The Committee has met over 40 times since its creation in 2016. Among other things, the Committee has developed the overall research protocol (including the central Research Questions), the terms of reference for the individual research components, recruiting researchers, reviewing interim reports, ensuring the links between research components and, finally, providing support to the research teams as they carry out their work.
A major focus of the Steering Committee is combining Cree Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Western Science. Indeed, Cree coastal land users play a key role in the research project, not only as guides and boat drivers, but as active knowledge contributors throughout the data collection process. While Traditional Knowledge is also a focus of one of the research components, it is also omnipresent in all of the components.
To achieve this end, biologists from the Canada Wildlife Service and Cree Regional Government, as well as three Hydro-Québec representatives provide support in developing the scoping of the research and evaluating deliverables.
Finally, the Steering Committee oversees the work of the Cree field team, made up of the Field Coordinator and the Assistant Field Coordinator.
The mandate of the Steering Committee, as established by the Agreement signed between the Grand Council of the Crees, Niskamoon Corporation and Hydro-Québec in August 2016 shall be to:
- Elaborate a Comprehensive Program in connection with purpose of this agreement pursuant to Section 1 herein;
- See to the implementation of the Comprehensive Program;
- Review and comment specific aspects of each individual component of the research program, including terms of reference, results and conclusions in a constructive format lending to the credibility of the research.