Entre souveraineté indigène et sécurité nationale : Négocier la sécurité frontalière et la culture Mohawk à Akwesasne

Based on the case of the Mohawk territory of Akwesasne, wedged between Ontario, Quebec, and New York state, this paper provides an analysis of the links between the affirmation of indigenous culture and the implementation of security policies on borderlands. The focus extends beyond political conflicts over border issues to encompass the ways in which Aboriginal sovereignty is affirmed within processes of negotiation and cooperation in the matters of identification requirements, border agents’ cultural sensitivity, and law enforcement. We find that the enhancement of border security can paradoxically be a political opportunity for local leaders to reaffirm indigenous sovereignty, and that this reaffirmation through cooperation is, at the same time, emerging as a key factor in the implementation of border security policies.     

Differences in hi‐tech immigrant earnings and wages across Canadian cities

This paper examines the relative earnings and wages of immigrants working in the hi‐tech sector in Canada's cities. Between 1990 and 2000, a sizeable earnings advantage of immigrants over nonimmigrants employed in the hi‐tech sector evaporated, and this change was most noticeable in the largest cities. We use population census microdata to examine the geographical dimensions of this shift. After controlling for individual characteristics, we show that immigrants in the largest and tech‐intensive cities earn significantly less relative to nonimmigrants than those in midsized and smaller cities. We also present results comparing the hi‐tech immigrant wage and earnings gap for the five largest Canadian cities. The findings are consistent with the notion that geographic differences are an important component of the overall earnings gap between immigrants and nonimmigrants.     

Accessibility interrupted: the Shimshal road,Gilgit‐Baltistan,Pakistan

Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional‐scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40‐kilometre link‐road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility‐related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide‐induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link‐road's completion.     

Appreciating the heterogeneity in the unity of Africa: A socio‐ecological perspective on Africa's geographies

The African continent is known by various metaphors and geographies, but for many there are also unknowns about the continent. Geopolitically, Africa is a continent that is considered remote—an economically emerging continent seen as entangled in persistent challenges of wars, political dictatorship, poverty, disease, and more recently migration. Given these predispositions it is typical to stereotype events, practice, and behaviour as “African.” There is, however, now recognition of the continent as emerging economic power house. But unpacking the diversity of Africa reveals a huge potential with respect to resource endowments, diversity of ecology, socio‐cultural economic advancement, politics, language, and demographics. Colonial history coupled with traditional Africa shaped the geopolitical boundaries that have added to the confusion about this massive and diverse continent. Intellectual discourses either amplify the differences due to specificities of geographical focus or generalizations such as the contested notion of “African.” However, using socio‐ecological lenses, Africa is unified by these very differences in addition to being a massive landmass with several big and small island states. Appreciating these differences is useful to understanding the observed patterns of social, economic, and political systems that unify the continent. This paper illustrates the notion of “African” to describe the heterogeneous nature of a “unified” continent. Some illustrative examples between Africa and other continents are used.     

“I spent the first year drinking tea”: Exploring Canadian university researchers’ perspectives on community‐based participatory research involving Indigenous peoples

Community‐based participatory research (CBPR) is generally understood as a process by which decision‐making power and ownership are shared between the researcher and the community involved, bi‐directional research capacity and co‐learning are promoted, and new knowledge is co‐created and disseminated in a manner that is mutually beneficial for those involved. Within the field of Canadian geography we are seeing emerging interest in using CBPR as a way of conducting meaningful and relevant research with Indigenous communities. However, individual interpretations of CBPR's tenets and the ways in which CBPR is operationalized are, in fact, highly variable. In this article we report the findings of an exploratory qualitative case study involving semi‐structured, open‐ended interviews with Canadian university‐based geographers and social scientists in related disciplines who engage in CBPR to explore the relationship between their conceptual understanding of CBPR and their applied research. Our findings reveal some of the tensions for university‐based researchers concerning CBPR in theory and practice.     

