Youth-Led Participatory Video as a Strategy to Enhance Inuit Youth Adaptive Capacities for Dealing with Climate Change

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Rapid climatic and environmental changes experienced throughout the Canadian North are having significant impacts on the lives of Inuit, with implications for the future of the large Inuit youth population. Within the adaptation research and practitioner community, youth voices, perspectives, and involvement are essential in ensuring representative and sustainable adaptation strategies. This paper examines the potential of youth-led participatory video (PV) as a strategy to foster known protective factors that underpin the resilience of youth and their capacity to adapt to various stresses, including impacts of climate change. The work draws on a case study from the Inuit community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada, where a two-week PV workshop was conducted with seven youth and followed by in-depth interviews with participants and community members. The findings show that PV may be a pathway to greater adaptive capacities because the process connects to known protective factors that enhance resilience of circumpolar indigenous youth. PV also shows promise as a strategy to engage youth in sharing insights and knowledge, connect generations, and involve young Inuit in planning and decision making in general.Key words: participatory video; protective factors; resilience; adaptive capacity; climate change adaptation; youth; Inuit; Nunatsiavut; Arctic; Canada RÉSUMÉ. Les changements climatiques et environnementaux rapides qui surviennent dans le Nord canadien ont des répercussions importantes sur la vie des Inuits, avec des conséquences pour l'avenir de la grande population de jeunes Inuits. Au sein de la communauté de praticiens et de recherche sur l'adaptation, la voix des jeunes, leurs perspectives et leur participation sont essentielles pour assurer la mise en oeuvre de stratégies d'adaptation représentatives et durables. Cet article examine la possibilité de faire des vidéos participatives dirigées par les jeunes comme stratégie pour favoriser les facteurs de protection connus qui sous-tendent la résilience chez les jeunes et leur capacité d'adaptation face à divers agents stressants, notamment les conséquences du changement climatique. Le document s'inspire d'une étude de cas de la communauté des Inuits de Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, au Labrador, Canada, où un atelier sur la vidéo participative d'une durée de deux semaines a eu lieu avec sept jeunes, suivi d'entrevues approfondies avec des participants et des membres de la communauté. Les résultats démontrent que la vidéo participative pourrait être une façon d'améliorer les capacités d'adaptation parce que le processus est relié à des facteurs de protection connus qui améliorent la résilience des jeunes indigènes de la région circumpolaire. La vidéo participative s'avère également une stratégie prometteuse pour amener les jeunes à échanger leurs idées et connaissances, établir un lien entre les générations et faire participer les jeunes Inuits à la planification et à la prise de décisions en général.

Adaptive capacity of Arctic communities in the context of climate change and shipping growth: A review of Russian and Western literature

“…In addition to determinants and adaptation readiness, literature identifies several contextual factors and cross-scale processes that are not strictly a part of adaptive capacity, but can complicate the effectiveness of community's ability to adapt to changing conditions (C. T. West, 2011) and may also affect local exposure to changing conditions . The following factors are identified as follows: demographic trends like gender and its societal roles (Buchanan, Reed, & Lidestav, 2016;Bunce, Ford, Harper, Edge, & Team, 2016;Goldhar et al, 2014;Tomaska, 2015), population structure (Lundmark, Pashkevich, Jansson, & Wiberg, 2008), youth participation and engagement (MacDonald, Ford, Willox, Mitchell, & Productions, 2015), the type of community (Armitage, 2005) and the area's political and socio-economic situation (Keskitalo, 2009;Kvalvik et al, 2011), including market conditions and globalisation (Keskitalo & Kulyasova, 2009). Wesche and Chan (2010) underline that food security also influences local adaptive capacity (see also Fillion et al, 2014).…”

Envisioning Democracy: Participatory Filmmaking with Homeless Youth

“…Nonetheless, I am cautious about claims made for participatory video with young people as a source of youth resilience, or as unproblematically representing youth “voice” (MacDonald et al. ; Vélez‐Torres ). As documented above, the process is a negotiated one; while Arendt reminds us that everyone carries the potential to intervene in the public, Bourdieu highlights the constraints that mean not everyone can intervene and participate on an equal footing.…”

Picturing (as) Resistance: Studying Resistance and Well-Being of Indigenous Girls and Young Women in Addressing Sexual Violence

“…Aside from these studies there are, to date, few studies within participatory visual research with young people that explore issues of well-being even though there is often an implicit sense that notions of participation and working with the visual through media production are inherently good (for the participants). Terms such as "voice," "agency," and "empowerment" are used in relation to participatory visual work (see Clover, 2011;Crivello et al 2009;MacDonald et al, 2015;Mand, 2012;Moletsane, Mitchell, & Lewin, 2010;Moletsane et al, 2015), and there is an increasing recognition that young people South Africa (Mitchell, 2009(Mitchell, , 2011a(Mitchell, , 2011b(Mitchell, , 2012, all point to the ways in which these various narrative modes build on storytelling conventions of communities and, as such, have the potential to both subvert some of the researcher-researched power dimensions, and contribute to a milieu where the perspectives of young people are recognized.…”