Six hundred samples. Roughly 180 sites across the Canadian Arctic. And more than 3,000 microbes providing more than four trillion pieces of data on the genetic composition of the Arctic Ocean.

These are the quick numbers behind the work of Srijak Bhatnagar, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary and Athabasca University, who along with his team spent seven years studying and cataloguing environmental DNA from Canada’s most northern waters. 

Environmental DNA is genetic material shed by all organisms, including fish, birds, insects and microbes, into their environment. It includes feces, skin, tissues and mucus, which allows researchers to identify the creature that shed it, providing a picture of the living composition of the ocean and its inhabitants. 

Through samples collected over a six-year period by various researchers aboard the CCGS Amundsen, an icebreaker and Arctic research vessel, Bhatnagar’s team believes they can help identify more than 80 per cent of all environmental DNA found in the Arctic Ocean. 

The significance of this work goes beyond the numbers. According to Bhatnagar, collecting and cataloguing as much environmental DNA as possible is essential to understanding and combatting climate change. The data provides insight into populations and migration patterns for key species in the region, and tracking the impacts of diseases and other marine contaminants on the ecosystem and food security for local communities.

Srijak Bhatnagar (centre) and his team of researchers are studying the DNA of the Arctic Ocean, through genetic material shed by its animal, insect and microbial inhabitants. Bhatnagar believes the group can now help identify more than 80 per cent of all environmental DNA found in the region’s ocean, making tracking population and migration patterns for key species easier. Photo: Limelight Photography

Many animals and plants in the North are threatened by climate change, like the Arctic cotton shown here, which is used for wick in qulliq (traditional Inuit oil lamps). Bhatnagar and his team plan to share the information they’ve acquired with other researchers and Inuit communities to enhance their understanding of regional flora and fauna. Photo: Shivangi Mishra

The team plans to make the information accessible to other researchers as well as Inuit and other Indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic. They are currently building an online environmental DNA database with their ocean samples, which will be added to larger, publicly available databanks created and hosted by the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which includes DNA from both terrestrial and marine species in the Arctic. But they also travelled through Nunavut and Nunavik, hosting a series of workshops aimed at making the connection between genomic data and the environmental changes Inuit communities are seeing on the ground.

Bhatnagar’s team is also collaborating with researchers at Carleton University to build a larger, publicly accessible AI-supported system that will be fed by all genomics research taking place in the region, including the ocean environmental DNA his team has studied. The goal, he says, is making “the ChatGPT for genomic information.”

Such a platform, Bhatnagar says, could give communities the tools to answer critical questions: what can the DNA in Arctic waters tell us about mercury contamination in the region? What can local bacteria tell us about the impact of climate change on the population of key wildlife species?

“I cannot emphasize enough how many questions this could answer that I can’t even think of and only the future would reveal,” Bhatnagar says.

A safe, accessible and inexpensive method

Between 2013 and 2019, Bhatnagar’s team processed environmental DNA samples collected from the ocean by various researchers aboard the Amundsen, from across the Canadian Arctic archipelago and as far north as Nares Strait, which lies between Nunavut’s Ellesmere and Greenland. Genome Canada, a federally funded non-profit organization, provided more than $10 million in project funding to Casey Hubert, a professor at the University of Calgary and mentor of Bhatnagar’s. 

Hubert’s research aims to understand what kinds of microbes live in the Arctic Ocean, how abundant they are and how they may offer a nature-based solution in a region that is seeing less sea ice, more shipping and potentially greater chances of oil spills due to increased traffic. 

“Arctic Canada does not have capacity to mount a quick oil cleanup response,” he explains. “So what it comes down to is bacteria that are in the ocean that can actually degrade oil, crude oil or diesel.”

Research on the microbial environment in Canada’s Arctic Ocean means increased nature-based solutions for a region that’s feeling the effects of climate change and mounting ship traffic, which can lead to increased risk of oil spills. Certain microbes have the ability to degrade different types of oil. Photo: Shivangi Mishra

The collected samples have revealed significant quantities of microbes that can degrade various types of oil. They also provide a baseline for these microbes, so any change in the composition of microbes and marine life in the area can be measured after an incident, such as a spill. 

“Pollution incidents could also disturb the environment, disrupt the ecosystem,” Bhatnagar explains. “So how do we know that when the oil cleanup has happened, the environment is back to its old self, or has now moved on to a new self?” 

