Collaborative management, differential discourse, and youth engagement; a case study of Auyuittuq National Park, Nunavut

The collaborative management arrangements in place for Nunavut’s National Parks demonstrated a shifting trend in Canadian resource management, where Indigenous people are increasingly involved in the governance of traditional lands. This work considered the arrangement in place for Auyuittuq National Park, Nunavut, by exploring the effect that differential discourse had on policy formation and implementation. To focus the research on a single management issue youth engagement was selected for consideration. Employing a qualitative case study strategy of inquiry, data was collected by conducting 50 interviews and 7 focus groups in the park adjacent community of Pangnirtung. The project findings indicated that the Parks Canada Agency’s discourse maintained a dominant position within the management process, such that many of the youth engagement strategies implemented did not account for Inuit cultural practices. As a consequence of this omission, many of the implemented methods were unintuitive to the community, and in some cases served as a barrier to youth participation.