Research Associate Position for the Environmental Conservation Lab (environmentalconservationlab.ca) working on the In Land and Life Project (inlandandlife.ca)

Job Description

• Provide overall project coordination for wildlife disease related research being conducted with Aboriginal communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan
• Liaise with co-investigators and graduate students associated with these projects
• Liaise with participating community members associated with these projects regarding
• Play a key role in analyzing and writing up data arising from community-based projects in Alberta and Saskatchewan for peer-review publication
• Play a lead role in writing interim and annual progress reports for funders involved with these projects (PrioNet Canada, Health Canada)
• Play a key role in researching and writing funding proposals for expanding wildlife disease related research in Alberta and Saskatchewan
• Liaise with the university regarding expenses associated with these projects
• Maintain project websites
• Play a lead role in writing additional research dissemination materials (ie newsletters)
• Coordinate the Environmental Conservation Lab

Qualifications

• PhD or Masters degree with at least 2 years of work experience
• Experience working in cross-cultural settings, particularly with Aboriginal communities
• Ability to travel to Alberta for a total of approximately two months per year
• Familiarity with project management, finances and report writing
• Effective oral and written communication skills

Applications due April 17.  Please send your CV to weier@cc.umanitoba.ca.

This is for a full-time position. Salary will be commensurate with experience.

In the last little while we found out that we will be receiving support to continue our research.  This means that over the next year, we will be taking more samples to find out if we find higher levels of cadmium in other animals or humans.  This part of the project is in the very early stages, so we will have more information about this in a few months.

Another event that is taking place to talk about wildlife health will be a gathering on June 14th and 15th, 2011.  Scientists and people in government are being invited out to Alexis to hear the communities concerns about wildlife health.  There will be activities for people in the community to come to and we hope to see you there.

Please let us know if you have any comments or questions!

Check out the newsletter  Page 1, page 2/3 and page 4 and if you are interested in hard copies please send us an e-mail at inlandandlife@gmail.com.

Leona at the camp

Leona Tootoosis

I think that the serenity of it.  It’s peaceful, and everybody is so friendly, like you knew them from before.  And the hard working people that I observed, you know there was no specific time to do anything.  It was just done as needed without needing to be told.  Even those young boys splitting wood so early in the morning.  That was something.  And providing for the tepees.  They split wood for the tepees, and the cooking of course.  I never seen moose nose prepared like that.  It was just astounding to see.  Three moose and an elk.  I never seen that much meat in my life.  People were just looking at me when I was saying how those racks were the length of a tepee pole.

Manon after helping to put up a tipi.

Manon Roy

Turns out that one of the highlights of campout for me was getting stuck in the bush. Yup! Our truck got stuck in the mud on a cutline in the early evening. I had been asking to go walking in the forest for several days to learn about plants and animals, so I was happy to volunteer to hike out for help with Percy. « It’s two miles to the nearest farm » he said. No problem I thought. Well, three hours later we knocked on some poor lady’s door and got ourselves a ride home. But hey, what a blessing! During our hike I witnessed a beautiful forest sunset, saw deer leaping gracefully through the quiet woods, and got to use some of my new-found knowledge of plants to keep me going. Who knew I would depend on bush berries and Rabbit Root so soon!

Carmen and Stef hanging out at the camp.

Carmen Fuentealba

I don’t have one specific one because there are so many things.  The interaction with individuals.  The privilege of being invited to the sweat lodge.  I put it as high as last year when there was traditional singing.  Percy and a group would sing.  To be going back and getting in touch with the spiritual side of things.  Realizing how we are similar and have common roots.

Andrea Kootenay

My favourite memory was sitting in the kitchen and playing crib.  I really miss that.  I also remember when I heard that Orlando shot a moose in the swamp and they sent Eugene in to go swim for it.  When we got stuck in the bush and Manon and Percy had to walk a couple of miles to get us a ride back was also a great memory.

Annie cutting moose meat.

E-mail inlandandlife@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Dayna cutting meat

Entering a different culture is often a great opportunity to learn new skills, experience new ways of living, and share thoughts and worldviews.  One issue that people frequently deal with when entering a new culture is gender roles – different expectations for how men and women interact in society.  In this blog, Dayna Kroeker and Stefan Epp discuss how they experienced gender at this year’s In Land and Life campout.

Dayna: Stefan, what were some of your duties as a male at the campout?

