E1. Indigenous

IT’S MY FIRST DAY in Fort Good Hope, and I drive to a camp near the edge of town. I add my borrowed truck to a row of a dozen others, climb out, and then make my way toward a cluster of people. At the centre of camp, Elders are instructing the younger women in a mix of Dene and English, teaching them how to tan moose and caribou hides. The process is intensive: scraping, washing, wringing, stretching, hanging, smoking, rinsing, stitching. It can take weeks, I am told, to tan a single hide, and nobody will finish one this afternoon. 

The mood is light and happy. After observing for a while, I follow the sound of laughter from a few yards away, coming from a plywood-and-sheet metal camp kitchen. I shyly poke my head through the door to see a functional kitchen space and a few women preparing food. I sit down at the table, and people stream in and out to snack on scattered plates of fruit, crackers, and cheese. Everyone chats and laughs together. People are receiving me politely, but not necessarily warmly, so I sit quietly and try to absorb everything going on around me.

After a while, the snack plates are swept away to make room for tinfoil pans heaped with mashed potatoes, pork chops, and salad. People from all around camp stream inside to serve up. The plywood bench seats fill. After a long day of travel, I gratefully accept the paper plate full of food offered to me by one of the cooks. After a while, someone asks what I’m doing in town. When I explain that I had been invited to stay for two months to interview people about Imperial Oil’s nearby oilfield for my research, the mood becomes tense. Two women halfheartedly joke that I should give back the food if I’m working with Imperial Oil. 

Once I clear up the misunderstanding, explaining that I’m here as a university student and not as an employee of Imperial Oil, people are immediately more comfortable, and the mood lifts. I’m told I can keep my plate. A man jokes that I should get a T-shirt that says “Not With Imperial,” and the room laughs. We all finish our dinners, and I am offered dessert.

That summer, I spent two months conducting research in the tiny, fly-in-fly-out community of Fort Good Hope (Rádeyı̨lı̨kóé), a few kilometers south of the Arctic Circle.

The region’s Indigenous peoples’ cultures believe that land, water, humans, air, and animals are sentient. All beings hold power, agency, and value, as all are equal. All beings speak, even the land. The Fort Good Hope Dene and Métis people have their own distinct culture, history, and traditions. They are called the K’asho Got’ine. 

More than 100 years ago, in 1919, a settler working for Imperial Oil “discovered” oil on the banks of the Mackenzie River. Nearly overnight, the region was transformed. Within two years, the Norman Wells Oilfield was established, and the town of Norman Wells sprung up nearby to house its employees. Its size, output, and impact have since grown dramatically. The oilfield has been harmful to the K’asho Got’ine way of life, all while enormously benefitting Imperial Oil. In the 1980s, against the wishes of local people, the oilfield underwent a massive expansion, which included the construction of six artificial islands in the middle of the Mackenzie River.

The very embodiment of colonial extraction, a company from southern Canada extracting oil from Indigenous territory for more than a century, has a fitting, almost cartoonishly evil name: Imperial Oil. The company owns two-thirds of the Norman Wells Oilfield, and the Government of Canada owns the other third.

As of December 2020, fewer than 20% of the employees at the Norman Wells Oilfield are Indigenous to the Sahtú Region, though the workforce does fluctuate. Employment is not a notable benefit for the region.

“We don’t have anything to show for Imperial Oil having been here… Show me the library. Show me the art centre. Show me the Traditional Knowledge centre for Sahtú. Show me the swimming pool for the kids. Show me all those things that were left behind as a legacy,” said Ethel Blondin-Andrew, the first Indigenous Member of Parliament in Canada at a public hearing. Later, she added that if Imperial Oil had done positive things for the Sahtú, they were “well hidden, because I’ve been looking.”

After over a century of oil extraction, Imperial Oil has announced that they are closing the oilfield.

The company submitted a portion of its closure plan in 2022, starting with a proposal for a waste management facility. Sahtú people did not want the oilfield. They vocally opposed its expansion in the 1980s. They have experienced minimal financial benefit and extensive detriment for over a century. And yet, despite the harm brought to the North by Imperial Oil, the company’s official statement reads: “A made-in-the-north solution is appropriate rather than expecting the South to accept the North’s waste” (emphasis added). The Sahtú Secretariat Incorporated shared that they consider “this statement to be a most egregious one, bordering on colonialism… Such thinking reflects badly on the company and makes light of the sacrifices the people of the Sahtú have made over the past one hundred years.”

