An international placement from home

By Kate Robb, 2nd year MDP student

Although I have been unable to travel due to the continuing pandemic, I have been lucky to have the opportunity to participate in an international field placement. Remotely from my home in Winnipeg, I am working with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) on a project called the Arctic Energy Atlas.

ACEP is an applied energy research program based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. With a focus on innovation and the integration of renewable energy sources into isolated diesel-based energy systems, ACEP's research goes beyond the technical scope to consider energy solutions from a perspective that includes the social and cultural realities of remote communities, as well as the collaboration of researchers and community partners.

ACEP and the University of Winnipeg are both partners in the Community Appropriate Energy Security (CASES) partnership, which aims to reimagine energy security in northern and Indigenous communities. I have been a research assistant for CASES throughout my time in MDP, so this is an exciting opportunity to collaborate with one of our partners.

The project that I am working on is called the Arctic Energy Atlas (AEA), which is a product that delivers information on energy resources, infrastructure, and access across the pan-Arctic. The AEA includes a database complete with maps to illustrate transmission systems, the types of energy sources being used, as well as the types of power consumers (communities and industrial activity). It also includes information on road systems, and the distance to coastlines and rivers to further demonstrate the accessibility of energy in the Arctic. The AEA project is funded by the Office of Naval Research's Arctic Regional Collaboration for Technology Innovation and Commercialization grant.

My specific component of the AEA project is developing a corresponding policy framework that will describe how each Arctic nation is approaching their energy system and development. By presenting information that includes the different utility structures, priority areas for energy development, and government programs and policies across the pan-Arctic, the framework will provide valuable context for the information found in the AEA.

Once complete, the AEA will be useful both for informing policy makers' decisions related to energy in the Artic, as well as ensuring communities and other partners can access information about their own energy systems. It will be available with free access online. Working on this project has been an exciting opportunity to apply my existing knowledge and expand it beyond the Canadian scope. I am excited to continue and see where it leads!

 

Do what you can: Building communities in whatever way make sense

By Stephen Penner, 2nd year MDP student

The summer was spent reflecting on the question of development: respectful development, requested development. When to act, what to do, and how to do development.  It was spent struggling with the larger question of “what is the place for a non-Indigenous person to work in Indigenous communities” and the smaller challenge of appropriateness of addressing requests made by Yup’ik community members. The short answer to the broader question, is that while on placement for the program, one must act in accordance to the program and use the lessons learned in the MDP to facilitate respectful approaches and answers. 

Community general store in Alaska

My first request was to create a business plan for a Yup’ik community based commercial enterprise. I called upon my learnings from the course in Indigenous Business Planning and my group work project from the MDP Capstone course. The plan was to create an Anchorage based food distribution company as a division of the commercial enterprise.  Allowing the community to take advantage of the preferential treatment that minority owned businesses receive when bidding on contracts. I spent two days in Anchorage with the principal, meeting with potential partners and entities that were going to be critical in executing the plan.

Fish processing

The second request was to build an “un-corruptible” intra-community wellness agency to act in support of the Qunasvik initiative whose focus is suicide reduction.  The objective was to create a Yup’ik based agency that could act, support and build protective factors in the 5 communities that the Qunasvik was active. I knew the development challenge would be to understand the lived experience of the Yup’ik and translate that into the model.

Choosing a Co-op model, I created an Indigenous structure that included important cultural features to the Yup’ik that needed to written into the by-laws. Based on the Qasgig (the traditional meeting place of the Yup’ik) I outlined the reasons, rationale and starting structure of a not-for-profit (501(c)) model.  Reviewing the plans with a Co-op developer at the University of Alaska Anchorage, I received his blessing that this model as executable. I was able to complete the proposal prior to my departure.  A review of the funding structures and building an understanding of successful prevention models allowed a path to be suggested as a way to restore agency to Yup’ik communities.

 One summer, two models, one unforgettable experience and many lessons later, I am left with the ongoing question that I started with.  The only answer that I have is that when asked to deliver a project, bring the best of what you understand of the community and the best of what you can offer as a “gift” to the community. You may use such opportunities to facilitate “the good life.”

At the end of the line

 By Stephen Penner, 2nd year MDP student

The Yup’ik communities that I have travelled to and the Yup’ik people that I have travelled with have shown me another side to what it means to be “Indigenous.” The YK Delta (Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta) homeland of the Yup’ik sits literally as west in the west that you can go out of sight to the average Alaskan and invisible the rest of the USA.  Most Yup’ik communities are fly in, outside of a few exceptions, and are served by small (6-8 seater) planes that arrive without a great deal of regularity.  20,000 Yup’ik people live in 56 villages that span this immense territory- as vast as Nebraska or equal to just over 2.3% of the size of Canada.

Bird on a wire

The Yup’ik people are part of the Inuit and Inupiat (Alaskan Inuit- a term not as commonly used but assumed by academics and scholars) family.   The Yup’ik are considered  a tribal nation and are part of The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.  ANCSA is a sort of modern treaty- interpreted to a Canadian context- funding both the non-profit and the for-profit entities within the Yup’ik and the 4 other distinct Alaskan tribal territories.

Fishing boat

I had visited many Northern Indigenous communities before my first visit to a Yup'ik community. It felt uniquely remote.  In contrast, I feel connected to the south while traveling in Northern Canada; hamlet offices display the communities' connection to the rest of Canada, the RCMP, and Co-op/North West Company and the Arctic Rangers being prominent reminders of the North/South connection. The Alaskan community remains deeply proud of its Yup’ik culture and roots, eminently respectful of its Elders and has created a culture of inclusion to visitors like me.

The work that chose me for my final MDP placement was to re-connect and re-engage with Dr. Stacy Rasmus a researcher from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I first encountered her work while attending the model Arctic Council last year. I was simply floored at the role that she played in empowering communities to deal with a host of health-related problems.

That being said, my path was not entirely clear when I arrived. I spent the first week digesting Qungasvik (Yup’ik for tool kit) and gaining book knowledge in regards to how I needed to walk with respecting the Yup’ik story, before engaging with community. And understanding the power of this tool.

The Qungasvik is a community-built response and a community-delivered suicide and alcohol reduction program.  It promotes youth sobriety and reasons for living. Qungasvik was built out of a suicide epidemic in Alakanuk, another Yup’ik village, and that village has seen an almost complete reversal in suicides since the full implementation of the toolbox. 

The Qungasvik provides communities with connections to Elders, to stories with resources, readings, land based activities, videos and more.  The tool kit is used by a community response team and is built on a culturally relevant platform.  As an outsider, I can never understand the Yup’ik experience, but I have come to deeply appreciate the learnings, objectives and goals of the tool kit during my short time in Alaska.