Stefan: Well, there seemed to be lots to be done.  Often I would go out with the hunters in the morning and evening.  If we caught anything the animal would need to be cut up, sampled, and packed.  I didn’t do the cutting, but did help gather samples and pack the moose out from the bush.  And then around camp, I went out to get wood and water a few times and did some odd jobs – kind of whatever needed doing – building a frame for drying meat, cutting wood, that kind of thing.  At the end of the campout I spent part of a day drying meat, but that was kind of outside my regular purview as a man.  How about you Dayna?

Dayna: There was also always a lot of work to be done for the women as well. Alongside the more obvious duties of helping cook the meals and making sure that everyone was fed as well as being responsible for the children during the day, the task that took up most time was cutting meat that was to be dried. Cutting the moose could easily take all day, not very strenuous work, but very time consuming and tedious. The more patient you are cutting the meat, the better your results generally are.

Stefan on the hunt.

Stefan:  It seems like one obvious difference between these two roles – male and female – is a physical separation of where the work happens.  My work was often outside of camp – on the hunt, gathering wood, picking up water, etc – while your work was in and around the camp – cutting meat, cooking, taking care of the children.  Sometimes, I’d return to camp and see the women working really hard at things and wonder, “do they think that I never work?” because they wouldn’t see me working as my work was mostly some place else.  Then I’d feel a little bad at camp because it would feel like I wasn’t pulling my weight, although really I had been working, just in a different setting and in a different way.

Dayna: I definitely noticed that as well Stefan, I thought all you did all day was nap! Apart from the difference in location of the work of both genders, the work is also physically very different. As I mentioned above, the women spent hours upon hours each day cutting meat, which is not very physically intensive in the short term, but when done all day can be very tiring. This is very different from the quick bursts of physical strength that the men are required to perform. Stefan, you ended up cutting meat with us one afternoon despite it not traditionally being a man’s role, why did you decide to break that barrier?

Stefan carrying meat across camp. And, yes, he knows he's holding it the wrong way - but it was just across camp.

Stefan:  For the record, I don’t think I actually ever napped, although I did notice you had a propensity to sleep till, let’s say, noon.  But, as for cutting meat, I guess there were a few reasons.  One, I had seen some men do it over my two campouts, so I felt that it wasn’t totally beyond the pale to take on.  Secondly, after going to two campouts it was one of the few key activities that I hadn’t been involved with at all and I wanted to see what it was like.  I had a pretty strong suspicion (rightly, it turns out) that I wouldn’t be much of a meat cutter, but was happy to have the experience.  And finally, since the rest of the ‘researchers’ were all women, and so were spending their days cutting meat, I kind of felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight.  Often my jobs would bookend the day – early mornings and later evenings while doing less in the heat of the day.  But it was during the middle of the day that you were all working hard and it felt kind of weird to sit around doing nothing while this was going on.  And here’s a question for you, Dayna.  I would imagine that gender roles are less divided in your day-to-day life.  Was this a challenge for you?

Dayna: Yes, you are indeed correct in that assumption. Initially I really didn’t find the gender division that much of a challenge, it was nice to be able to immediately have a place to fit in at the campout. Though it was never explicitly mentioned what roles the men and women had to play, through observation it was quite apparent what those roles were. I liked being able to find my place quickly, to have a place that I could be comfortable in my roles despite being in a completely foreign setting. I also didn’t mind the gender roles because they easily fit the types of tasks I would prefer to do anyways. I enjoy precise tasks, working with my hands, and cooking anyways, so it seemed like a good fit for me. I was very appreciative of not having to chop logs, or haul bloody carcasses to a truck! I also realize that some people do not have these natural tendencies. Manon, a researcher on the trip with us, struggled with meat cutting because of her active personality, she would have much rather been putting up shelters than sitting around the meat table. In this way I don’t think the divisions of labour between genders allows for the diversity that exists naturally within people.

Tamara and Dayna join in the meat cutting

Stefan:  I think that for the most part I, too, appreciated having a role into which I could pretty much immediately fit.  It was pretty obvious what I was supposed to do – if there was something to be lifted, carried, or chopped I knew where I had to be.  I guess what is a little difficult for me is that I do very little lifting, carrying, or chopping in my daily life.  I’m not the weakest person around, but I find remarkably few occasions to, let’s say, haul a moose hind quarter a half mile through the bush. So one challenge for me was trying to keep up with expectations while being a step behind in what was needed for the jobs – strength.  I often wondered, perhaps unfairly, if the folks I was working with were thinking “this weak city boy can’t do anything.”  So in that way, the role into which I was slotted wasn’t necessarily a role that plays on my strengths.  But maybe it’s a male thing, wondering how others perceive my ability to fulfill a masculine role that emphasizes physical prowess.  Or maybe I’m just a little paranoid.  Perhaps both.