This method of research and data collection is also less harmful to the ecosystem than other techniques, he adds.

On solid ice: the plan to refreeze the Arctic

“Using an [environmental DNA] baseline is a lot faster and cheaper and less deadly than trawling [where you] pull up everything, count it and by the time [the marine organisms] come up, they’re already dead,” Bhatnagar says. 

“We use a gram of seafloor or a litre of water and that’s about it. It’s a lot less invasive and faster and cheaper, and it’s replicable,” he says, meaning researchers can compare samples over time. “They can see the changes happening over our lifetime because of climate change.” 

Changing populations, migration patterns and food sovereignty in the Arctic

Alongside making environmental DNA from the ocean samples accessible, Bhatnagar says funding from Genome Canada is also being used to increase the uptake of genomics to inform discussions around food sovereignty for Inuit. This includes discussions about population management and migration patterns, from co-managing herds to monitoring initiatives for local biodiversity. 

In order to do this, Bhatnagar and his team visited communities across Nunavik and Nunavut between January 2024 and March 2025, speaking to Elders, hunters and trappers committees and Inuit government representatives about how environmental DNA-based tools could support their goals. 

Reducing the impacts of research activities on local wildlife and marine life is significant, according to Allen Gordon, an Inuk historian, municipal councillor and wildlife technician in Nunavik who participated in a community workshop held in Kuujjuaq, Que., earlier this year. 

Researchers visited the community of Kuujjuaq, Que., to discuss how their mapping of Arctic DNA can support Inuit food sovereignty and other goals. Photos: Shivangi Mishra

“With new techniques and with new genetics research, you may not need to just always kill — because to sample that beluga, [for example], you’ll have to kill it,” he says. 

“Now you may be able to get a lot of samples just from the water, and the water will tell you who’s been around, who’s left their mark.” 

Gordon adds that larger DNA information can help answer questions Inuit have about wildlife as a source of food that are unique to each community. In Nunavik, Inuit want to know more about belugas, which they have largely been prevented from harvesting in Ungava Bay for decades due to declining local populations. 

Nourish

“The government came out in the ’80s saying, ‘No more hunting. Your [beluga] population is way too low. No more hunting at all,” Gordon recalls. “But then questions came [from Inuit]: are these whales that we still see and sometimes harvest — are they unique to Ungava Bay or are they the ones that move around to Churchill to join that big population?” 

Gordon adds that it’s an example of how science can help both the Canadian government and Inuit find consensus on their shared goal of maintaining a healthy beluga population: “For us Inuit being a harvesting society — we want to keep eating and killing belugas.”

Inuk historian Allen Gordon shows the research team an enlarged microscopic image of salmon scales. Photo: Shivangi Mishra

Shivangi Mishra, a postdoctoral researcher who co-created the community workshops with Bhatnagar, says working with Inuit is essential for ensuring any digital technologies including the database reflect local knowledge that precedes, completes and complements scientific research on Arctic genomics. 

“Science is a very powerful tool, but grounding the science in Indigenous values and traditional values is more important,” she says. 

“Technologies are just a tool. They always complement, but it’s not like they are the only solutions.”

Through the workshops, Gordon says he has been happy to connect with other Inuit working with Bhatnagar’s team who are learning about genomics, making the science accessible to their communities and attempting to apply it to local decision-making. In one meeting, he heard from Emily Angulalik, the executive director for the Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq Kitikmeot Heritage Society in Cambridge Bay, Nvt., who shared that Inuit in the community are seeing more diseases and parasites in muskox. This was surprising for Gordon because over in Nunavik, the local muskox population is healthy and currently growing by nine per cent each year, according to 2024 statistics from the Government of Quebec.

Some of the important specimens Srijak Bhatnagar’s team are working with are from various Arctic fish species. A researcher shows the ear stones, formed from calcium deposits in the ears of bony fish, used to determine a fish’s age. Photo: Shivangi Mishra

With Angulalik’s participation, Gordon says the conversation around food sovereignty and research in the region was more expansive. The two of them shared with the team the importance of involving communities, valuing their knowledge and ensuring scientific research returns to Inuit.  

“We had a lot of similarities of Inuit knowledge that in the past had not really been taken into account,” Gordon says. 

