Kivalliq Innuit Association

Published purpose

The Kivalliq Inuit Association (KIA) has worked with Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) and the Nunavut General Monitoring Plan (NGMP) to establish an aquatic cumulative effect monitoring program (CEMP) with the ongoing support of Kivalliq communities, including Naujaat to address core questions of community concern: The CEMP will incorporate both western science and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) to answer key questions: Is the water good to drink? Are the fish safe to eat? The CEMP is the key component of the Inuu’tuti Initiative, a new program in the North, intended to characterize the cumulative effects on the aquatic environment within the Naujaat watershed. To this end, the NRC will collaborate and examine aquatic biology as well as conduct hydrological analyses and climate scenario simulations. The main objective of this Project is to implement Inuu’tuti CEMP: the integrated monitoring of key Inuu’tuti sites of particular community interest over a three-year period measuring environmental contaminants in water and fish tissue and relating those to the health outcomes for organisms in the region. Additionally, Inuu’tuti CEMP will test the hypothesis that organisms exposed to environmental stressors have elevated levels of various endogenous chemicals.