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Fishers have detailed knowledge of their resources, their environment, and their fishing practices that is rarely systematically collected. We conducted three types of interviews with coastal Newfoundland fishers to identify the range of information available, to see if it could be quantified, and to explore its potential for reconstructing trends within fisheries. These fishers have many terms for Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), each associated with characteristic patterns of seasonal movement and availability to gear and indicating the location of several coastal spawning areas. They described a variety of changes in fishing practice. Of the four changes that could be quantified, all contributed to decadal-scale increases in catch efficiency prior to 1992, while change in catch per unit of effort for cod was consistently negative at decadal scales. For these fishers' lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus) roe fishery, catch per unit of effort was consistently negative in the 1990s. We describe ways to access the large reservoir of information held by fishers, the use of several cross-checks to identify consistent patterns, and the use of trends and patterns to broaden the basis for interpreting quantitative surveys used in fisheries assessment. Local information from resource users can be assembled in forms usable in quantitative stock assessments.

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Academic research in Canada involving Aboriginal peoples has changed dramatically during the last 20 years. From an academic researcher’s perspective, the changes have recently become formalised in the release of the 2nd edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethics in Human Research. In this article we examine similarities and differences in the way ethical review is constructed and approached from university, Aboriginal and, in particular, Inuit perspectives. We begin our argument with a general comparison of research ethics as expressed in academic and Aboriginal sources in order to find areas of commonality, difference, and potential ambiguity between the two perspectives. We then briefly review our own experience with a multiyear research project involving several Inuit governments of different spatial and administrative scales. We conclude with discussion of a common issue arising from academic research, including our own work with Inuit and the research ethics board chaired by one of the authors. It concerns how to address potential tension between critical inquiry associated with Western scientific paradigms and respect and use of Inuit knowledge within a collaborative research process. In conclusion, we offer some “best practice advice” to academic researchers who face such a dilemma.

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In this paper we document the extensive informal sector of unpaid productive labour in an isolated, peripheral area in Canada. The study is based on interviews with all adults in 250 households. We consider various socio-economic characteristics as determinants of participation in the informal economy with respect to home construction, other types of subsistence activity and the unpaid work that is done for other households. Our central hypothesis is that the extent of participation is independent of socio-economic status. Our analysis challenges the general adequacy of accounts by Pahl and by neo-Marxist authors. We argue that the informal economy is best understood partly as a constructive response to deprivation and partly because many of the activities are culturally valued.

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