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Candice Sudlovenick enjoys her work as an outreach programs manager for SIKU.
She joined Ikaarvik as a youth over a decade ago and credits the experience for finding joy in research.
“[Ikaarvik] was amazing,” Sudlovenick said. “It felt really empowering, and it made me realize I have a voice, and people want to listen.”
Methods of Inuit leadership in research are discussed in a paper published in Arctic Science late last year that was co-authored by University of Calgary postdoctoral fellow Danielle Nowosad, who is of Métis heritage.
“Canada is one place that there is more of a push to inclusion of Indigenous peoples and knowledges and perspectives.”
Ikaarvik: from barriers to bridges
Ikaarvik formed when a group of Inuit youth graduated from the Environmental Technology Program at Nunavut Arctic College in Pond Inlet in 2010. They wanted to continue environmental work outside the classroom.
The namesake is turning barriers to bridges. The organization seeks to prepare Inuit youth for careers in a new field of bridging Inuit knowledge with science research.
“Historically, research relationships with communities [weren’t] the most positive,” Sudlovenick said. “Ikaarvik was really advocating that Inuit are more than just camp cooks and bear guards.”
Nowosad said Inuit communities have spent decades pushing for more meaningful involvement in research.
Western science, she said, is often portrayed as a separate world from Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ)—an Inuktitut term for traditional knowledge that translates as “what Inuit have always known to be true.”
But Nowosad sees significant overlap.
“They’re both very rigorous,” she said.
And she believes IQ includes a level of respect that Western science sometimes lacks.
“I think there’s a lot more responsibility in IQ, whether it’s socially to other people, whether it’s to the land itself, or even respect for the work that you’re doing,” she said.
She also questioned the idea that science can ever be fully objective.
“It’s impossible not to have bias,” she said. “IQ is great because it embraces the interior landscape of a human in addition to what you’re actually practicing.”
Research still faces challenges
Both Nowosad and Sudlovenick said collaboration is improving, but challenges remain.
Nowosad said universities and funding systems often operate on timelines that do not fit relationship-based work.
Community partnerships can take years to build, while academic systems often prioritize faster publication schedules and measurable outputs.
“It can be quite a tightrope walk,” Nowosad said. “Funding, timelines and expectations for outputs are very high, and that doesn’t match well with deliberate, intentional work with communities.”
She said some universities and funding agencies are beginning to recognize that community-based work can take longer but often produces stronger research.
A different future for Arctic research
As climate change accelerates across the Arctic, both researchers and community leaders say local knowledge is becoming increasingly important.
Sudlovenick said recognizing Indigenous knowledge as equal to Western science can help empower youth in northern communities.
“We can work together to better things for our communities and our environment,” she said.
With younger generations growing up with both technology and traditional knowledge, the divide between Western science and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit may continue to narrow.
