Audrey R. Giles – University of Ottawa
Français
As major funding agencies allocate research dollars to investigations intended to find ways to
enhance injury prevention and reduce physical inactivity and associated lifestyle diseases in
Aboriginal populations, it is particularly timely and important to conduct research into initiatives
that dealt with similar issues and objectives in the past; the Northwest Territories (NWT)
Aquatics Program is an example of a program in need of such research. In this program of
research, data has thus far been gathered by conducting archival research, participantobservation,
and semi- and unstructured interviews in four northern communities: Taloyoak,
Nunavut; Fort Simpson, NWT; Tuktoyaktuk, NWT; and Hay River and Hay River Reserve,
NWT). This research project, which is in year two of three, employs discourse analysis
(Fairclough, 1992; Phillips & Hardy, 2002) to examine oral and written statements that
participants, programmers, and policymakers use and have used in discussions of the NWT
Aquatics Program, particularly Indigenous residents’ involvement in this program.
Though the thousands of children who participate in the water safety and physical activity
programs that the NWT Aquatics Program offers speaks to the program’s popularity, it does not
necessarily speak to its success; two of the program’s main goals since its inception in 1967 –
dramatically decreasing drowning rates and developing aquatics leaders within the NWT - still
have not come to fruition. Questions about the development and relevance of this program, its
conceptual underpinnings, and its abilities to meet the unique needs of northern, often
Aboriginal, residents of the NWT thus need to be investigated. Particular attention has been
paid to the creation and piloting of a Shallow Water Lifeguard Certification, a NWT-crafted
solution to the critical shortage of locally trained northern residents who are certified lifeguards.
This certification is a large departure from previous attempts to import southern aquatics staff to
teach northerners approaches to water safety and physical activity that are largely divorced from
the realities of everyday life in the NWT.
This research project also examines the influence of Indigenous cultural practices on physical
activity. We have, for exampled looked at Dene menstrual practices, the use of tobacco
offerings, and Indigenous knowledge of water safety - just a few of the beliefs that many
northerners use to inform their aquatic activities. Nevertheless, these practices are not included
in resources such as the Red Cross’s Water safety instructor manual (1996) or the Department
of Fisheries and Ocean’s Safe boating guide (2000). Local safety practices and beliefs continue
to be marginalized, even as the NWT reports a drowning rate of 10 times the national average
(Waldram et al., 2006).
This project will extends the limited body of anthropologically-informed knowledge on the role of
northern Aboriginal cultural practices in water safety and physical activity; it is hoped that such a
contribution may play a large part in understanding and preventing water-related fatalities and
physical inactivity in the NWT and Nunavut. Further, the examination of the Shallow Water
Lifeguard Certification and culturally-informed approaches to aquatics leadership may also lead
to the development of a model that will enable health promotion and injury prevention
researchers to include locally-derived knowledge, practices and approaches to risk in their
research and its findings in meaningful ways.
SCRI 2007 Presentation Slides
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