Nunavik | At Nordic summer school

About fifteen Quebec and French students took part, in July, in a doctoral school in the Cree and Inuit community of Whapmagoostui/Kuujjuarapik. Photographer Renaud Philippe attended this unique course session where, far from the classroom, we had set ourselves the task of building bridges between ancestral knowledge and scientific knowledge.

Lizzi Niviaxie, an Inuit elder from Kuujjuarapik, is surrounded by about fifteen kneeling university students. They are captivated by the stories that accompany the few plant samples pasted on a herbarium and identified in syllabic characters.

Normand Voyer would have liked to give some theoretical lessons to his students, who take part in the summer doctoral school on the theme Nordicity and advances in the science of natural productsbut in the end, it was these kinds of impromptu classes that had the most effect on the group.

Normand Voyer has been traveling the North for a long time. Full professor of organic chemistry at Laval University, his research focuses on plants and lichens that have never been the subject of research — and plants of interest to northern communities. Under-represented in research in molecular chemistry, northern ecosystems nevertheless abound in potential. “Here, the plants experience extraordinarily high stresses which make them veritable molecular machines for producing protective substances. »

The analysis of a lichen that had never been studied, collected in 2019 in Umiujaq by Normand Voyer and his team, made it possible to identify two natural substances unknown to date. “We know more than 140 million chemical compounds on the planet. In a single lichen, we found two that were completely new! he exclaims.

Exponential development of a birch

This wealth, however, is threatened by climate change and the greening of the Arctic.

Pascale Ropars, science manager at ArcticNet, a network of Canadian centers of excellence whose objective is to study the impacts of climate change and modernization in the coastal Canadian Arctic, has been studying this phenomenon for fifteen years. . “On the ground, it’s enormous, the changes that we can observe year after year in terms of species growth. »

In Kuujjuarapik, dwarf birch in particular is growing exponentially, shading lichens and fruit shrubs, traditional sources of food for local populations.

However, we “desperately need” to create a bridge between traditional knowledge and science, says Joshua J. Kawapit, logistics and communications manager at the Cree First Nation of Whapmagoostui, to avoid losing valuable knowledge. “When an elder dies, it’s like an encyclopedia that disappears, and you can never come back to it,” he illustrates.

“The elders know the virtues and uses of natural products, what they give us to cure this or that, we take it without asking ourselves any questions […], but everyone will have a better understanding of things. The younger generation is changing. Wondering. Wants to know. “They’re curious and say, ‘Why does it work like that?’ We don’t know, we can’t answer, we don’t have that information,” he says, pinning great hopes on the summer school program.

Nordic Research Ethics

Catherine Dussault studies, at the doctoral level, the preservation of Inuit knowledge in the context of research. She came for her own studies, but also to educate students. The workshop she led on the ethics of northern research caused a stir.

The discussion continued until the end of the stay, and inevitably, over the days and the meetings, the glances changed. For many, this was their first experience in an Aboriginal community. “They have become aware and come back with their heads full of fundamental questions. As soon as you work with people in vulnerable situations, you have to show sensitivity, recognize that you are addressing complex humans, who have a previous history. Listening and observing is the most important. »

To encourage these encounters, the course schedule was atypical. Picnic with the Inuits, game of Cree Baseball, elk BBQ in a teepee.

Proof of the impact of these reflections, to end the summer school, the students must as a team propose a research question related to the chemistry of natural products and the knowledge learned during the week. All the teams proposed projects emphasizing engagement with the communities.