Students on Ice Arctic Expedition 2019
Setting Sail with Our Learning Community
Greetings on return from the Students on Ice Arctic Expedition from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland to Resolute, Nunavut! What a remarkable trip, with lots of ups and just a few downs, including a nausea-inducing crossing of the Davis Strait. SoI gathered 130 exceptional students and 90 staff on board the Ocean Endeavor in our living, floating, experiential laboratory. Here I will cover the best of the expedition, which includes (1) teaching wildlife observing in outdoor workshops and from the top deck, (2) learning more about my personal connections to my family’s history of reindeer herding, and (3) attending the official designation of the Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area in Arctic Bay, Nunavut!
2019 Itinerary
The original itinerary, Kangerlussuaq, Greenland to Resolute Bay, Nunavut. Two weeks on board the Ocean Endeavor with a unique Arctic learning community and the best students you could ever ask for.
About the Students on Ice Arctic Expedition Program
This Canadian expeditionary Arctic education program takes students aged 14-24 from across Canada and the world to experience the nature, people, and culture of the far north while discussing the most pressing natural and social issues of our time. It’s a program I’m very proud and humbled to volunteer for as an on-board conservation and wildlife biologist. This program is also unique in that it employs a large number of Inuit and First Nations peoples as educators, and 50% of its students in 2019 were Indigenous from across the Arctic and elsewhere. Additionally, 90% of all students are fully funded through generation donations and grants from around the world. See the Students on Ice website here.
Experiential Learning on the Land and Water
We set off by sailing out the winding, narrow Kangerlussuaq Fjord that stretches 190km (120mi) from Kangerlussuaq to the Davis Strait. From there we sailed northward. As part of our floating classroom, we took zodiacs each day onto the water, onto shore, or in to the communities we passed by on the ship on order to give the student opportunities to experience the environment and culture of Inuit homelands. Many activities also occurred on the ship including lectures, workshops, art, performances, and my personal contribution of top-deck wildlife viewing.
The students were very eager to learn, and my duties as an instructor, facilitator, and mentor were made effortless by their enthusiasm. While on board, we spend many hours together in small groups on the top deck looking for birds and mammals, learning how to use guidebooks, learning about community-based monitoring and data repositories, learned to keep a respectable distance, and about many of the species’ interesting natural histories. I’m happy to report that we saw a handful of bowhead and humpback whales, one juvenile walrus, and many species of marine birds.
Another treat while in Sirmilik National Park, we took students on the zodiacs to visit the Cape Graham Moore thick-billed murre colonies in the Bylot Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Thousands of murres were out feeding and nesting in the cliffs and it made for a very exciting time to be out on the water. Sirmilik National Park is one of my sites for the Arctic Wetlands and Indigenous Peoples Study so I was thrilled to be there in person and experience the lands I’ve been learning so much about.
The last treat worth mentioning is the five fat polar bears we saw by zodiac while on our way in to Resolute! They all looked very healthy, including the two year-old cubs.
A History of Herding Reindeer
Once upon a time, my family was one of the few Inuit families that herded reindeer. While on board with Students on Ice, I had the very happy chance of meeting a Sámi woman named Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, pictured with me above on the coast of Greenland. We quickly learned that we are forever joined by a very old and special family connection in Arctic history. Beginning in the 1890s, Sámi families journeyed 10,000 miles from Sápmi to Alaska as part of a program for Sámi to share knowledge and culture about reindeer husbandry with Inuit. Pirita’s family is likely responsible for teaching my family how to herd reindeer in Northwest Alaska. One of my ancestors is featured in the black-and-white photograph above.
The program that temporarily brought Sámi to Alaska is an odd piece of history. It’s undoubtably a beautiful story of Indigenous solidarity wrapped in an environmental crisis at the hand of settler colonialism. By the end of the 1800s, American and Russian fur trappers had decimated many of the wildlife populations around the settlements in Alaska, leaving our peoples extremely food insecure. The American government bought reindeer from Siberia and contracted Sámi to civilize the Inuit and turn us from hunter-gatherers to nomadic-herders. It didn’t exactly go as planned.
I’m fascinated by the true Arctic adventurers, the Indigenous people from our homelands that lived incredible lives on the land and managed feats that no one else dared to attempt. It’s a shame their stories are dwarfed by the narratives told of their settler-colonial counterparts. I would like to see more stories about the amazing trials and adventures survived by our own people. I’ll be thinking about putting together a book list soon.
If you’re interested in this fascinating bit of history and are a fan of true expeditionary narratives about actual Arctic people, I can recommend a few sources. You can read a little bit more about Iñupiat reindeer herding at the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, here. I had trouble finding a book on this subject in Alaska that is still in print, but for perspectives on a similar process in Canada, consider reading the book The Reindeer Herders of the Mackenzie Delta, find it here.
Celebrating the Establishment of Tallurutiup Imanga
Another major highlight for me of this trip was being present for the historic establishment of the Tallurutiup Imanga (Landcaster Sound) National Marine Conservation Area, which was officially designated while we happened to be sailing through this portion of the Northwest Passage. To celebrate this historic announcement, we decided to take a detour to Arctic Bay (Ikpiarjuk), Nunavut to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the heads of Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA) and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) while they gathered to deliver the official announcement. Above are photos taken on this trip while in the conservation area.
Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area Boundary
Tallurutiup Imanga is a biodiverse area of the Northwest passage that has been home to Inuit for time immemorial. Many species critical to Inuit livelihoods and food security can be found here. It is a historic protected area in part because it is explicitly designated to protected Inuit harvesting rights and the development of management strategies based on Indigenous knowledge and local decision making. I recommend reading more about Tallurutiup Imanga through the rights-holder organization, Qikiqtani Inuit Association, here, and at the Pew Charitable Trusts, here.
For me, it wasn’t so much about being surrounded by the incredible people who made this happen, but rather I was so humbled to find myself in this landscape during such an important win for Inuit in Canada, Inuit across Inuit Nunaat, and Indigenous peoples across the Arctic. While others filed into the community hall for the declaration, I headed up the plateau above town and spent my time being present in this special place in our Indigenous homelands. We have always known our lands are special, but to have others recognize the merits and the role of Indigenous communities and knowledge in making such a protected area and conservation effort possible is the pinnacle of inspiring and is the motivation that keeps me working everyday. TI holds another special place in my heart as it is also one of my protected area sites in the Arctic Wetlands and Indigenous Peoples study, which I had been writing about as a ‘proposed conservation area,’ but the surprise realization that I could upgrade this protected area to ‘established’ really made my month!
Towards a Motivated Future
Perhaps the greatest highlight of this entire endeavor has been the few students who have approached me to say that they’re now interested in learning more about wildlife science. I’m looking forward to a future generation of wildlife and conservation biologists from the Arctic who have the knowledge and cultural experiences to manage wildlife and protected areas in culturally-relevant ways. Let’s flood the education system with more Indigenous scholars and professionals, until we no longer need a fancy, far-off education to make our communities’ voices heard.
I can’t wait to be returning next summer for another great expedition!
