Frances Abele - Care, Cooperation and Activism in Canadas Northern Social Economy

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Copyright 2016 The University of Alberta Press

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Care, cooperation and activism in Canadas northern social economy/Frances Abele & Chris Southcott, editors.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9781772120875 (paperback).

ISBN 9781772121100 (epub).

ISBN 9781772121117 (mobi).

ISBN 9781772121124 (pdf)

1. CooperationCanada, NorthernCase studies. 2.Cooperative societiesCanada, NorthernCase studies. 3. Native peoplesCanada, NorthernSocial conditionsCase studies. 4. Native peoplesCanada, NorthernEconomic conditionsCase studies. 5. Canada, NorthernSocial conditionsCase studies. 6. Canada, NorthernEconomic conditionsCase studies. I. Abele, Frances, author, editor II. Southcott, Chris, author, editor

First edition, first printing, 2016.

First electronic edition, 2016.

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Contents

Frances Abele and Chris Southcott

Matthew Beaudoin

Matthew Beaudoin

A Social Fishery Venturing off the Coast of Northern Labrador

Jean-Sbastien Boutet

Cdric Drouin and Frdric Moisan

Lucille Villaseor-Caron

History and Impact upon the Community of Repulse Bay, Nunavut

Jennifer Alsop

Noor Johnson

A Case Study of Illiniariuqsarvik Igloolik Head Start

Sheena Kennedy Dalseg

The Beat That Sustains

Julia Christensen

A History

Jerald Sabin

The Inuvik Community Greenhouse Project

Julia Christensen

A Turning Point for the Northern Social Economy

Moses Hernandez and Rajiv Rawat

Kiri Staples

Valoree Walker, Joseph Moise and Kiri Staples

The Case for Volunteer Centres

Kiri Staples and Valoree Walker

Frances Abele and Chris Southcott

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contributions made to this volume by collaborators in the social economy organizations profiled here, for their patience with researchers inquiries and their open-minded and open-hearted approach to working with the Social Economy Research Network of Northern Canada. Thank you to the authors in this volume for their interest in building a portrait of an oft-overlooked corner of northern social, economic and political life. Kelly Black of Carleton University, and Linda Cameron, Duncan Turner, Kirsten Craven and the staff of the University of Alberta Press helped us to make the book clear, while Valoree Walker held the enterprise together as she has done on so many of our projects, while expertly curating the photographs. Frances Abele thanks George Kinloch for inspiration, and for his unstinting intellectual and domestic support. Chris Southcott thanks Laura Hope-Southcott for her understanding and support throughout the project.

Base funding for the Social Economy Research Network for Northern Canada was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Introduction

Frances Abele and Chris Southcott

Few regions have experienced the degree of rapid economic change that northern Canada has over the past one hundred years. Communities that have long relied upon harvesting from the land and sea are now part of territorial economies dominated by the industrial exploitation of natural resources. They face an uncertain future in a globalized economy dominated by accelerating international trade and knowledge-based economic institutions. These changes, and accompanying state policies, have resulted in tremendous social and economic stress. With accelerating development pressures, northerners face both new challenges and opportunities to benefit.

New forms of self-government offer the potential for political empowerment, but they will not automatically deliver economic or social empowerment. Northern economies are dependent economies, increasingly shaped by large-scale mineral development. In this circumstance, Aboriginal organizations and governments and the territorial and federal states may play both a buffering and a facilitating role. Northern political innovations and new institutions are central to these roles: for example, demands for local participation in environmental and development decisions and the rise of resource co-management arrangements have opened space for consideration of economic alternatives, discussed and debated in a variety of fora.

In this book, we draw attention to some aspects of the northern political economy that have not, generally, been topics of discussion when people ponder the Norths economic futureeven though these often overlooked institutions are effective participants in northern political life, while others provide a wide range of services that are essential to northern societies well-being. Collectively, these institutions are the northern social economy. The term social economy is used in a variety of senses in Canada; in the North, the term has two somewhat complementary meanings. For our purposes in this volume, social economy is understood as an extension of what in the past has been termed community economic development. It seeks to offer, and legitimate, a third aspect of economic development that in the past has been pushed aside in favour of large-scale, private-sector resource development and state-based initiatives. It refers to a strategy to develop and enhance the vitality, and the social and educational capital, of northern communities through organizations that are more directly controlled by the communities themselves. The social economy refers to those institutions in the community that are neither primarily profit-oriented nor state-driven. It refers to organizations whose primary purpose is to serve social goals in the community and whose structures are based on participatory democratic principles.

The chapters in this special collection are linked to the establishment of a network of researchers and northern community organizations looking into the potential of social economic development in Canadas North. Research done by this network is concentrating on the ability of social economic organizations to deal with several key political and economic characteristics that dominate the economies of northern communities. What our research has shown is that when they work together, individuals in northern communities can be extremely innovative and effective in providing solutions to many of the challenges the region is facing. While they often have few resources to mobilize, community groups have time and time again proven to be able to provide necessary services to meet their needs. This book presents a series of case studies that we believe illustrate the ways that community groups in Canadas North are using whatever limited resources are at hand to organize themselves to solve the economic and social problems they face. We hope this book will help convince others that given more resources, some of the best answers to what communities in the region need can come from the communities themselves.