‘We must use our language to learn our ways’

The AI chatbot will function as a mix between a search engine like Google and an AI-overview system like ChatGPT, Bhatnagar says, that will use the most current and comprehensive genomic research available. 

Bhatnagar says decisionmakers will be able to ask the chatbot questions about local species, the researchers studying them and community involvement in the work.

“The platform will tell me that, for example, polar bears [in that area] are actually thriving. So if we were to hunt polar bears, we go to that side and not to this side, and that information helps [people] with decision-making, from an individual level to territorial and federal government levels.”

While the system will not host the environmental DNA itself, it will draw from all publicly available research and the environmental DNA that Bhatnagar’s team is adding to the larger databanks at the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration. 

Preserved remains of Arctic animals. Researchers hope to build an AI-powered searchable database with information about patterns of the region’s fauna. Photo: Shivangi Mishra

Christy Caudill, a systems scientist at Carleton University, is working alongside Bhatnagar to build this platform in partnership with Angulalik and the Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq Kitikmeot Heritage Society. She says the AI tool will function as “a knowledge mobilization system.”

Caudill notes communities like Cambridge Bay have been using both actual genomic science and Inuinnait knowledge around genomics as part of their local monitoring programs for a long time. But there are gaps between Inuit ways of knowing and genomics, particularly when it comes to terminology. 

“We must use our language to learn our ways,” Annie Atighioyak, president of the Kitikmeot Heritage Society, says of this work. “Through spoken Inuinnaqtun, observation, hands-on activities and not just the written form. Let the learners see, hear, feel, practise or taste the language and culture.” 

With Angulalik and Elders at Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq Kitikmeot Heritage Society in Cambridge Bay, the team translated hundreds of terms used in genomic science to Inuinnaqtun. Together, they co-created a definition that incorporates scientific information but is rooted in the culture and Inuinnaqtun dialect. Elder Mary Kaotalok and Angulalik translated ‘genomics’ as: “Aallanngurninga uumajuvaluit ihumaaluktut qanurinninganik, aulavallianinganik, nunaujiurnirmilu naunairutikhangit.”

Arctic sovereignty? Inuit would like a word

Alongside these translations, Angulalik and Caudill have also been developing knowledge models that identify the linkages between Inuit and scientific ways of knowing, and ensuring the platform is rooted in both. 

For example, Angulalik and Elder Mabel Etegik described the relationship between their knowledge of muskox and their knowledge of climate change, culture, weather and working together. Their knowledge of this keystone cultural species and its connections and context will be indexed by the AI tool and can be searched and summarized for users.

Caudill adds the process has also led to important discussions about “how [genomics] can be expressed in an everyday context to people” as well. 

Emily Angulalik, executive director for the Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq Kitikmeot Heritage Society in Cambridge Bay, Nvt., has helped produce genomic science translations made from English into Inuinnaqtun. In addition to supporting translations, the research team has been working to develop knowledge models that identify links between Inuit knowledge and non-Indigenous scientific knowledge. Photo: Shivangi Mishra

“The term ‘genomics’ is inherently difficult to fully understand, unless that is your field of study. It can take years of specialty study to truly understand the concept of wildlife genomics as it relates to larger contexts and informs areas such as conservation,” she says. 

“But, for the first time, it can now be said in only four lines in Inuinnaqtun and understood by those speakers in its holistic context. I think that is a brilliant example of the strength of language itself and the power that it has to relay information.””

Angulalik agrees, adding this work will make genomics research more accessible to Inuinnait moving forward. 

“It’s a slow process but the terms will be used in our future — for our youth and for the generations to come,” she says.

“It’s also so important for our Elders and for Inuinnaqtun speakers [today] to understand the importance of the terms.” 

Researchers hope to present an initial version of their AI-powered platform at the ArcticNet conference in Calgary this December, and to have it accessible to the public by late summer. Photo: Shivangi Mishra

Meanwhile, Caudill and Angulalik are hoping to present an initial version of the AI platform at the ArcticNet conference in Calgary this December and have it ready for public use by August. It will include more than 100 translations from genomics science co-developed with Inuit partners, some of them in Inuinnaqtun. 

Caudill and Angulalik are now engaging in discussions about data sovereignty and digital ownership with Inuit as well. 

“Consistently, our Inuit partners have said, ‘We welcome science. We welcome Western science. We welcome technologies. We welcome innovations. And also, we’re taking that seat with you at the table,’” Caudill says. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Building a strong conservation economy for Inuit is at the heart of a landmark $270-million agreement that is now being implemented in the Qikiqtani region of Nunavut. 

