DDN Research Advisory Core Meeting
January 6, 2015
Attending: Tim Jardine, Toddi Steelman, Jennifer Fresque-Baxter, Stuart Macmillan, Kiri
Staples
Action Items
Task
Responsible
Presentation on DDN for SRDP open houses
List of accommodation in Fort Chipewyan for
Toddi
Finalize DDN poster, governance structure
diagrams, TORs, and DDN presentation for
SRDP open houses
Review PAD community coordinator job
description
Pictures of PADEMP, SRDP, and SKRD
meetings for website/poster
Updates to delta network map
Send IDG application draft to Stu and Jen
Kiri
Stu
Kiri
All
Jen, Stu, Tim
Kiri
Kiri
Meeting Minutes
1. Upcoming trips
a) SRDP open house in Fort Smith and Fort Resolution

Tim and Chrystal are confirmed to attend the meetings - they will fly to Fort
Smith and then drive. They are going to attend the open house and talk to a couple
of people as well about their project.

Others confirmed include Karl, Jay, Apurba, Kiri, and Veronica also going. Paul
is unconfirmed, and Lalita won’t be attending

Format of the open house will include posters and booths during the day, with
once an hour presentations (10 minutes). There will also be an evening public
lecture.

SWEEP will have a series of posters for the open house. Is a presentation needed
though?
o Yes, but it doesn’t need a lot of detail – what is SWEEP, what are we
doing, etc. would be good for the public audience
o Posters could focus more on results

The DDN will bring posters as well – one for an overview of the DDN, and then
one for Veronica, Sarah, and Evan’s projects. Is anything else needed?
o Also have room for a presentation on the DDN during the evening session.

How much should the presentation focus on the DDN, and how much should
focus on Veronica’s research?
o Will start with an overview of the DDN, and then get into a very broad
overview of Veronica’s work. She is still talking to community partners
and developing her research questions, so it would be helpful for her to
have side meetings as well for feedback. Once she makes these
connections, she will be able to follow up with people personally.

The daytime sessions and free days will be a great opportunity for getting
community feedback. We could arrange meetings with key representatives and
walk through the governance structures and Terms of Reference that were drafted
in order to get feedback. In the past these one-on-one meetings have proven to be
really valuable. After that point we can pull people together to get the Project
Development Group going.

Logistics
o Transportation – rent vehicle between Fort Smith and Fort Resolution, but
there is only one vehicle rental place in Fort Smith, so the other option is
to fly to Hay River and rent a vehicle there
o Will be driving to Fort Resolution on the morning of the 28th, driving to
Hay River on the 29th, and then flying out on the 30th.
o Accommodation – B&B or motel in Fort Resolution
b) PADEMP Forum in Fort Chipewyan

Travel – from Fort McMurray, can fly (Northwestern Air, Fort McMurray
Aviation) or drive on the winter road (4 hours)

In the past we have found ways to shuttle people from their accommodation to
meeting place (ACFN Youth Elder Centre)

Will send list of accommodation
2. Terms of Reference for Research Advisory Group and Project Development Group
(attached)

Under the “background” section, can write that the Slave River Delta is
represented by the SRDP, because Aurora College, Aurora Research Institute and
GNWT are already a part of the SRDP. The same goes for PADEMP - Parks
Canada is represented within PADEMP and doesn’t have to be listed as a partner
on its own.

The diagram is good. It might be helpful to show that the SRDP, PADEMP, and
SKRD groups advise these smaller core groups. Although they are smaller, these
core groups are still accountable to larger organizations. There are multi-level
linkages that need to be represented in our governance structure.
o Tim Jardine, Graham Strickert and Bob Patrick recently attended a
meeting in Cumberland House where the idea of creating a Stewardship
Group in the Saskatchewan River Delta was discussed. Bob Patrick is
going to put together Insight Development Grant application to get this
going, so down the road there may be a group similar to PADEMP or
SRDP in the SKRD.

On February 12th, PADEMP is having its Steering Committee Meeting. This
would be a good opportunity to get feedback on the TORs and confirm who might
be interested in getting involved in the Project Development Group.

There is a fair bit of overlap between the two groups. What are the main
differences?
o The Research Group is meant to be more on academic side of things,
Project Development Group on community side of things
o Project development more focused on specific research projects. This
group will make sure we are meeting mutual needs of partners, students,
etc. We also want to make sure we have that community connection, are
tracking what the community wants done, and are keeping people in loop
with what is being done in their area and other regions.
o The research advisory side is more focused on how all the different
research pieces connect to each other. It will have a broader scope in terms
of looking for funding opportunities, making sure that we’re not stressing
communities with overlap between projects, and other research questions
that aren’t as relevant at community level.

If anyone has any further comments about the TORs, send them to Kiri.
3. DDN Poster

Format of first poster is better, but font from second poster is good

Could cut down on text (background section especially)

It might be nice to have group photos of our partner organizations/representatives
along with co-investigator pictures

Could make project descriptions less academic – “knowledge mobilization” isn’t
an accessible term for most audiences
o In our presentation we could explore the terminology a bit more to build
capacity around it
o “Sharing knowledge” might be better than “knowledge mobilization” 
Sharing information between people to get it to the people who need it, not
just putting information out there

Evan’s project is more about perspectives of river flows and decision-making
rather than just youth – change description to reflect that
4. Delta Network Map

The purpose of creating the delta network map was to visually represent where
people are working and understand where there are connections

We could take this to another level and be more formal in identifying people and
measuring relationships, but this would require a lot of work to get approvals

Is this useful to us, or are there other ideas for how to move it forward?
o Having this is helpful to see who is working where, but social network
analysis is a huge undertaking though
o It would be nice to represent the connections between SRDP and
PADEMP in some way
o Right now it appears too heavily loaded towards SKRD because there are
names of individuals rather than organizations – could list the groups that
are part of the partner organizations (e.g. SRDP) as a subset and replace
names of representatives with the names of their organizations

We will continue to think about what we want from this. As we continue to foster
relationships and build connections, we would like this map to be more dense in
the future, but need to figure out how to represent/achieve that.
5. Insight Development Grant

Kiri, Evan Andrews, Toddi, Maureen Reed, and Marcia McKenzie are working
on an IDG application focused on the Saskatchewan River Delta. It came out of
Evan’s work, when he attended and helped out with the culture camp in
Cumberland House. He has been talking with Lily, the Vice-Principal at
Charlebois Community school, and Renee, a teacher at the school, as well as with
the First Nation. We want to see if there is work we could do to create model
culture camp experience that could be taken by youth to other deltas, and what
that model could look like in other deltas.

There is a general interest to figure out how we focus more on the youth-oriented
goals of the DDN and formalize it with resources.

The application is due at end of February.

Is there interest in other deltas, or other feedback?
o Sounds like an interesting idea, and there is interest in seeing a draft of the
application
o One challenge with focusing on culture camps could be that there are
differences between cultural groups, but this could be an interesting part of
the question as well.
o Around the theme of youth engagement, Jen is part of three Health Canada
grants exploring youth-led climate change adaptation plans that youth will
be presenting to their Chief and Councils. There are potential linkages
there in terms of youth engagement and the use of photography (they are
focusing on food, but there could be some lessons learned).
o The purpose of the IDG is that it has to be a new insight, and we need to
distinguish it from previous work, so different techniques of cultivating
leadership would be welcomed.
6. Community Coordinator Job description

PAEMP has adapted the version of the description that was circulated after the
last meeting.

There are a couple of areas highlighted related to tenure for discussion – we can
look at this and provide feedback later.

Having these drafts ready might be helpful for the January meeting so we can get
feedback on them – we should try and finalize them before then.