Research has shown that trust is essential to the functioning of co-management. This is especially true in the Territory of Nunavut where wildlife is an integral part of the lifestyle and culture of Nunavummiut (the people inhabiting Nunavut). In Nunavut, wildlife is managed by a co-management board situated in between federal, territorial, regional, and community governments and organizations. This research explores Inuit attitudes and trust in managing wildlife as part of a co-management system in the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut, Canada. Interviews were conducted in the communities of Igluligaarjuk (Chesterfield Inlet), Tikirarjauq (Whale Cove), and Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake). Even now with the 1993 settlement of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA) and the implementation of a public government in 1999, there is documented evidence that beneficiaries of the NLCA are dissatisfied with wildlife management decisions and do not trust the governing process of co-management. In this study, participants specifically indicated dissatisfaction with regulations and outcomes of current polar bear co-management. It has been predicted that conflicts specific to polar bear management could lead to regulations being ignored or even defied and endanger the entire system of wildlife co-management. Results from this research indicate that dissatisfaction over decisions involving polar bears is dominantly compartmentalized towards the outcomes of polar bear management and does not necessarily apply to the broader system of wildlife co-management. Therefore, in the Kivalliq Region, predicted impacts of dissatisfaction over polar bear co-management may apply directly to the polar bear co-management system but likely not the wildlife co-management system generally. This study provides a forum where Inuit trust in the wildlife co-management system is documented and I hope it will contribute to an increased understanding of Inuit goals in wildlife management and to the discourses on co-management in Nunavut.

In this thesis, a critical analysis is proposed of the relationships between Inuit participation, science and policy in wildlife governance in the Nunavut Territory, Canada. This analysis situates the emergence of a participatory regime for the governance of wildlife in Nunavut, explores its performance and examines the relations between the ways in which wildlife governance arrangements are currently represented in policy and how they are played out in practice across the territory. To pursue these objectives, this research draws upon a number of theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies poised at a crossroads between environmental geography, science and technology studies, political ecology and ecological anthropology. It combines participant observation, semi-directed interviews and literature-based searches with approaches to the study of actor-networks, hybrid forums and scientific practices associated with Latour and Callon, as well as with Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian analyses of power, governmentality and subjectivity. This analysis suggests that the overall rationale within which wildlife governance operates in Nunavut remains largely based on a scientific and bureaucratic framework of resource management that poses significant barriers to the meaningful inclusion of Inuit views. In spite of their participation in wildlife governance through a range of institutional arrangements, consultation practices and research initiatives, the Inuit of Nunavut remain critical of the power relations embedded within existing schemes, where significant decision-making authority remains under the control of the territorial (or federal) government, and where asymmetries persist with regard to the capacity of various actors to produce and mediate their claims. In addition, while the use of Inuit knowledge, or Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, in wildlife governance in Nunavut has produced some collaborative research and management endeavours, it has also crystallised a divide between ‘Inuit’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge, generated unresolved conflicts, fuelled mistrust among wildlife co-management partners and led to an overall limited inclusion of Inuit observations, values and beliefs in decision-making.