| Summary: | Helicobacter pylori is a bacterial infection of the stomach lining known to cause ulcers and stomach cancer This infection has become a major concern of Indigenous peoples living in the Northwest Territories, where H. pylori infection and stomach cancer are more prevalent relative to much of southern Canada and the United States. I joined the Canadian North Helicobacter pylori (CAN Help ) Working Group in 2010 to conduct participant observation in the Aklavik H. pylori Project (AHPP) and identify ways that ethnography can be integrated into the ongoing multi-pronged research that incorporates epidemiology, microbiology, gastroenterology, knowledge translation, and the development of public health policy. Between September, 2011 and June, 2012, I lived as a participant observer in Aklavik. I led an epidemiological study of the incidence and re-infection of H. pylori infection. I examined how different risk perceptions emerge from processes of “making sense” of H. pylori as a “pathogen” or as a “contaminant” and described how these different constructions influence people’s behaviours. Ethnography, in this way, can make visible the lenses through which different groups of actors perceive, experience, and react to H. pylori infection. The recognition that the social inequities most strongly associated with H. pylori infection and re-infection that exist today are the result of Aklavik’s colonial history is one example of a space in which different lenses can be brought into a shared focus. From such shared understandings, consensus knowledge can be built collaboratively between outside researchers and Indigenous Arctic communities in an ongoing, and community-driven, research project. Furthermore, I critically examined the definition and use of the “household” as a level-unit of risk assessment and have outlined steps for assessing possible risk factors as these are distributed across multi-household extended kin groups that can be identified and followed in long-term research. Doctor of Social Science
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