The company just doesn’t seem to understand how much damage they have done. 

One day, a local man sat me down on a stack of pallets beside the grocery store. One story he shared that day, among many others, was that if you hit a caribou with a stick, you would never see another one. I had no plans to hit any caribou, so this did not mean much to me. He also told me that people from Fort Good Hope used to catch and dry herring in huge volumes, sometimes hundreds in a day. He lamented that it had been over 30 years since anybody had pulled that much herring out of the Mackenzie.

These two stories remained separate in my mind for weeks. Throughout my time in the Sahtú region, dozens of people warned me not to hit a caribou with a stick. I didn’t understand why everybody was telling me this. Did I look like a person who would hit a caribou?

People also recounted stories of pulling herring out of the river by the bucketful, setting up camps to dry them, selling those dried fish to the Northern Store by the bale, and feeding herring to their dog teams during the winter. Then, they would note that herring had become a rarity to catch since the 1980s, just after the oilfield expansion.

The two threads finally came together for me when another Elder went through the familiar story and imparted the same warning about hitting caribou. This Elder explained that the contamination from the islands being constructed, the noise made by trucks and heavy machinery when it was being built, the siltation and contamination, then taking so much oil and using so much water, combined with our lack of respect, amounted to mistreatment of the fish. The herring had disappeared, he believed, because expanding and operating the oilfield was like hitting a caribou with a stick.

K’asho Got’ine place incredible value on the value of reciprocity. A community – and its culture – doesn’t survive thousands of years in the harsh Arctic without treating one another and the land well. If your fish net is extra full one week, you give some fish to your neighbour. Then, if you have an unsuccessful hunt that autumn, another neighbour might share some moose with you. All beings take care of one another. If we are good to the fish, they will remain. If we strike the caribou, they will disappear.

Violating the reciprocal relationship between people and land, whether by hitting a caribou with a stick or by extracting oil at Norman Wells violates this important rule.

In 2004, Elder Lucy Jackson said in a public hearing for Imperial Oil’s water license renewal: “We live on the fish right down the Mackenzie Valley, and the ecosystem is really a concern to the peoples. […] So, I question the credibility of how that is safe for eating.”

Ten years later, in 2014, at a hearing for Imperial Oil’s next Water License Renewal, Ethel Blondin-Andrew, the first Indigenous woman to serve in Canadian Parliament and as a federal cabinet minister, spoke. In her role as President of the Sahtú Secretariat Incorporated, acting as a representative of Indigenous people in the Sahtú region, Blondin-Andrew said that she was “not prepared to eat those fish.”

In 2024, at another public hearing, yet another community member said: “I am hesitant to eat any fish that comes out of the river today. I am worried about the effects of possible contaminants.” Many others echoed this sentiment.

Despite whatever the results of Imperial Oil’s scientific monitoring may show, if these studies are not done with full transparency and community input, if the results are not explained in ways that are easy to understand, and if they are not done in ways that build trust, the results will not matter to the community. As it stands, Imperial Oil maintains that they are not at fault. The K’asho Got’ine have their doubts.

I interviewed dozens of people in Fort Good Hope about their experiences with Imperial Oil for my Master’s research. I asked how they’d been engaged with the upcoming Norman Wells Oilfield closure planning, how they’d felt about that engagement, and what they wanted out of future engagement. I also spoke with many others on the phone, over cups of tea, at community barbecues, at the sewing club, bingo night, graduation, on boats, and at all kinds of town activities.

What I found out is that Imperial Oil’s past engagement with the K’asho Got’ine has long been ineffective because it has not been appropriate for the local culture, governance approach, or style of communication. The rare times Imperial Oil does engage with the community, the information it shares is packed with technical jargon that’s hard to follow. These sessions often feel more like lectures than conversations. People say their questions are brushed aside, or the answers they get don’t match what they asked. Trust in the company has eroded. By ignoring local values of respect and reciprocity, Imperial’s attempts at engagement and consultation have missed the mark.

The herring is another example of this. Imperial Oil’s studies do not engage with ideas of respect or reciprocity, and because Western science cannot see the connection between oilfield operations and the disappearance of herring, Imperial Oil has determined that there is no connection. 

Imperial Oil has announced its intention to close the oilfield. With the closure now approaching, we need to reaffirm the K’asho Got’ine right to lead the reclamation. They must be allowed to define how the land should be used in the future, how to handle the waste safely, and how to repair relationships with the land. K’asho Got’ine must set standards for cleanup, and must be allowed to decide what constitutes “clean” and “safe.” 

