Elizabeth Tuglavina is next to a quadrat collecting plastic samples on the shore of Hopedale, Newfoundland and Labrador, June 30, 2024.
Credit: Max Liboiron
An Inuit-led initiative to determine and monitor the levels of plastics in Nunatsiavut also led to the development of an ethical research model that fundamentally changed how knowledge was gathered and shared.
The NGPlastics project was launched in 2022 to monitor levels of plastic and trace elements in the foodways and environments of Nunatsiavut, Newfoundland and Labrador. Support was provided for the project by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) through funding from its Arctic and Northern Challenge program and by UK Research and Innovation, as part of the Canada–Inuit Nunangat–United Kingdom (CINUK) Arctic Research Programme.
Led by Inuk researcher Liz Pijogge of the Nunatsiavut Government, with co-leads Dr. Max Liboiron of Memorial University of Newfoundland and Dr. Alex Bond of the UK's Natural History Museum, the project aimed to inform governance decisions on plastic pollution and metals in the environment.
Max Liboiron works with Reuben Flowers to collect Arctic char guts for plastic monitoring during the On the Land workshop in Uivak, Newfoundland and Labrador, June 26, 2024.
Credit: Alex Bond
The main research finding was good news in more ways than one. Researchers found no significant levels of plastics in Nunatsiavut shorelines or animals, which has profoundly positive implications for supporting traditional practices, cultural preservation and food sovereignty in Inuit communities.
"When we did find plastics, they were small enough to pass through the animals without blocking the digestive tract," says Pijoggethe project lead. "This confirms wild food is safe to eat."
The researchers also found that, while most of the plastics they recovered came from local sources, during a workshop in Makkovik in 2023, community members identified some from as far away as Greenland and Italy. They were able to date oil jugs to the 1960s and salmon tags to the 1980s.
An Inuit-led approach to research
A plastics identification table set up in the Nanuk Centre allows community members to help identify the sources, brands and uses of plastics found on shorelines around Hopedale, Newfoundland and Labrador, June 28, 2024.
Credit: Paul McCarney
A key aspect of the project was that it was an Inuit-led approach directed by community members that prioritized the integration of local knowledge systems. This shift to community-based research methodologies not only empowered Inuit researchers, but also centred the project on Inuit knowledge, ensuring it would provide value and create an impact for communities in Nunatsiavut.
"We use mainly established Western scientific methods in the lab, like microscopy and spectrometry," says Dr. Liboiron. "But we also used methods in collaborative analysis such as the On-the-Land Workshop model, participatory statistics and community plastic identification workshops and held facilitated discussions about community attribution and authorship, all of which are key aspects of capacity sharing."
Alex Bond shares his knowledge of what one can tell from a bird feather with the participants in the On the Land workshop in Uivak.
Credit: Laura Crick
For example, after 5 discussions in 3 communities about how Nunatsiavummiut wished to be recognized for their input to research, a consensus emerged "that everyone who attended the workshop should be listed as an author, including all youth, bear guards and camp managers," says Katrina Anthony, an Inuk team member who leads the Community Authorship and Attribution Working Group for the project.
Community members argued that, because the infrastructure, safety, labour and overall context of the workshop created the conditions for specific kinds of input, all members had contributed to the research as authors. In fact, a resulting blog post on community research authorship and attribution in Nunatsiavut named 46 authors, most of them Inuit. The research team also established principles of authorship, now widely shared with other projects within the CINUK programme.
The Inuk-led Community Attribution and Authorship Working Group will continue to foster these conversations and share insights about how Inuit in Nunatsiavut want to be recognized for their skills, knowledge and labour in research.
A model for Arctic research collaboration
Through the collaboration with the UK's National History Museum, the NGPlastics project explored the relationships between colonial museum collections and Inuit communities. By researching who had collected birds from Nunatsiavut and brought them to museums—and why, the project aimed to make this history visible and to strengthen a trend in which museum curators share information about these specimens with Indigenous communities and governments.
The project integrated colonial archival samples with contemporary data to explore long-term trends in pollution and environmental changes. This provided insights into the historical context of plastic and metal contamination, linking these issues to broader environmental changes, including climate change and the introduction of consumer plastics.
Shan Zou of the NRC's Metrology Research Centre provided high-precision measurement and analysis expertise, developing protocols for assessing toxicity and supporting the scientific study of pollution in the Arctic environment. The NRC's participation in the project made it possible to do analyses at a nanoplastic scale that could not be done otherwise. The results showed there were no toxicities from plastics or metals in snow in Hopedale, even when the snow had been gathered from high-activity areas.
Early impacts from the project include methodologies for both Western and Indigenous knowledge and an emphasis on and respect for the need for Inuit data sovereignty and security. The NGPlastics project concluded in 2025. But looking ahead, project partners plan to continue monitoring plastics and trace elements in birds caught for food and to use museum specimens to study contaminants over a 100-year period.
This project also offers a model for other research initiatives, demonstrating how Inuit-led projects can lead to meaningful scientific and social outcomes.