The uncertainties of changing climate, socio-economics and land-use make it critical to document community knowledge about people's relationship with caribou and their observations and understanding about social-ecological changes. The Voices project is an effort to document the knowledge and perspectives of the Caribou People in the form of videos and is shared through this website.

Caribou people interviewed for this project addressed the following questions:

• What is your community's relationship with caribou?
• What about that relationship is changing and why?
• How are those changes affecting you?
• How is your community coping with these changes?

The main objectives of the Voices of the Caribou People project are:

1. To capture local perspectives on global changes; and their understanding of the impacts;
2. To document community strategies for coping with changes;
3. To share knowledge & information -- with other northern communities, northern researchers and with greater public; and
4. To take a snapshot of conditions during the IPY as a legacy for future researchers.

 

Voices project work was conducted in partnership with the participating communities. Interviews were conducted with community members and focused on four themes:

 

• Elders (long-term changes in resources and conditions on land)
• Leaders (resilience of communities and adaptive capacity)
• Active hunters (present ecological conditions and challenges to meet their needs)
• Youth (future of the Caribou-People)

 

These videos are a record of people's observations of changes that are taking place on their homelands and life style, and how these changes are affecting their traditional culture. The Voices Project hopes to provide an opportunity for caribou people to share their coping strategies with other indigenous communities, give insight to CARMA researchers on local people's needs of northern science, and communicate the important issues concerning human-caribou systems to the greater world. All the interviews on this website are available for educational purposes only.