Launched in Iqaluit on Nov. 13, the 10-year SINAA agreement is a partnership between the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, the Government of Canada and philanthropic partners including the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Aajuraq Conservation Society. 

The federal government has committed $200 million in funding for this agreement, while the remaining $70 million will be provided by philanthropic donors. That money will see the creation of new jobs, infrastructure and training opportunities within the conservation field, including support for Nauttiqsuqtiit Guardians and conservation centres. 

SINAA, which means “the floe edge” or “the place where land, ice and sea meet” was signed in February by former prime minister Justin Trudeau and Qikiqtani Inuit Association president Olayuk Akesuk. It follows years of consultation with Inuit in all 13 communities that are part of the Qikiqtani region, which stretches from Sanikiluaq, on an island in southern Hudson Bay, to Grise Fiord in the High Arctic. 

The agreement covers 989,879 square kilometres of Qikiqtani land and waters and may help Canada meet its larger climate targets: Through the creation of new marine protected and conserved areas, SINAA will contribute almost four per cent to the country’s goal of protecting 30 per cent of land and oceans by 2030. As well, it adds to the area of Canada’s marine territory that will be under Inuit governance and stewardship, bringing the total proportion of Canadian oceans under Inuit-led protection to 12.3 per cent. 

The Qikitani region of Nunavut contains a number of existing national parks and marine protected areas; SINAA will add new terrestrial and marine protected areas, which represent nearly four per cent of Canada’s oceans. Map: Supplied by Department of Fisheries and Oceans

SINAA will create economic opportunities and address regional concerns for Inuit

Implementing the agreement will involve the creation of specific economic opportunities through conservation, according to Richard Paton, assistant executive director for marine and wildlife conservation at the Qikiqtani Inuit Association. 

“Under SINAA, we will have approximately 130 new jobs for Inuit. The initiative includes funding for Nauttiqsuqtiit centres — that’s our conservation centres. And building on infrastructure, the opportunity to train Inuit in the conservation economy while supporting local monitoring and research that’s done by our Nauttiqsuqtiit Guardians program,” he said.

Paton says SINAA has been years in the making. In 2022, the Qikiqtani Inuit Association spearheaded discussions of a regional conservation approach that would connect all Qikiqtani Inuit. 

“That shift was significant because we recognized that as we were speaking to [the federal government] about new conservation areas, the focus was generally on the community directly adjacent to that conservation area. And historically, many Inuit communities and Inuit directly were not engaged in a way that reflects our understanding and our relationship with the environment,” he said. 

Through the regional conservation approach, Paton said Qikiqtani Inuit Association began identifying conservation outcomes that will support the local economy while also helping alleviate systemic and ongoing challenges faced by Inuit across the region. 

“Having eyes and ears on the water is really important for sovereignty and security,” Sheena Kennedy, executive director of Oceans North, told The Narwhal. Photo: Alex Ootoowak

One such challenge is food insecurity, which is linked to many factors including the high cost of living, declining access to country food and fewer opportunities for Inuit to both practice and pass on their culture and tradition, especially in light of growing climate change impacts. In addition to creating employment opportunities for Inuit, Paton says SINAA will address food insecurity. 

“All of [our Nauttiqsuqtiit] Guardians understand the environment around them and will be able to harvest marine animals and bring those back to the communities and to share and [contribute to a] typical Inuit cultural diet that offsets food insecurity,” he explained. “This will also be an opportunity to adjust Inuit diets in a way that could offset some of the health impacts that we’ve had over the last 50 years.” 

Ecologically critical Qikiqtani region will be protected by Inuit Guardians

Alongside a regional conservation model, Oceans North executive director Sheena Kennedy said an essential aspect of SINAA is also the protection of the larger environment at a time of changing geopolitics in the region. 

Larger than British Columbia and more than twice the size of California, the Qikiqtani region is close to a million square kilometres in size. It covers roughly 10 per cent of Canada’s land and marine area, and encompasses more than 1,500 islands and up to 35 polynyas (open-water areas that remain unfrozen even in winter).

The region is also home to some of the most productive marine ecosystems and a critical habitat for key Arctic species including the world’s largest subpopulation of polar bears, the endangered Peary caribou and 75 per cent of the global narwhal population. 

