PolArctic Sanikiluaq Nunavut mariculture AI — Inuit-led, Two-Eyed Seeing, peer-reviewed in Marine Pollution Bulletin 2025

Canada (Nunavut, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Belcher Islands)

PolArctic Sanikiluaq Nunavut mariculture AI

Indigenous-led mariculture AI deployment. First AI to treat Indigenous Knowledge and Western science as equals. Inuktitut + English output. Peer-reviewed in Marine Pollution Bulletin 2025.

Lead actors + named partners

What this deployment does

PolArctic combines satellite data, artificial intelligence (AI), and Indigenous Knowledge to monitor marine habitats in Sanikiluaq, Nunavut (Qikiqtaaluk Region, Belcher Islands). The approach is “Two-Eyed Seeing” (Etuaptmumk) — Albert Marshall’s Mi’kmaw concept that integrates Indigenous Knowledge and Western science as equals.

The deployment specifically:

Substantive applications:

Peer-reviewed status

Iravani, R., Biagi, M., Laforest, S., Lee, K., Isaacman, L., Chen, Z., An, C. (2025). Protecting shorelines in Canadian Indigenous communities: Environmental challenges, policy interventions, and mitigation technologies. Marine Pollution Bulletin 219:118310. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2025.118310. Open access; CC BY 4.0.

PolArctic is explicitly cited as the substantive operational case for Indigenous Knowledge + AI integration for shoreline protection.

Why this deployment matters

PolArctic operationalises concepts that the CARE Principles articulate but do not specify:

The deployment does what FNDGS calls for but does not name the framework as implementation reference. This is the framework-deployment operationalisation pattern — frameworks articulate; deployments operationalise; the alignment is implicit, not explicit.

Funding source

Mixed academic + Indigenous + International. No single federal programme funds PolArctic. This is the framework-deployment funding-instrument gap pattern (G-313).

Operational status

Pilot completed 2021-2022 (Commercial Inshore Fishery Potential Project); subsequent scaling ongoing through 2024-2026 with continued WWF and other funding for follow-on mariculture/sea-ice work; expanded to digital twin of the Arctic Ocean.

G-335: PolArctic production mariculture status post-2022 pilot unclear; the project exists but the operational scaling model is evolving.

Framework citation

PolArctic does not cite OCAP®/CARE/NISR/IEEE 2890-2025 in its published documentation. The deployment integrates IK as equals in training and validation but does not formally name a framework as governing document. This is the framework-deployment operationalisation pattern — frameworks articulate; deployments operationalise; alignment is implicit, not explicit.

Why this matters for talks

For archetype 05 (critical-lens Indigenous sovereignty): PolArctic is the operational case for Two-Eyed Seeing in AI. The talk-ready claim: “PolArctic operationalises the CARE Principles’ ‘Authority to Control’ through Inuit community ownership, and the Two-Eyed Seeing approach through Inuktitut + English output. The deployment is a substantive operational case — but it is not funded through an Indigenous-led-agrifood-AI-specific federal programme.”

For archetype 02 (data-sovereignty Canadian): PolArctic is data-sovereignty-by-design — community-stewarded, multilingual, peer-reviewed. The talk-ready claim: “PolArctic is the operational alternative to vendor-captured AI: Inuit community ownership, peer-reviewed methodology, climate-adaptation focus.”

For archetype 06 (regional-cluster-comparison): PolArctic anchors the Canadian Inuit-led AI cluster distinct from the EU cooperative cluster model and the US land-grant-extension cluster model.

Substantive contested claims surfaced

Substantive gaps surfaced

Freshness and source provenance