Atikamekw Kinokewin, the “living memory”
Like other Indigenous peoples in the world, the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok are particularly concerned by the loss of their knowledge and conscious of the obstacles and the challenges underlying its transmission in today’s context. In face of these preoccupations, and at least in the last twenty years, the Atikamekw Nehirowisiw Nation has elaborated various initiatives in order to document, give value to local knowledge and facilitate its transmission. It is in such a context that the project Atikamekw Kinokewin emerged, in 2006, on the basis of a collaboration between Indigenous experts and academic researchers. The assessment presented in this article works at two interrelated levels, namely a reflection on the experience of the participatory research itself, as well as the progress, the activities and the results of the project Atikamekw Kinokewin. With a view towards the decolonisation of research, the article discusses also some of the challenges, namely at the ethical and methodological levels, inherent in such participatory research with Indigenous communities.