The Qikiqtani region is home to the world’s largest subpopulation of polar bears, as well as many other key Arctic species. Photo: Supplied by Oceans North

“Having eyes and ears on the water is really important for sovereignty and security, and there’s nobody better to be out on the land than the people who know it the best,” Kennedy, who attended the announcement in Iqaluit last week, said.“That’s a really important component of this work, especially at this time. For millennia, the Qikiqtani region has sustained Inuit, and Inuit know it the best. That is essential to both maintaining ongoing cultural continuity, food security but also sovereignty, which is really important right now.” 

SINAA is one of four Canadian projects being funded under the Project Finance for Permanence model, which is a public-private financing model bringing together Indigenous organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations and philanthropic partners to collaborate on shared goals and establish long-term funding for conservation initiatives on the ground. Inspired by an approach used by Wall Street executives, the model requires funders to finance all key aspects of the conservation plan at once. 

$375M Indigenous-led conservation deal just signed in the Northwest Territories

“I think it helps to show the partners — in this case, the Qikiqtani Inuit Association and all of the Inuit in the region — that they have a lot of support from government and from non-profit partners to advance their vision and to realize it,” Kennedy said. 

For Paton, SINAA is significant because it will ensure the protection of this diverse environment and its interconnected local economies are guided by those who know it best. 

“As decisions are made in new conservation areas, [SINAA] will be led by Inuit and decisions will be made by Inuit.”

Updated Nov. 24, 2025, at 11:53 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the area covered by the SINAA agreement. A previous version of this story used an estimate from 2023.

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Andrew Dialla was six or seven when his grandmother passed away. He grew to know her through stories of her deep love for the land — how she would spend hours out on walks, collecting “pretty things” in her pail.

“The main thing I always heard about her was her collecting stuff on the ground all the time,” Dialla recalls. 

Dressed in a beige camouflage jacket and carrying a magnifying glass, Dialla is squatting down to look at the rocks around him. He’s taking part in an introductory prospecting course led by the Nunavut government’s geology department. Along with 10 other people, Dialla has spent a week at the local Franco Centre and Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park, at the edge of Iqaluit on southern Baffin Island, learning about a lot more than just rocks.

Participants in an introductory prospecting course cluster around dark, rusty looking rock that crumbles into smaller grains of orange and red hues. The program lead explains these rocks are gossans, the heavily weathered and decomposed surface of what may be ore deposit or a mineralized vein below the surface.

As an industry, mining is already the largest private-sector employer of Indigenous Peoples, both in Nunavut and across Canada. Many Inuit receive some compensation from the industry through the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, which defines Inuit-owned parcels of land — on which the three mines currently operating in the territory are located.

Yet few Nunavummiut prospect and explore themselves, and there are no Inuit-owned private exploration companies in Nunavut at this time.

Now in its 25th year, the Nunavut Prospectors Program aims to engage more Inuit in the business of mining. With the courses held in at least three communities, the hope is to train, certify and fund Nunavummiut to go out to explore, prospect and stake claims on their land safely, effectively and as ethically as possible. 

On the cool day in August, in Sylvia Grinnell park at the shore of Frobisher Bay, Dialla is brushing up on some well-practiced skills in prospecting.

Just last summer, he went out with his nephew around their hometown of Pangnirtung to double check areas he had visited in the past for gold or diamonds. 

“I spent a few days climbing mountains and basically suffering because the land where I was is like walking on a mattress,” Dialla says.

“You really have to be passionate if you want to do this, because it’s hard work. It’s not just walking around and touring around. You can bend over a lot and you grab a lot of things. And you’re out on the land so you have to be careful,” he says. “It’s always better to call a partner. When I’m looking through the magnifier, my partner can be looking around for polar bears.” 

Andrew Dialla, a student in the prospecting program, uses his magnifying lens on a patch of rock. At another location he identified this garnet patch. Students make note of what they see and where in a notebook, like this one used by Jonathan Enns.

A licenced prospector since the ’90s, Dialla took the course to refresh his memory — and it also revived those of his grandmother. A lot has changed in the years since. 

In general, the mining industry has seen massive growth across the North and is considered to be the largest private sector contributor to each territory’s economy, according to a 2024 report by the Mining Association of Canada. 

