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ARVIAT
Arctic College instructor, hamlet councillor, 12-year Pond Inlet resident and career anthropologist, Shelly Elverum, says her job is first and foremost as a "cultural interpreter."

Elverum, her husband Carey, daughter Zoe on the sea ice near Pond Inlet. - photo courtesy of Shelly Elverum

"My daughter says, 'Mom doesn't have a job; she just talks to people," jokes Elverum. "In the North it comes down to relationships and it comes down to communication."

Elverum lists communication and "capacity-building" -- essentially, enabling smaller communities to do their own research -- as two defining elements of her work. In Nunavut, Elverum says she's constantly challenging the unspoken assumption at higher levels of government that Inuit are somehow not interested in this kind of research. In 2009, Elverum's course at Arctic College morphed into an environmental technology program pilot project. She was told outright two of the 14 students would be lucky to graduate -- 13 did.

"My joy in life is turning that around. People love to be meaningfully involved in projects."

For this fundamental reason, Elverum typically takes a backseat approach to her research – literally.

"I love just sitting in the backseat of the truck and training people. That's what gets amazing results. It's actually community members doing their own work. It's awesome."

With so much activity in the North lately -- mining, shipping, drilling -- Elverum is called into duty as an Arctic anthropologist to act as smooth go-between for people, business and government regarding large projects. But on a landscape where the spectrum of use spans from resource development to feeding one's family, she's more interested in melding traditional knowledge with modern knowledge.

"It's about encouraging people to ask the right questions," she said, explaining one of the biggest issues in Nunavut for her is how so much happens in Iqaluit because of its capacity at the regional level. "When you talk about the small communities there's this belief people aren't capable or don't have the capacity to be able to do themselves ... We shouldn't be the passive recipients of research."

Elverum grew up in Baker Lake, Cambridge Bay and Inuvik; before moving to Edmonton at age seven, she thought she was Inuk. When her husband Carey got a job managing Pond Inlet's new Sirmilik National Park in 2000, the anthropological power-couple returned to the North. Elverum said it felt like coming home. It's now their nine-year-old daughter Zoe who culturally identifies as an Inuk.

"We see what so many researchers, government officials and statistics don't," said Elverum. "We see the love, joy, resilience of Inuit. We are humbled to live here."

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