Excerpt from resource description:
The northernmost regions in the world are projected to suffer the most severe consequences of climate change. Natural resource-based communities and Indigenous peoples have been identified as particularly susceptible and research efforts are increasingly directed at exploring the potential consequences of climate change on the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples. Using Indigenous (IK) or Traditional knowledge (TK) as a canary or early warning for climate change as well as a complement to western scientific knowledge or to supplement the lack of observational and diachronic data is also gaining increasing popularity. However, whereas interest in IK /TK has grown exponentially over the last two decades, research has tended to neglect taking a critical perspective on learning processes and knowledge transfer mechanisms. Research has treated IK/TK more as an artifact handed down through generations or as information to be automatically appropriated when spending time on the land. With rapid changes in their environments, Indigenous peoples and communities with close connection to the land will face the most severe challenges. How a changing climate is viewed by the people and how they adapt, will be learned, in part, through trial and error. These newly-learned experiences will be understood, transmitted, communicated and translated in their first language. New terminology in that first language may evolve to help identify and explain climate change phenomena. New practices will have to be developed to help people cope with these changes. The connections between climate change, livelihood, and survival are thus highly significant culturally in addition to those identified through statistics and numerical trends. Against this backdrop, in view of the complexity and severity of potential climate change ahead, we recognise the need for in-depth studies, unveiling people's own conceptions and understandings of their livelihood situations and possibilities to adapt to climate change (cf. Keskitalo 2008). We also recognize an empirical need to strengthen our understanding of those residing and acting within forested ecosystems in the Circumboreal North.
By exploring two Indigenous communities, one reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) herding community in northern Sweden and a woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) hunting community in Saskatchewan, Canada, this research project aims at partly addressing this knowledge gap.