In 2022, mining contributed 41 per cent to Nunavut’s gross domestic product. And yet, according to Maryam Abdullahi, a geologist and currently the senior petroleum advisor for the territorial geology department, Nunavut is considered by industry and government to be one of the most underexplored places in Canada, for mining purposes. She is teaching the prospecting course in Iqaluit this year and says, shorter field seasons, the lack of road access and sheer expense influence both the interest in mining in the territory and the market’s appetite for it.

“Here, even in summer, you’re at the mercy of the weather. You have two months to work and you have to fly everything in, which is why in terms of competitiveness and the amount of companies that will come in, it is difficult,” Abdullahi says. 

“Any company that comes in will be a company that has a lot of money, will be a company that has a lot of investors that have very high confidence in Nunavut, and will be a company that probably has a strategic reason to be here.” 

“In terms of how much potential Nunavut has, I can’t quantify that because to be able to quantify potential you need to have a lot of exploration done,” Abdullahi says.

Maryam Abdullahi is a petroleum exploration geoscientist in the Government of Nunavut’s minerals and petroleum division at the Department of Economic Development and Transportation. She taught the introduction to prospecting course in Iqaluit this year.

The fact that Nunavut is heavily under-explored affects how much we understand about it, she says. Whoever can gather that information also has the power to use it. And that presents an opportunity for Inuit to have more control.

It may be yet-unquantified, but “we have a lot of potential,” she says.

Nunavut is already known for gold exploration and a vibrant base-metal inventory that includes lead, zinc, copper, silver, critical minerals and rare earth elements, Abdullahi says. Some of these are necessary components in key technologies for the shift to clean energy, including batteries.

“Nunavut has 22 of the 31 critical minerals that have been listed by the Government of Canada and the United States as the minerals there are significant in order for the energy transition and decarbonization to happen,” Abdullahi says. 

Instructor Maryam Abdullahi, centre, explains the fractures in a rock surface may be used to understand how a rock surface weathered over time. During the introductory prospecting program, student Willis Norrie found this silicate-rich marble in Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park.

The introductory prospecting course aims to equip participants with a base knowledge of the geology of Nunavut, as well as the necessary steps to take once an exploration site has been discovered or established. 

Over the course of the week-long program, this means recognizing igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks and knowing how to differentiate them based on how they look, smell and feel. 

As well, participants learn how to use field equipment such as a compass, a GPS and local maps to identify and confirm locations. The program also includes instruction on the groundwork and paperwork required to stake a claim through an online portal.

In the past five years alone, 103 Nunavummiut — both Inuit and non-Inuit — across 15 communities have received their prospecting certificate. 

Since 2019, 16 people have also applied for $8,000 grants from the Government of Nunavut to secure prospecting claims. 

The program helps Inuit help industry by engaging in exploration in their backyard, Abdullahi says. 

And yet, long-term exploration is expensive and time consuming, which means it is easier carried out by a company than it is by an individual. 

“All it takes is one guy to find something good and get a mining company interested in it,” Dialla says. He keeps that in mind when he explores in his home community, where many Inuit continue to live off the land but don’t necessarily make a living from it. 

The prospecting course is held by the Nunavut Government in several communities across the territory. The Iqaluit program was held at Sylvia Grinnell (Iqaluit Kuunga) Territorial Park, on the Sylvia Grinnell River that flows in from Frobisher Bay.

“The reason why I’m trying my efforts in the Pangnirtung area is because it’s my hometown and, talking to a bunch of people there, I really found that Pangnirtung needs something else other than fishing,” he says.

“If there could be a mine opened up nearby, or kind of nearby, that would create a lot of jobs.” 

It is also a way to apply age-old skills and knowledge of the land in newer ways. 

“[It’s about] looking at the land and not looking for animals on the land, and that takes a lot of getting used to,” Dialla says. 

“I realized a few times looking through the binoculars that I’m not supposed to be looking for caribou here, but I’m looking for caribou,” he says. At the same time, he adds, most hunters have a story about being out on the land and seeing a particularly interesting rock.

For William Rowsell, a first-timer in the prospecting course in Iqaluit, it’s a full-circle moment following a childhood of collecting rocks. 

Rowsell was raised in Kinngait, formerly called Cape Dorset and hailed as the “most artistic community in Canada” and the “capital of Inuit art.” Rowsell remembers going out on the land with his father to collect soapstone for others to carve. 

