Achievement

The IGERT focus on research ethics and partnering with indigenous communities helped create a research collaboration between IGERT faculty Virginia and Grenoble with Lene Holm (Dir of Envir, Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greenland). From these interactions Grenoble (Linguistics, Univ of Chicago) and Trainee Whitecloud (Ecology) are conducting highly interdisciplinary research on Greenlandic language and traditional uses of plants. Summer '11 they travel to small communities between Nuuk and S. Greenland to interview those still holding knowledge about native plants for food and medicine. Also, they are studying how Greenlandic words for plants and their uses relate to the Inuit language areas of Canada and Alaska. This work may help elucidate the evolution of Inuit language during the westward movement of peoples across the circumpolar north. Early results have been presented to the international community and the knowledge will be shared with Greenland.