Advocating
an experiential ap-proach to learning may be impractical for some indigenous groups. However, in Cambridge Bay, which is surrounded by open tundra and ocean as yet unaf- fected by biodiversity loss or drastic habitat change, it would not be difficult to arrange regular hunting and camp- ing expeditions with willing parents and grandparents, and indeed many Inuit families already regularly engage in these activities. Furthermore, while learning in the way I have advocated may seem to have limited utility in modern Inuit society, it should be remembered that knowing the land is becoming increas- ingly profitable for Inuit. Throughout northern Canada it is now a policy re- quirement that the knowledge of in- digenous people be incorporated into environmental assessment and resource management (Usher 2000). Nunavut’s Inuit Government has also determined that it will utilise Inuit knowledge as a method of aligning the territory’s poli- cies towards Inuit philosophies and away from Western thought processes (Bravo 2000: 471–472). As Inuit are paid for research contributions, talking about the land and animals has become lucra- tive and prestigious for many elders and hunters who are recognised as knowl- edgeable due to their frequent hunting and travelling, despite the limitations of transmitting Inuit knowledge in this way and the reservations of many Inuit about these processes, as already discussed.
Furthermore,
in a communitywhere jobs are limited and unemploy- ment levels are high, there can be few
opportunities to utilise the lessons learnt in school. Meanwhile, many families support themselves additionally through various subsistence activities on the land, which reduce family expendi- ture on bought food items. The ‘replace- ment value’ of land food in Nunavut has been estimated at between $30 and $35 million a year (Hicks and White 2000: 38). In a territory with a population of less than 30,000 individuals, its impor- tance should not therefore be down- played in generating a healthy econo- my. Maintaining detailed knowledge of the land therefore becomes increasingly practical and viable for ambitious young Inuit. This knowledge may therefore provide a path to the future, as well as maintaining links to the past.
Conclusion
Throughout
this paper I haveargued for an experientially-based ap- proach to indigenous knowledge trans- mission in Inuit communities, which I have argued transcends concerns for cultural change or language loss. This is not to suggest that classroom based efforts should be abandoned, or that languages should be allowed to decline. It is instead a recognition that these ef- forts will mostly prove fruitless without an experiential context to the learning process, and that only through main- taining, encouraging and facilitating contact with the land can the distinc- tive nature of Inuit knowledge be main- tained. At present, the repackaging of a previously experientially-based knowl- edge system into discrete items of in- formation encoded in books and CDs runs the risk of precipitating one of the biggest shifts in Inuit knowledge pos- sible: a restructuring of Inuit concepts of what it means to be knowledgeable, and how one should know the world.
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