These days, Rowsell’s son comes along to collect rocks in Iqaluit, where they now live. It is one of the reasons Rowsell took the course, “to regain the knowledge” and have more to teach his son.  

“I honestly had forgotten about everything that I learned in geology in high school, and not only in high school but in life when my father was teaching me about rocks,” Rowsell says.

The course roused other memories from his childhood: of a giant patch of orange rock in Kinngait on which he and his friends would play. 

After a few days in a classroom, students use what they’ve learned about prospecting in the field. Matilda Pinksen, left, and Jonathan Enns pair up and note down the GPS coordinates for their first location. Using a hand magnet and a rock pick, students identified areas with the strongest magnetic pull.

“Some Elders had expressed to us that we shouldn’t be playing there, in case lightning ever strikes it again. At the time we thought about how we don’t have lightning or thunder [in Kinngait],” he says. Then he learned about gossans, a type of highly oxidized rock that’s often the weathered top of an iron or other mineral deposit. He realized, “this looks very familiar to what I used to play on with my friends.” 

Scientifically speaking, metals do conduct lightning.

“Those Elders could have been spot on with their stories,” he says. “They knew it and they told stories in order to deter curious kids like we were away from spots they’re not supposed to be in.” 

Should that orange rock be unclaimed, Rowsell says he is unsure if he would stake it because claiming that land may not align with Inuit values and his community’s interests. “I love geology but it’s not like that passion to a point where I’m going to focus my entire life to mine something, especially when it’s also not in line with my culture,” Rowsell says.

“I understand that it would be great for the economy in Kinngait, considering it would create jobs and it would create that spark. But I also believe it would take away from the fact that Kinngait is still known for its art. Instead, it would be known for a giant mine right in the middle of town.” 

When photographing sites, Abdullahi encourages students to include a rock pick as a size reference for their find — like this gossan rock.

But putting mining operations in the hands of Inuit could help steer the project by those values. While such ownership doesn’t yet exist in Nunavut, over its border in the Northwest Territories, DEMCo Ltd. is a fully Dene-owned exploration and mining company. In the Yukon, Selkirk First Nation recently purchased the abandoned Minto mine, and may seek to reopen it. 

The recently signed Nunavut Devolution Agreement will come into effect in 2027, and will transfer responsibility for lands and resources from the federal government to the territory. In that context, both Abdullahi and Nunavut’s Minister of Economic Development and Transportation, as well as Mines, David Akeeagok say more Inuit need to have the necessary education and training to get involved in mining and make decisions for the industry moving forward. 

“If you know big mining companies, when they need those minerals, they’re going to start looking for them,” Akeeagok adds. In Nunavut, the proper training can allow Inuit to take the lead. 

“As Inuit, we’ve always advocated that you need to balance the stewardship of the environment and the extraction,” he says. “But when you’re not able to make decisions about the extraction process, then that balance is off.”

For Dialla, from Pangnirtung, his grandmother’s legacy is a part of what brings him out to the prospecting course.

Back when his family was still moving between camps with the seasons, one story goes that his grandmother was walking around one day and found rocks “that looked like broken glass and some of them were round,” Dialla recalls. She picked them up and put them in her pail. 

When Dialla’s grandmother tried to rinse them later, the transparent rocks nearly disappeared under the water. She told her husband or another family member about it. They took some of the rocks and scratched them against a mirror in the sod house. 

Andrew Dialla hopes to get a sample of this marble tested. Marble is a metamorphic rock found across Nunavut, and highly valued because it is one of the rock types often used as carving stone. As well, students used magnifiers to get a closer look at rocks, like this quartz cluster — common in sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and shale.

The mirror broke right away, shocking everyone there. 

“Grandma didn’t know anything about diamonds … she’d never heard of them,” Dialla says. “But listening to her description of the clear rocks that she collected, we always thought they had to have been diamonds.” 

The family believes their spring camping spot, so many years ago, was nearby the current Chidliak diamond exploration site, owned by De Beers.

The family has looked for those rocks in the years since. Dialla says his sisters even tried returning to the spring camp and the qammaq, or sod house, northeast of Iqaluit, where his grandmother had left them when the family migrated again for the summer. But after so much time passing and so many changes to the land, they have had no luck finding it. 

“Grandma’s diamonds were never found,” Dialla says. “They’re still there.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.