This text is part of the special Feminine Leadership notebook
The researcher Catherine Alexandra Gagnon recently won first prize Discovery BORÉAS 2023 for an article allowing you to learn more about the caribou and its link with the environment as well as with the human. The relationship between nature and humans is at the heart of his work and his commitment.
Researcher, committed and lover of nature, Catherine Alexandra Gagnon was honored for her article “ Climate, caribou and human needs linked by analysis of Indigenous and scientific knowledge »published in the journal Nature Sustainability. His study highlighted the connections between climate, caribou and the ability of Gwich’in and Inuvialuit hunters to meet their subsistence and cultural needs.
At the origins of his research
Although his love for nature dates back to his childhood, it was during his first research contracts, in the Yukon, that his awareness began. She realizes that these places usually perceived as virgin had in fact been known for millennia. His experience in the field and in research then taught him that the answers to his environmental questions required a conversation “with the main stakeholders”, that is to say, people who have a “consensual relationship with this environment” and who inhabited it. This led her to work with Inuit elders for several years.
Mme Gagnon is also a consultant and president of the environmental consulting firm Érébia, specializing in relations with indigenous communities and in the mobilization and sharing of indigenous and scientific knowledge. She has developed these skills throughout her career by working closely with indigenous communities. The research question that guided his doctoral work in environmental sciences at UQAR came from the community which identified its own needs regarding the migratory caribou of the Porcupine River. This problem is also part of a particular socio-political and environmental context, specifies the researcher. The protected area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where female caribou give birth, located on the American side, was coveted by the Trump government, which wanted to exploit its oil. This is a big concern for Gwich’in communities, says Mme Gagnon, because it is a “sacred” place […] where life begins. The problem having already been examined by indigenous researchers, it is “for them” that she says she carried out these analyzes which gave rise to the article published last March in the journal Nature Sustainability.
From the heart in the relationship with nature
Involved in the Mothers at the Front movement since its creation, Catherine Alexandra Gagnon is in all the battles. Without detaching itself from a scientific approach, this investment demonstrates its commitment, but also its fears about the future. “Science reaches certain facets of society and, sometimes, we have to speak to the heart. With everything I have observed, I find it difficult to detach myself from a slightly more militant investment in getting things done. » Environmental injustices and in relations with Indigenous people marked her and were at the center of her concerns, whether scientific or not.
The researcher wants non-Indigenous people to realize “that they are on territories” and that we must “make room for nations and the environment”. She believes that we must reinvent “our way of inhabiting the Quebec territory”, making room “for people, nations and their fundamentally different vision of the way in which we occupied the territory […] with a vision of resource extraction.
Despite the environmental drama we are experiencing, she still hopes to see the birth of the desire to “reestablish a more sacred connection with nature” and deplores a great detachment leading to a loss of meaning in our Western societies. As a researcher, “we approach nature in a digital, scientific way,” she confides. Throughout her career, she has been marked by the possibility of maintaining a different relationship with nature: not only as an object of research, but also as part of us. This is what she has observed in particular with communities that maintain a filial relationship with the caribou. “When we are told that a caribou is our brother, we are not able to place it in a natural science framework. I find it fundamental and fascinating. »
“What is most personal is perhaps also the most systemic,” concludes the researcher, who invites us to cultivate a personal relationship with the environment. She believes this would give us power to change the system without assuming it would be external to the individual.
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