Rethinking the value of ethnographic research through the Montreal Nipivut radio project - Mark Watson

Nipivut (meaning ‘Our Voice’ in Inuktitut) is a Montreal Inuit radio show and the product of a participatory action research project. As an anthropologist, I discuss how the show and the context of its social and organizational relations developed and, more importantly, how its formation over the last 4 years has challenged me to rethink ethnographic practice from an action perspective. Drawing on the central ideas of ITK’s National Inuit Strategy on Research, I describe an attitudinal shift inspired by the Nipivut project that reconceptualizes anthropological practice as ‘future forming’, a perspective that is validation of the research itself, not at the expense of anthropological learning but actually to its benefit.