashkui are areas of early or permanent open water on rivers lakes and estuaries.
GEOFF HOWELL:
Normally if we had come up here and picked something that was important we would have picked something like a wetland, which we would then go in and study how waterfowl inhabit and use that and the chemistry of that system. In terms of looking an Ashkui it's a much broader concept, much more holistic in that we would look at chemistry, fish, the land around that, the forest and how Innu people actually use those systems, build their camps, the medicines that they get and so it's really a very broader perspective of looking the whole ecosystem and the people that are in that ecosystem.
NARRATOR:
The science is multidisciplinary. At this Ashkui, they took samples to test for water chemistry and biological productivity at the surface.
NARRATOR:
At the next site they have to drill through the ice.
This is so they can take core samples from the bottom of the lake.
The core samples tell them how environmental conditions have changed over time. They can study historical patterns of climate change and find out about long range airborne contaminants.
Labrador is one of the least industrialized regions in the world. So the silt on the bottom of the lake is completely free of local contaminants. By analysing each slice, the scientists can get a historical record of air pollution that has blown in from far away.
The scientists use the elders' knowledge of historical events such as fires to cross-check the dates of the core samples.
The Ashkui project is providing a vivid portrait of an ecosystem in flux.
NARRATOR:
Back at Seal Lake. Jack Selma finishes his presentation to the elders.
NARRATOR:
Simon Michel senior tells the scientists about the two caribou populations that should be included in any study of Ashkui.
It's not the sort of thing the scientists would have considered before.
PETER PENASHUE:
Super: Peter Penashue, president, Innu Nation
Of course when you put people together in one room in the middle of nowhere with no access to phones, with no access to anywhere else, interesting things happen.
And a lot of things I think were realised that scientists and the Innu, particularly the elders were compatible with each other.
MARY ANN MICHEL:
Super: Mary Ann Michel
NARRATOR:
Mary Ann Michel appreciates the way the scientists have shown respect to the elders' concerns.
BEN MICHEL:
Super: Ben Michel
Western science is now beginning to admit to itself that the Innu know.
GEOFF HOWELL:
The Innu way of looking at the world is very holistic. It's very much understanding the whole. Western science tends to be the opposite in that we're very reductionist. We concentrate considerable amounts of effort on taking little pieces out and seeing how they work and then trying to build that up later. So that's the challenge in this, is trying to piece these two pieces together. Both of them are valid. Both of them provide different ways of looking at the same thing and I think both of them make the overall picture much stronger in the long run.