La frontière asymétrique : Franco‐Ontariens et Anglo‐Québécois dans la région de la capitale nationale

The francophone and anglophone minorities of Gatineau‐Ottawa appear to benefit from a privileged location. Living very close to their respective majorities, they simply have to cross the border in order to access resources to live in their own language and share their culture. However, a qualitative analysis of the discourse by Anglo‐Quebeckers and Franco‐Ontarians about their everyday life in the Nation's Capital Region shows that the border has more complex and often contradictory effects. In this article, we focus our attention on four particular manifestations of the border: (1) the border is transparent so that one can cross the Ottawa River without hindrance in certain contexts yet rather opaque in others; (2) one may transcend minority status through the strategic use of the border; (3) it creates a multi‐topic imaginary geography in which the border itself often becomes mobile; and (4) finally, the border can act as a mirror when the cross‐cultural intermixing it allows causes the Anglo‐Quebeckers and Franco‐Ontarians to question their identities, a questioning which would not be as intense in the absence of the border. The comparison of these two minorities makes it possible to highlight the asymmetrical nature of the effects of the border on their everyday life, identities, and sense of belonging.     

Functional specialization across space: a case study of the Canadian Electricity Industry, 1971–2001

This article examines the location of functions within the electricity sector in Canada from 1971 to 2001, using a centre‐periphery model. Power generation, distribution and retailing are generally carried out by multiestablishment crown corporations. Location patterns of different functions—management, scientific, production, etc.—are analyzed via the use of occupational groups. The spatial distribution of functions is found to be generally consistent with centre‐periphery relationships, with evidence of a growing functional specialization between large metropolitan and nonmetropolitan locations. However, differences emerge depending on power generation sources: fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, solar or biomass. The choice of a power generation source has consequences for local economies.     

Studying the process of enamel powder preparation for émail champlevé by colour measurements and μ‐X‐ray mappings

Colour measurements and non‐destructive μ‐X‐ray mappings have been used for the first time in a comprehensive study of medieval émail champlevé works from different production areas in France and Germany. This approach has given a new insight into the enamel powder preparation process of the glass material used for enamelling. Colour measurements demonstrated that all production centres used glass of very similar hues, but with large differences in colour saturation. The μ‐X‐ray mapping results of blue enamels are described by a semi‐qualitative approach. Significant variations in oxide contents of lead, cobalt, manganese and antimony oxides were found. The variations suggest that more than one glass material was used to prepare the powder for enamelling. The variations in antimony and cobalt show that glass had different degrees of opacity and colour depth. The manganese and lead contents, which do not correlate with the cobalt or antimony contents, indicate that probably glass of different base compositions was used to prepare the enamel powder for one champlevé field.     

Inter‐Indigenous development aid: markets,corporations, and biases

The Canadian government and the Meadow Lake Tribal Council sponsored a forest extraction corporation in eastern Nicaragua that restructured 16 Miskitu and Mayangna villages and transformed local human‐environment interactions. The Central American aid project demonstrated paternalistic and interventionist tendencies and exposed biases in inter‐Indigenous aid that rendered it inseparable from conventional aid. This case encourages reflection on social and ecological impacts from the marketing of collective resources, the creation of Indigenous development corporations, and the decision‐making criteria and processes driving foreign aid. The case study demonstrates how foreign aid programs targeting Indigenous Peoples may actually thwart the self‐determination that they set out to encourage. Aid agencies and business partners, who had limited knowledge of local cultures and institutions, created externally defined rules that instigated resource conflicts and undermined the authority of customary leaders without resolving poverty or uneven development.     

From interdisciplinary to inter‐epistemological approaches: Confronting the challenges of integrated climate change research

Spurred by the literature on climate change and its calls for undertaking holistic research that more fully integrates the work of biophysical and social scientists, this article responds to the question: To what extent has climate change research in Canada embraced and been guided by the theories and tenets associated with interdisciplinarity and to what extent have integrated approaches been sensitive to cross‐cultural perspectives? It provides an overview of some of the epistemological issues raised in the interdisciplinarity literature that particularly impact research development and design. Furthermore, since much of the climate change literature that claims to be integrated or interdisciplinary draws from Indigenous Knowledge (IK), additional insights are provided from this perspective. The article develops a framework that can be used to undertake and/or evaluate research in a way that acknowledges “upstream” epistemological issues. The framework is then used to evaluate a comprehensive database (n = 282) of Canadian climate change articles. It is argued that an interdisciplinary approach adds a critical voice to the literature on integrated climate change research and is valuable because of its focus on epistemology and methodology. The article advocates the creation of a space for inter‐epistemological acknowledgement in which the academy develops an ethos of self‐reflection, while simultaneously respecting and integrating parallel knowledge frameworks, such as IK.     

