By Maike Schmieding, Research Chair for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at Keyano College.
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, located in the Northeastern part of the province Alberta in Canada, is an interesting place to research. The municipality is comparable to Austria in size, sparsely populated, wild in nature and beautiful in summer and winter. The winter months can drop to –50 degrees Celsius, and it is not uncommon to see Northern Lights from your couch. The Regional Municipality with its urban services area of Fort McMurray is mostly known in Canada for the Athabasca oil fields, one of the world’s largest reserves of oil. The region has been through many gold rushes and busts, with the population doubling and tripling in size, big oil company players substituting the local work force with fly-in-fly-out camp workers from all over Canada. Fort McMurray attracted international attention in 2016 when the Horseshoe Wildfire prompted an evacuation of 80,000 people and destroyed 2,400 homes. In 2020, the downtown core flooded, impacting more than 13,000 people.
In 2024, Keyano College, a local Community College in Fort McMurray proudly residing on Treaty 8 territory, was awarded $750,000 through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to support a research program into Human Sustainability in the North. As with many research projects, this program was built on the needs and desires of the local population, and where Keyano College and their partners saw gaps in research.
When I first started thinking about what kind of research project would serve our community best, I investigated research that had historically been done in this region. To no surprise, most research surrounded the oilsands and the natural disasters our community has experienced. But one more thing stood out to me: most research has been conducted by outside agents, rarely engaging with local populations besides data collection without meaningful collaboration, regularly utilizing research methods that could be handled from a distance such as social media or phone calls and leaving without sharing findings or providing tangible benefits. Extractive methods frequently ignore local knowledge systems and cultural contexts, leading to conclusions that are inaccurate, irrelevant, or even harmful. The lack of reciprocity in these practices reinforces systemic inequities and further disconnects rural, remote and Northern communities from decisions that affect their lives and land.
I believe residents of remote and Northern communities deserve more. This NSERC funded research program will be driven by community for community, centering the voices, needs, and knowledge of the people who live rural, remote and Northern. Our communities possess deep-rooted knowledge of our environment, traditions, and social systems. Community-based research will ensure that research addresses the actual priorities of the community, rather than imposing external assumptions or goals. This program will also strengthen local capacity by training community members in research skills and providing opportunities for youth engagement, leadership development, and knowledge sharing. In Northern Alberta, where geographic isolation can limit access to resources and representation, this research program will be a tool for empowerment and advocacy. The program will support community-driven solutions to issues like environmental change, health disparities, housing, or education in rural, remote and Northern communities, ensuring that outcomes are both meaningful and actionable. In this way, community-based research not only generates more grounded and ethical data—it also contributes to long-term community resilience and self-determination and will inform future research behavior in rural, remote, and Northern communities by modeling and developing best practices.
Photo taken by Brent Wagner on the Winter Road between Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan