The Labrador Networks Project Research Team would like to thank the residents of the Happy Valley-Goose Bay Community for their hospitality and contribution to the project. Currently working in Goose Bay are Kirk Dombrowski, Joshua Moses, Sarah Rivera, David Marshall, and Emily Channell. New York contributors are Ric Curtis, Bilal Khan, and Katherine McLean.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Getting Started

We are headed up to Nain to start the fieldwork project on January 9th (Richard Nixon's birthday, actually). I thought as a first post it might be good to put up a link to the project description published by the US National Science Foundation, and a couple of pictures to give a bit more detail about what we are up to. This project is being funded by the Arctic Social Sciences Division of the Office of Polar Programs...NSF Project Description.

In Labrador, Josh and I will be hosted by Fran and Brian Williams, who run a small bed and boarding business from their house. Brian's Nain blog is located just around the blogspot corner at
http://torngats.blogspot.com/

I've stayed with Brian and Fran on two previous summer trips, and am looking forward to spending more time chatting.
Fran is also going to serve as the community liaison for the project in Nain. She is a former president of the Labrador Inuit Association, and long time director of the OKalaKatiget Society.

Not coincidentally, we are renting office space at the OK society, where we will do most of our interviewing. It is a nice new building that is home to the local radio station, and the host to a number of important cultural programs and events.


You may be wondering why we are arriving in January. Well, we took the advice of quite a number of folks who assured us that winter was a good time to reach people in the community. During the rest of the year, many people travel for work, hunting/fishing, and visiting. During winter, people hunker down. So that seemed like a good time to go about interviewing and collecting stories. And apart from the cold, it is actually a beautiful time of year to be in Nain. So, we packed our parkas and are ready to take the Labrador plunge. Should be fun.

I'll close with a summer picture of Nain, from my trip last August. When I get there in a couple weeks, I'll take the same picture....for a seasonal comparison.

In the mean time we will be pulling together the last details for what we expect to be a five month trip. Lot's still to do...ordering backup systems, making sure the leases for office and interview space go through, purchasing wool socks.
Kirk