Knowledge and Data: An Exploration of the Use of Inuit Knowledge in Decision Support Systems in Marine Management

Abstract

In increasingly data-driven marine and coastal management practices, the issue of “data” is becoming central, resulting in the development of comprehensive data hubs and spatial data infrastructures. These data hubs are often composed of different types of datasets, from oceanographic to biological and socioeconomic. In the Canadian Arctic, and in the context of co-governance arrangements and participatory approaches, these data hubs include, prominently, Inuit knowledge. This chapter explores the ontological tensions of using Inuit knowledge as data in the context of marine and coastal management, and it discusses the nature of Inuit knowledge and the transformations that take place when the knowledge is rendered into data. The authors assess the ability of existing decision support systems and tools to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and propose a number of criteria to integrate Inuit ontological approaches in the design of these systems and tools.