I have returned to the Sahtú Region many times since that first visit. I’ve had dinners of fish that I pulled out of a net on a frozen lake, lain in the snow watching the northern lights dance, turned sticky spruce tips into tea for a friend’s sore throat, and sewn beads onto moose hide in front of a warm woodstove. I’ve waved hello to wildflowers, hand-picked blueberries to eat with ice cream, swam in the Rabbitskin river on hot days, and watched a blazing orange sunset last for hours. I have begun to understand the reverence with which people discuss the Mackenzie River, the nearby lakes, the paths that wind around town. I, myself, have begun to love the land. And slowly, I have begun to hear the land whispering, but I can’t quite make out what she’s saying.

At the end of a recent trip, I had the window seat on the flight out. These small planes fly pretty low, so I kept my eyes glued to the ground nearly the entire time. I spotted something out the window, and as we drew closer and it came into focus, I asked the man beside me what I was looking at. With great surprise and joy, he told me that what I witnessed that day should be a secret between me and the land, to tell nobody what she said. He told me what the land was saying and how lucky I was to hear it. He has heard her loud and clear for his entire life. I only heard a fragment of what she said that day, and my, oh my, what she said was beautiful.

Its disrespect has pumped billions of dollars in oil out of the ground, nearly extirpated an entire species of fish, and polluted a waterway that sustains an entire people. Despite enormous profit, very little has benefitted those who live and rely on the land. Finally, though, Imperial Oil has taken almost all it can take. 

We must make sure Imperial Oil gives back. Let us learn from the people of the Sahtú how to repay the land for all we have taken from her. If you, like me, cannot truly hear the land, then you must trust those who can. 

The land speaks to the K’asho Got’ine, and they have been trying to translate for us. All we need to do is listen.

–

This piece was edited by Sahtú Dene writer, Dakota Erutse

Citation:

King, Annie. “After a Century of Oil Extraction: Reclaiming the River at Norman Wells,” Yellowhead Institute. May 14, 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/after-a-century-of-oil-extraction-reclaiming-the-river-at-norman-wells

Artwork: Coming in Under the Lights, Antoine Mountain

The post After a Century of Oil Extraction: Reclaiming the River at Norman Wells appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

The Association on American Indian Affairs is seeking a full-time Cultural Sovereignty Director to lead and grow one of their core program areas!

The post Job Opening: Cultural Sovereignty Director, Association on American Indian Affairs appeared first on Native Organizers Alliance.

In April 2026, Indigenous women’s groups announced looming funding cuts for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG+) support. These cuts occurred without transparent communication or forewarning. At the press conference, Hilda Anderson-Pryz stated, “in March, crucial funding to some Indigenous organizations ended with no official notification of renewal… This lack of sustained support is a significant barrier to making real progress and combating this crisis. Today, our right to life is threatened by the lack of political will and it will remain so until the government enacts the 231 calls for justice. But seven years later… only two have been fully implemented.” Anderson-Pryz addresses the heart of the matter – the true cost of funding cuts – Indigenous women’s lives. 

Contrary to the National Inquiry’s (2019) Calls for Justice, which outline the need for long-term, guaranteed, and sustainable funding, multiple programs and projects involving “Indigenous rights, title, and gender-based violence prevention and response” are on the chopping block (Macdonald & McIntosh, 2025). These cutbacks demonstrate that the lives of Indigenous women do not matter to Canada. 

In response to the press conference, over 400 family members of MMIWG+ have questioned the efficacy of National Indigenous women’s organizations. In a letter to Federal government officials, they note that “these organizations do not represent the families” (Ward, 2026, para. 3). This distrust is indicative of tensions between families and Indigenous women’s groups. Both this letter from family members and the National Inquiry (2019) emphasize the need to invest in and resource self-determined, family and survivor-led solutions. 

In this period of economic austerity, and given Canada’s long history of gendered colonization, it is not a surprise that gender-based reconciliatory initiatives are considered expendable.

These austerity measures follow news south of the border, where the Trump administration is making funding cuts to the Office on Violence Against Women, which will disproportionately affect Indigenous women. In November 2025, as a part of its attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion, Trump’s administration removed a report from the Department of Justice on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples. Another generation of Indigenous women, on both sides of colonially imposed borders, is now subject to, and targeted by, government policy and societal indifference.

