Circumpolar Institute seeks to open doors

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Old St. Stephen's College is a quiet corner of campus ? although strictly speaking it's not actually a part of the University of Alberta ? but it houses one of the quietly significant and forward ?thinking organizations in the province. That's the Canadian Circumpolar Institute, the descendant of the better-known Boreal Institute of Northern Studies, which is dedicated to academic and applied research everywhere in the North.

"Our strength is our network, basically," said Clifford Hickey, director of the institute and northern research coordinator for the university's office of the vice=president for research and external affairs. "Our network is worldwide."

Hickey said that the institute acts as a doorway, or introduction service, between those in need of information on the North and those who have it. Academics around the world, but certainly here in Alberta, have been less than effective in explaining what their often-obscure-sounding research projects may have to do with the real world. The Circumpolar Institute acts as a go-between for those academics and communities, businesspeople, governments, students, who need to know what the academics have found out.

"Basically, if I was able to say one thing, to get one message across," Hickey said, "It would be that we're open for business, as academics doing business. This university and other like it has an enormous fund of expertise that can solve problems that (people out there) are facing, and the communities with needs should give us a call.

"Mostly, I act as a traffic cop," he continued, "and introduce people in need to people who can do things for them."

The institute also provides opportunities for many Native people around the North. Hickey is enthusiastic about the educational possibilities offered by the projects conducted there. Aboriginal people, as well as non-Aboriginal people, from the small communities scattered thinly around the pole can gain valuable expertise in assisting, indeed in carrying out, the research facilitated by the Circumpolar Institute.

"Many people are able to take the basic skills they get from assisting in basic research, such as in conducting inventories," said Hickey, "and make use of those skills in their lives in the communities up there. And all of our work has a community focus, of course, in the sense that it's participatory and so very interactive."

"The North," as defined by the institute, includes much of Alberta. The line between the North and what is not considered the North is vague, and extend fairly far south, certainly in the institute's home province.

"We do feel a special obligation to Alberta," Hickey said, "because of being based here and because of our intimate relationship with the people in northern Alberta," He also explained that, as an intermediary in so many deals between those with information and those with a need for it. If a problem is brought to the institute by somebody outside what is strictly the North, the institute can still introduce that somebody to someone who can help to solve his or her problem.

"Hickey highlighted three recent projects in northern Alberta as examples of the cost-effective and useful practical application of academic knowledge practiced by the institute.

"We recently finished a memorandum of agreement between the provincial government and the Whitefish Lake First Nation at Atikameg," he said. "It is the only memorandum of agreement between the province and a b and in Alberta. The government usually negotiates directly with industry on these matters, but the memorandum of agreement looks very good from everybody's point of view. The province tells us that they want to use it as a model for the future, but we'll see what that means in practice."

The Circumpolar Institute is also facilitating a second project at Whitefish Lake, this one on land use. It involves students from both the University of Alberta and the band.

The third project is based at Wabasca, and deal with healing ? both traditional and modern. Hickey said that the questions of how to make use of traditional healing practices in the modern world and how to work within the evolving health care system in Alberta have made it a special challenge, but also potentially especially rewarding.

The institute is able to facilitate or operate projects for a fraction of what it would cost to hire a private consultant, but there are limitations.

"We can make use of the work of students, who get paid in terms of education and experience instead of money, and or professors, who can often work on things for us as an aspect of their research or of their positions with the university, and thus they can do it only for the expenses incurred," Hickey

explained. "But we do not want to compete with consultants, although in fact to some extent I suppose that we do."

"Head-to-head, we can complete almost any project at a much lower cost than a consultant, and we hope we do it with academic balance and (objective) distance," he continued. "But we never take on a project where we cannot publish the results."

This final factor means that Hickey has turned down many projects that would have been very interesting, but academic publication is a must.

"If there are reasons for suppressing the information, or withholding it, as consultants sometimes do for business of for government, then we cannot take on the project," he said. "Our role is to further the base of knowledge, and publication is essential to that."

It's also essential to the enhancement of the reputation of the University of Alberta in the world community, something that the Circumpolar Institute is already doing, and which it will do more of in the future. With the limited funding available to the institute, it may be one of the real bargains on the campus of one of Canada's finest universities.

The Canadian Circumpolar Institute can be contacted at (403) 492-4512.