Arctic Peoples, Culture, Resilience and Caribou

How will Arctic Aboriginal communities continue to be resilient and healthy in relation to the social and ecological changes which threaten important human-environment relationships now and in the future? The theoretical thread or theme linking all the projects and case studies is resilience and adaptive capacity. Although resilience has multiple meanings in different disciplines we are interested in individual, household and community resilience to environment change - specifically barren ground caribou population variability and change. Theoretically, we know that resilience is informed by many socio-economic, cultural and ecological factors. Among the most well understood are: human social networks, traditional knowledge and skills, and governance and institutional arrangements. By exploring these variables, as well as other emergent elements of resilience through this series of projects we hope to gain a better understanding of social-ecological health in Arctic communities.