Strengthened partnerships between all levels of government, inclusive of Inuit representational organizations, would be a significant legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that we emerge stronger, and better able to face the next one.
Natan Obed: B.C.’s provincial UNDRIP law creates a self-reporting obligation, which has proven faulty in the Wet’suwet’en situation
There has never been an Inuk who has sat on any of the governing bodies of the three federal research funding agencies. This exclusion is unacceptable, writes Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
Sound research can be an effective building block for strong public policies, programs, and initiatives that help create prosperity for Inuit. However, colonial approaches to research continue in Canada, characterized by uncoordinated and ad hoc federal research policies that circumvent Inuit governance mechanisms and marginalize Inuit from the benefits of research.
“The major concern for us is that our academic partners would use the information, and the data sets, for their own academic purposes. We didn’t ever agree to have a purely academic exercise about particular populations and their health outcomes. We did this to improve the lives of Inuit,” Natan Obed.
Natan Obed, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, speaks at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa on March 22 at the launch of the National Inuit Strategy on Research along with Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett.