Engaged acclimatization: Towards responsible community‐based participatory research in Nunavut

In this article, we consider the formation of responsible research relationships with Inuit communities from an “outsider” researcher perspective. Cautious not to prescribe what counts as responsible, we draw on research experiences in several Nunavut communities to introduce and explain “engaged acclimatization.” This neologism refers to embodied and relational methodological processes for fostering responsible research partnerships, and is inspired by the significance of preliminary fieldwork in orienting the lead author's doctoral thesis. As a complement to community‐based participatory methodologies, engaged acclimatization facilitates endogenous research by enacting ethics as a lived experience, initiating and nurturing relationships as a central component of research, and centring methods on circumstances within participating communities. After we locate engaged acclimatization within resonant literature and details of interrelated research projects, our article sketches out four aspects of engaged acclimatization: crafting relations, learning, immersion, and activism. In our discussion of each, we integrate specific insights derived from field notes, observations, photographs, critical reflections, and literature that have brought us to this understanding. The four aspects provide conceptual and methodological tools for readers to apply in the contexts of their own research programs or in guidelines for establishing partnerships with Inuit or Aboriginal communities. The value of this article lies in the extent to which it encourages readers to situate engaged acclimatization in their own research and further develop it as a process.     

Telling stories: Exploring research storytelling as a meaningful approach to knowledge mobilization with Indigenous research collaborators and diverse audiences in community‐based participatory research

A growing number of geographers seek to communicate their research to audiences beyond the academy. Community‐based and participatory action research models have been developed, in part, with this goal in mind. Yet despite many promising developments in the way research is conducted and disseminated, researchers continue to seek methods to better reflect the “culture and context” of the communities with whom they work. During my doctoral research on homelessness in the Northwest Territories, I encountered a significant disconnect between the emotive, personal narratives of homelessness that I was collecting and more conventional approaches to research dissemination. In search of a method of dissemination to engage more meaningfully with research collaborators as well as the broader public, I turned to my creative writing work. In this article, I draw from “The komatik lesson” to discuss my first effort at research storytelling. I suggest that research storytelling is particularly well suited to community‐based participatory research, as we explore methods to present findings in ways that are more culturally appropriate to the communities in which the research takes place. This is especially so in collaborative research with Indigenous communities, where storytelling and knowledge sharing are often one and the same. However, I also discuss the ways in which combining my creative writing interests with my doctoral research has been an uneasy fit, forcing me to question how to tell a good story while giving due diligence to the role that academic research has played in its development. Drawing on the outcomes and challenges I encountered, I offer an understanding of what research storytelling is, and how it might be used to advance community‐based participatory research with Indigenous communities.     

The importance of location and scale in rural and small town tourism product development: The case of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre,Manitoba, Canada

This paper begins with a review of the literature on tourism in rural economies, to establish a framework for analyzing large‐scale tourism products in rural and small town regions. The review is followed by the development of a typology of large‐scale attractions in rural and small town regions, including parks, casinos, events, heritage, and cultural products. The typology leads into the example of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre (CFDC) in Manitoba, Canada. Located in an agricultural region of south‐central Manitoba, the community of Morden is located 125 km from the provincial capital city, Winnipeg, which had a population of 811,900 in 2016. Morden is also located 35 km north of the border with North Dakota. Thus, while a small town in a traditionally rural region still dependent upon an agricultural economic base, Morden has been recently successful in diversifying its economy, including through manufacturing, services, hospitality, and tourism. In part, this success is due to a south‐central Manitoba location; however, it is also the result of innovative local leadership, including the prioritization of hospitality and tourism related to the CFDC. This paper describes the case study as an example of successful tourism development within an already economically and socially diversifying region.     

Fringe explosions: risk and vulnerability in Canada's new in‐between urban landscape

This article argues that a new landscape of urbanization takes shape in Canadian cities. In‐between the old downtowns and the new suburbs of urban Canada, a hitherto underexposed and under‐researched mix of residential, commercial, industrial, educational, agricultural and ecologically protected areas and land uses has become the home and workplace, and increasingly also the playspace of most people in Canada. The article examines this new landscape through the lens of the specific risks and vulnerabilities experienced by its inhabitants and users. Using a propane gas explosion in Toronto in the summer of 2008 as an example, we demonstrate that the ‘in‐between city’ is a space of great complexity, which has grown haphazardly and in a contradictory fashion, where, in contrast to the archetype of inner city and suburb, no clear spatial imaginary has been guiding urban development. This leads to always uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous proximities between various and competing uses and social practices. This is nowhere as clear as it is in the splintered urban infrastructures that service this landscape or use the in‐between city's space to service other adjacent or distant purposes.