Being the NWT’s climate change archaeologist

The NWT says it’s the only jurisdiction in Canada with a climate change archaeologist.

For the past two and a half years, Mike O’Rourke has helped to mitigate the effects of climate change on historical sites at risk.

“What I do, typically, is look at the impact of climate change on the remains of the past, and how those climate change impacts influence the way we engage with that past, or how heritage is impacted by climate change,” he explained.

“The focus is really looking at how the effects of anthropogenic climate change are affecting the stability of those remains.”

The effects of climate change in the NWT include warming temperatures, more frequent extreme weather events, longer ice-free seasons, coastal and river erosion, and permafrost degradation.

O’Rourke said the NWT has a “really unique archaeological record” in which many artifacts are preserved in the permafrost.

He pointed to the work of Chuck Arnold, an archaeologist and former director of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, who O’Rourke said recovered a 2,400-year-old child’s kamik – a traditional Inuit boot – in the 1980s.

But climate change is increasingly threatening those sites, according to O’Rourke.

“Heritage in and of itself, I think is really important and particularly within the NWT. There’s such a deep history of Indigenous occupation of these lands,” O’Rourke said.

“When we look at the impacts of climate change – which really are tied to the impacts of colonialism, to the rise of capitalism, the industrialization – those impacts can be potentially construed as colonial impacts.”

The NWT government’s Department of Environment and Climate Change says no other province or territory offers this kind of job. The territorial government estimates there are more than 6,500 recorded archaeological sites across the NWT.

O’Rourke said his work currently focuses on Beaufort Delta sites at risk from coastal erosion. He is working with the Inuvialuit Land Administration and the Tuktoyaktuk Hunters and Trappers Committee.

He said erosion is “mechanically removing features from these sites at a really rapid pace … It’s difficult to kind-of get your head around. You know, if we wait two years, how much of this site is actually going to be left? We need to act sooner than later.”

Some sites, O’Rourke said, are losing one to two metres of coastline per year. Others are losing five or even 10.

One site on his list is Kitigaaryuit, a historic Inuvialuit settlement and important seasonal gathering-place to hunt beluga whale. The Hudson’s Bay Company opened a trading post there in 1912 and it was declared a national historic site in 1978.

O’Rourke said sites where mitigation takes place are chosen based on shoreline erosion models, field visits, aerial images and input from communities.

“Not everybody wants to see mitigation work done,” he said. “So it’s really important that we take our direction from individual communities.”

The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and the chair of the Tuktoyaktuk Hunters and Trappers Committee did not return requests for comment.