Changing the topic a little bit, I think we both would agree that male and female roles were fairly well defined and were different in a lot of ways – the types of skills that were required, the place and time in which the work took place.  I think that similar things could be said about many cultures.  One thing that I’d be interested in knowing is that did you feel your roles were valued and respected?  In some other cultural contexts that I’ve been in, this didn’t seem to be the case, where there were separate spheres of work, but the male was clearly more respected than the female.  I know that we were only there for a week, so obviously our impressions are a degree superficial, but how did you experience this during the campout?

The authors preparing bannock for the final feast.

Dayna: My experiences in other cultures have indeed also emphasized the notion that the women’s work is not important, which troubled, and continues to trouble me greatly. The positive thing about the campout for me was that despite the separation in tasks between the genders, there was a very clear appreciation for the role that the other gender played. Despite the obvious differences in location, time, and physical intensity between the male and female roles, there was an overarching appreciation for each other that could very easily be seen.

Stefan: I like your comment about an overarching appreciation for the roles of the two genders – both relied on each other in a symbiotic way and I feel that that was recognized.  And I think that we both really appreciated the opportunities to participate in the community and learn new skills and tasks.  Probably there are all kinds of things that neither of us saw, or will come to realize as we talk with others and reflect on our experiences further, but I think that it has been good to reflect at this point on a pretty key component of our campout experience.

Learning how to cut meat in a thunderstorm.

We arrive and are immediately thrown into the mix. We unpack and go for a tour of the site, meeting everyone there. I promptly forget everyone’s names. We are introduced to the meat cutting area and the masters of the meat cut, Gerry and Daisy. The flies are overwhelming, and the cutters race to get the job finished before they can lay eggs on the meat. We aren’t immediately asked to join the cutting process, in fact we never were, this seemed to be the common trend. There are little expectations of us,and we are rarely told what to do, but rather through observation we are expected to learn the techniques, or what might be required of us for that day.

It starts to rain soon after our arrival; Tami and I decide it is finally time to take on the meat. A thunderstorm is brewing overhead, though it is not as ominous as the task that awaits us. I had been watching Daisy, Gerry and Anna cut that afternoon and thought that it looked relatively straightforward. Not so. As I look down at my first cutting job, I see how disastrous it truly is. My cut looks more like a shredded washcloth, sporting many huge holes, than the perfect king size blankets that are hanging on the drying rack. We share many laughs, as Tami and I struggle to cut right. Thankfully most of the meat is already cut and we finish off the last couple of pieces quickly.

Tami and Dayna learning how to cut meat for Pemmican.

After a game of cribbage and chatting around the fire we make our way to bed, joking with Daisy and Gerry about practicing our cutting techniques in our sleep.

No moose come in the next day, needless to say, I am grateful. An extra night of cutting practice in my dreams will make all the difference.

The hunts are successful on Saturday and we start cutting early. As the legs are deboned the pile of meat to cut grows and grows. We are anxious. Gerry and Daisy teach us how to cut the pieces that are mostly muscle, the kindergarten job, they say. Though I’m slightly offended that they don’t believe in my hidden skill (I know it’s there, it must be!), Tami and I are both happy to be doing an easy job.

So proud of my best piece of dried meat!

The pieces of muscle that we are in charge of get cut into thin strips that are dried then pounded to a powder to make pemmican. Cutting these pieces is the easiest job for the obvious reason that it doesn’t matter what they look like as they are pounded against a rock anyhow. We get to be experts at the job quite fast, Tami and I are pleased at our progress despite it being an easy task.

After a morning of pemmican strips I build up the courage to try to cut dried meat pieces again. I take my time, slowly following the sinew lines and feeling the thickness of the finished piece by cutting close to my hand. The cool, sticky piece of flesh rests in my hand, slowly unwinding as each cut is made to make a long flat piece of meat. I am proud of my final cut. My practice has paid off and I cheer as I hang my piece on the drying rack.

Though I am not the expert Daisy and Gerry are, I am content. Participating in the cut is actually almost fun, I am able to go at my own pace and chat with the others or simply sit. Staring out at the wilderness surrounding us, tinted blue through the light of the tarp overhead, I think to myself, cutting raw meat has never been so good.