Arctic and Northern People are Fighting for Sustainable Communities

OVERVIEW:

• Dr. Chris Southcott studies the social, environmental, and economic challenges confronting Arctic and northern communities
• His groundbreaking research over the last 40 years has helped give people in the north greater control over natural resource development in their traditional territories
• Dr. Southcott was recently named a Chair of Resources and Sustainable Communities at the University of the Arctic

Dr. Chris Southcott Helps Northerners Build Futures on their Terms

In May 2025, Sociology Professor Dr. Chris Southcott made a two-day journey to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. "I flew from Thunder Bay to Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse, and Old Crow to get there," he says.

He's visited the Arctic countless times as part of his trailblazing research work.

Dr. Southcott visits the Arctic about twice a year. "The hardest parts are the eight plane trips it takes to get there and travelling by snowmobile in the cold, but the warmth of the communities definitely makes up for any discomfort."

"My two largest projects covered all of the Far North, from Labrador to the Yukon," Dr. Southcott says. This involved collaborating with communities and researchers across the Circumpolar North, including Greenland, Norway, Russia, Finland, and Alaska.

Throughout his 40-year career, Dr. Southcott has emerged as an international leader in promoting sustainable natural resource development that benefits communities in northern Canada and the Arctic.

His northern research initiatives have secured major grants and advanced the university's research agenda. Dr. Southcott's contributions, and those of researchers across our faculties, have helped build Lakehead into a top-ranked Canadian research university.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Southcott was approached by Indigenous organizations in northern Ontario, including Dennis Cromarty, an Indigenous activist and former Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN).

"They were very worried about the lack of control they had over resource development happening in their communities," Dr. Southcott says. "They wanted me to provide information about impacts and alternative ways of approaching resource extraction that solved challenges shared by northern communities."

"Lakehead was just becoming a research university when I arrived in 1986," Dr. Chris Southcott says. "It adopted a research agenda focused on northern Ontario—in the north for the north." Above, Dr. Southcott and his children near Iqaluit.

Dr. Southcott founded the Social Economy Research Network for Northern Canada in 2006 to look at how community-based organizations in the north could deal with issues linked to resource-extraction industries and other economic drivers in the region.

People in the Far North Seek a Fairer Future

From 2011 to 2019, Dr. Southcott and his research team explored the social, environmental, and economic matters confronting Arctic communities in Canada and the circumpolar world.

This is a crucial issue as global demand for minerals, oil, and gas soars, and a warming climate enables Arctic resources to be extracted on a previously unimaginable scale.

Northern communities, many of them Indigenous, are caught in the crosshairs of this push. Historically, these communities have been almost entirely excluded from both the profits and the jobs that natural resources industries bring to regions. These operations have also damaged the fragile Arctic environment that Indigenous people depend upon for survival.

Inuit communities have modern comprehensive land-claim agreements that give them significant control over resource development, but they still have an uphill battle when it comes to securing fair resource development. "Mining companies come armed with teams of lawyers and experts," Dr. Southcott says.

To overcome these challenges, Dr. Southcott established an international research network called Resources and Sustainable Development in the Arctic (ReSDA).

ReSDA was funded by a $2.5 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). At the time, it was the largest social science grant for northern research in Canada.

"Our mandate was to develop strategies, policies, and tools to keep a larger share of resource development benefits in the Arctic while protecting the environment."

A Unique University Focused on the Circumpolar North

Dr. Southcott's expertise was most recently recognized in 2025 when he was made a Chair of Resources and Sustainable Communities at the University of the Arctic (UArctic).

"My role is to foster research that contributes to the long-term sustainability of people in the north and to advise organizations on circumpolar matters."

He's been closely connected with UArctic since its beginning. "Lakehead hosted the first international meeting of circumpolar universities in 1988, which later grew into the University of the Arctic," Dr. Southcott says.

The University of the Arctic is an international network of 200 universities, colleges, research institutes, organizations, and community partners. In 2012, Dr. Southcott (l) hosted Prince Albert II of Monaco (r) on a visit to the Eastern Canadian Arctic as part of University of the Arctic's Knowledge and Dialogue initiative.

He's currently doing research with the University of Laval, in partnership with the Inuit Circumpolar Council of Canada, investigating whether inequalities increase when mines open up. On his last trip to Inuvik, he presented his findings to local organizations working on issues such as poverty, housing, and substance use problems.

"Carrying out research that northern communities think is useful—and that helps them make informed decisions—is what I'm most proud of having achieved over the last 40 years," Dr. Southcott says.

The support of the Department of Sociology and Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities has made Dr. Southcott's work possible. He has also received funding for his research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), The Government of Canada's New Frontiers in Research Fund, Employment and Social Development Canada, and the National Science Foundation of the United States.