Canada likes to position itself as superior to our Southern neighbours, perpetuating a master narrative of a peaceful, multicultural, accepting, and polite country (Thobani, 2007). This posturing obscures the ongoing colonial genocidal violence that Indigenous Peoples experience through state regimes, policies, and systems. Our relationship to the nation state has always been defined by violence, and hate against Indigenous women runs deep. Despite a master narrative that portrays Canada as a human rights beacon, Indigenous women’s human rights are continuously violated (Luoma, 2021; National Inquiry, 2019a). 

Racism, heteropatriarchy, and misogyny have contributed to Indigenous women being targeted for violence (Bourgeois, 2018; National Inquiry, 2019). The “root cause of violence” against Indigenous women and girls is a “race-based genocide,” and gendered colonization that impacts our safety and contributes to increased violence (Duhamel, 2015; National Inquiry, 2019). Through framing MMIWG as an “Indigenous problem,” Canada has obscured its culpability for ongoing genocide (Bourgeois, 2015; Dowling, 2019; National Inquiry, 2019). The rise in residential school denialism, white nationalism, and general disdain for Indigenous Peoples continues apace, colliding with growing economic uncertainty and fear. 

Under “Canada Strong,” Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Federal government made massive budget cuts to “Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC),” and to employees who work on the Indigenous rights and relations portfolio at the Department of Justice. These fiscal constraints will widen socio-economic gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples and contribute to the continued underfunding of essential human services. These cutbacks are not “neutral but in fact follow… racial [and, in this case, gendered] lines” (Levesque, 2025, para. 8). 

Despite Human Rights Tribunal findings that the Canadian government has continuously discriminated against Indigenous children through underfunding child welfare services, these recent measures represent a continued colonial strategy of slashing funding and violating the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Notably, “the Canadian Human Rights Commission” is also slated to face funding cuts, which will surely exacerbate the impact of these austerity measures (Levesque, 2025; Smith, 2025, para. 11). 

Amidst this uncertainty, Canada’s economic priorities reveal a shallow commitment to “reconciliation” (Assembly of First Nations, 2025) and gender justice, with disproportionate impacts for Indigenous women. Additionally, federal service cuts include Correctional Service Canada (CSC). Over 50% of federally incarcerated women are Indigenous (and have an MMIW family member). Given the importance of literacy levels for rehabilitation and reintegration, CSC’s proposed cuts to “library technicians and employment co-ordinator positions” will contribute to the ongoing confinement of Indigenous women (Ibrahim, 2026, para. 1), contrary to the Department of Justice’s Indigenous Justice Strategy (IJS) released in March 2025. 

Implementing the IJS strategy will require “substantial effort and funding commitments” (Horn, 2025, para. 11). The 2025 Canada Strong Budget does not mention the IJS. Just like the clip art adorning the IJS – this is yet another example of window dressing – the shifts, niceties, and apologies that momentarily give us hope, “only to ultimately crush it” (Horn, 2025, para. 13). 

Together, these economic measures confirm that the era of rights and reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples, and Indigenous women in particular, is long gone. Instead, as the budget reveals, our inherent rights, laws, and lives are overridden in pursuit of military, extractive, and industrial projects, so-called economic reconciliation or, the “National Interest.”

Clearly, the lives, human rights, and safety of Indigenous women are not a priority for the Federal government. These austerity measures coincide with record-breaking military spending. As NDP Member of Parliament Leah Gazan noted, Prime Minister Carney is cutting approximately “$7 billion of funding between ISC and Crown-Indigenous relations… and has recently committed $13 billion in military funding.” Funding constraints continue amidst increasing rates of violence against Indigenous women, and minimal effort to implement the National Inquiry’s calls for justice. 

Indigenous women have long identified the solutions, programs, and support needed to respond to and protect them from violence. Those solutions have been consistently ignored by successive colonial governments (Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba, 1991; Amnesty International 2004; National Inquiry, 2019; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996). Families have continuously questioned decisions that are made without them, behind closed doors. 

This lack of transparency and accountability continues with the Canada Strong Budget (2025). Existing programming was already subject to patchwork – meaning it is often unsustainable, short-term, and project-based (or all three) – funding issues, and ongoing struggles to meet the needs of clientele (National Inquiry, 2019a). 

Tightening the fiscal shoestrings and using stealthy “sunsetting” to halt funding that supports ending violence against Indigenous women – while simultaneously increasing funding to support the military industrial complex – demonstrates the Canadian government’s ongoing commitment to sustaining shape-shifting colonial violence.

