Researchers wishing to conduct studies in Nunavut are asked by potential funders and licensing agencies to incorporate Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) and meaningfully engage Inuit communities, but they must usually interpret for themselves what this means and how to do it in practice. As a group of Inuit youth from four Nunavut communities, we have developed a concept we call ScIQ (pronounced sigh-cue) to describe how science and IQ can be combined for more meaningful engagement to benefit both Inuit communities and scientific researchers. ScIQ is based on the understanding that IQ is not only knowledge that Inuit have gained over many generations; it is more holistic and includes Inuit values, customs and principles for living our lives. Incorporating IQ into research then, should be as much about how research is conducted as it is about data collected from Inuit and local knowledge used to conduct the research. Over a 5-day Ikaarvik Youth ScIQ Summit in Cambridge Bay, NU, we developed 45 recommendations for specific things researchers can do before, during and after their research that, from our perspective, are examples of truly incorporating IQ and result in more meaningful engagement of Inuit communities. This paper presents the Ikaarvik ScIQ recommendations.

Truly transdisciplinary approaches are needed to tackle the complex problems that the Arctic is facing at the moment. Collaboration between Indigenous rights holders and researchers through co-creative research approaches can result in high-quality research outcomes, but crucially also address colonial legacies and power imbalances, enhance mutual trust, and respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, to be successful, collaborative research projects have specific requirements regarding research designs, timeframes, and dissemination of results, which often do not fit into the frameworks of academic calendars and funding guidelines. Funding agencies in particular play an important role in enabling (or disabling) meaningful collaboration between Indigenous rights holders and researchers. There is an urgent need to re-think existing funding-structures. This article will propose a new paradigm for the financing of Arctic research, which centres around the inclusion of Indigenous partners, researchers, and institutions from the initial planning stages of funding programmes to the final stages of research projects. These findings and recommendations have been contextualized based on critical reflections of the co-authors, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners, who have practiced their own collaborative work process, the challenges encountered, and lessons learned.

No abstract