Assembly of First Nations [AFN]. Federal Budget 2025. AFN, 2025. https://afn.ca/all-news/bulletins/federal-budget-2025/ 

Bourgeois, E. “Generations of genocide – The historical roots of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.” In K. Anderson, C. Belcourt, & M. Campbell (Eds.), Keetsahnak, Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters. University of Alberta Press, 2018.

Bourgeois, R. “Colonial exploitation: The Canadian state and the trafficking of Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada.” UCLA Law Review, 1426 (2015): 1428-1463. 

CPAC. “Indigenous women’s groups warn of the sunsetting of some funding for MMIWG supports.” April 8, 2026 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/ak-r2G48WeA 

Department of Justice Canada. Indigenous Justice Strategy. Government of Canada, 2025. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/ijr-dja/ijs-sja/tijs-lsja/pdf/IJS_EN.pdf 

Dowling, S. Elimination, in the feminine. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 21.6 (2019): 787-802. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2019.1607525

Duhamel, K.R. “‘I feel like my spirit knows violence’ understanding genocide – and how to stop it – in the context of the National inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.” In J. Black-Morsette (Ed.), REDress. HighWater Press, 2025.

Fryer, S. & Leblanc-Laurendeau, O. Background paper: Understanding federal jurisdiction and First Nations (Publication No. 1019-51-E). Parliamentary Information and Research Service, 2019. https://lop.parl.ca/staticfiles/PublicWebsite/Home/ResearchPublications/BackgroundPapers/PDF/2019-51-E.pdf 

Government of Canada. Canada Strong Budget 2025. Government of Canada, 2025. https://budget.canada.ca/2025/report-rapport/pdf/budget-2025.pdf 

Horn, K. “The Indigenous Justice Strategy: ‘Progressive and Transformative Reform’?” Yellowhead Institute, May 21, 2025. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2025/the-indigenous-justice-strategy-progressive-and-transformative-reform/ 

Hwang, P. “Cuts targeting Indigenous rights staff at Justice Department ‘reckless,’ critics warn.” CBC News. February 23, 2026. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/cuts-targeting-indigenous-rights-staff-at-justice-department-reckless-critics-warn-9.7097164 

Ibrahim, S. “Federal prisons to lose library technicians, employment co-ordinators in budget cuts.” CBC News. March 11, 2026. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/prison-cuts-librarians-employment-coordinators-9.7123434 

Lapointe, J. “Can the new B.C. government bring real change for Indigenous communities?” The Narwhal. November 20, 2024. https://thenarwhal.ca/energy-economic-reconciliation-indigenous-youth-bc/ 

Levesque, A. “Carney government cuts unfairly hit First Nations.” Policy Options. July 22, 2025.https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/07/budget-cuts-first-nations/ 

Luetkemeyer, E. “Trump administration removes report on Missing and Murdered Native Americans, calling it DEI content.” Oklahoma Watch. November 14, 2025. https://oklahomawatch.org/2025/11/14/trump-administration-removes-report-on-missing-and-murdered-native-americans-calling-it-dei-content/ 

Luoma, C. “Closing the cultural rights gap in transitional justice: Developments from Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 39.1 (2021): 30-52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0924051921992747 

Macdonald, D. & Mcintosh, E. ‘Budget cuts by stealth: Letting programs ‘sunset’ to cut costs won’t be painless.” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. October 28, 2025. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/budget-cuts-by-stealth-letting-programs-sunset-to-cut-costs-wont-be-painless/ 

National Inquiry. (2019a). Reclaiming power and place: The final report of the National Inquiry Intro Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. National Inquiry, 2019. https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Final_Report_Vol_1a-1.pdf
Pember, M.A. “Trump administration targets office on violence against women with ‘consolidation.’” ICT News. January 29, 2026. https://ictnews.org/news/trump-administration-targets-office-on-violence-against-women-with-consolidation/ 

Smith, D. “‘Concerning’ cuts to justice system in federal budget.” CBA National. November 5, 2025. https://nationalmagazine.ca/fr-ca/articles/law/hot-topics-in-law/2025/%E2%80%98concerning-cuts-to-justice-system-in-federal-budget 

Thobani, S. Exalted subjects: Studies in the making of race and nation in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Citation:

McGuire, Michaela M. “Sunsetting Gender Justice: Economic Austerity and the Defunding of MMIWG+ Supports,” Yellowhead Institute. May 08, 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/sunsetting-gender-justice-economic-austerity-and-the-defunding-of-mmiwg-supports

Artwork: MMIR 2024, Solange Aguilar, @shesanargonaut

The post Sunsetting Gender Justice: <br> Economic Austerity and the Defunding of MMIWG+ Supports appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

1st May marks the boreal spring to be in full swing – our fisheries are open, Pacific tour is concluded, new honorary member accepted and restoration of habitats proceeds.

Captain Karoliina and the crew have begun their harvests on lake Onkamo and Särkijärvi, and pike, bream and perch fill the fyke traps. Also the delicacy – i.e. vendace cans have started to make their impact in Helsinki high street and in Europe, with more to come towards autumn. Early spring enabled the start of the open water fishery historically early.

The Finnish restoration season has also kicked off, with peatland restoration work commencing in Koitajoki, and new boreal sites that have been added in Kemijärvi, Muonio and Pelkosenniemi. We look forwards to a busy season ahead especially in Eastern Finland and Lapland as well as Sámi forest restoration early in the year.

Pacific tour of 2026 has concluded. Teams visited Japan, Taiwan and Vanuatu with a large workshop over in Sun Moon Lake that gathered delegates from the Solomon Islands, Tasmania, and Maori as well as the Indigenous Taiwanese communities. We heard from across the ocean the results of last years restoration of wetlands, and plans for community-led mangrove and other initiatives. We met with the Thao people in solidarity and made plans also for the Festival of Fishing Traditions slated for Taiwan in 2027. Sutej Hugu, Indigenous philosopher and leader from Taiwan, summarized the gatherings and approaches in his keynote by saying:

“We would like to clarify with you about the fundamentals of Indigenous conservation and restoration in the perspective of Indigenous peoples’ self-strengthening process and self-determination for survival and revival. By the living traditions of Indigenous peoples, as human species we are embedded in inter-species habitats, and as human beings we are connected to all beings around us. The embeddedness and connectedness are the kernel and basis of our knowledge and institutions, and the deep origin of our strength and resilience.”

In other news, Snowchange has a new Honorary Member. Occasionally when an individual deserves the merit, Snowchange makes a decision to call a person to be an Honorary Member for Life in the Cooperative, i.e. they have shown extraordinary skills, devotion and dedication to the causes, ideological foundings and work of Snowchange Cooperative. It is the highest honor of the organisation. 

The new Honorary member is John Macdonald from Canada. Following an informative upbringing in Malawi, central Africa, John MacDonald spent most of his working life in the Canadian Arctic, including twenty-five productive years in Igloolik, as coordinator of Nunavut Science Institute’s Igloolik Research Centre.

Beginning in 1985, he collaborated closely with Igloolik’s Inuit elders and community leaders (including Leah Otak, Louis Tapardjuk, and George Qulaut) to establish and develop a major program designed to record and document the rich oral history and traditional knowledge of the Amitturmiut.

Among many publications flowing from this collaboration, is his foundational study of Inuit astronomy, cosmology, and environmental understanding (The Arctic Sky: Exploring the InuitUniverse (2022). He is also co-editor of The Hands’ Measure: Essays Honouring Leah Aksaajuq Otak’s Contribution to Arctic Science (2018). Since his retirement in 2009, he continues his research on Inuit oral history and primary historical contact between Inuit and Europeans in the Canadian eastern Arctic.

Today, 1st May, 2026, Chair Tero Mustonen has made an executive decision to call researcher John Macdonald to be a lifelong Honorary Member of the Cooperative. This honour also includes the rights to use and benefit of all of Snowchange services, assets and operative bases. Mustonen states:

“We have been working with John and the Inuit people of Igloolik since 2002. John, through his devotion, brilliance and dedication to the questions of Inuit oral histories, in particular the star lore and celestial issues, has contributed to Snowchange in outstanding ways over the past 20 years. For example our Finnish oral history archives have benefitted in major ways from the work John and the Elders have carried out over in Igloolik. We thank John for his lifelong devotion and commitment to Inuit and Arctic cultures and work. It is a great honor to invite John to be our next lifelong Honorary Member of the Cooperative.” 

Previously Eero Murtomäki and his wife Rita Lukkarinen, as well as cartographer Johanna Roto have been called to be lifelong Honorary Members of the Cooperative – the highest honour of the organization.

Check back in May, as we head to June and we ll have SNOW25 and other celebrations awaiting once the summer gets here.