Innovation, technology and developing the North: Insights from the Arctic for Australia’s remote regions and Indigenous communities

The challenges facing Australia's remote regions and predominately Indigenous communities are not entirely unique.

In northern regions, including most of northern Canada, Alaska, and northern Scandinavia, communities suffer with the overlapping issues of isolation, small populations, economic marginalisation and extreme weather. There is a growing realisation that new technologies, adapted to northern realities, could help address acute issues in health care, housing, food production, education, and environmental protection.

Compared to southern and urban areas, however, northern locations cope with being on the wrong side of the "innovation divide," with limited effort being made to mobilise new technologies to improve the quality of life in the North.

Drawing on his experience in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, Professor Coates offers suggestions on how technological change could bring about significant improvements in the circumstances facing Indigenous and remote communities, perhaps through close collaboration with the peoples of the Far North.

Ken Coates is Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan campus.  Ken was raised in Whitehorse, Yukon, and has long-standing professional and personal interests in Aboriginal rights, northern development, northern Canadian history, science, technology and society, and Japan Studies.

Ken has written extensively on Aboriginal history, Indigenous-newcomer relations and post-secondary education.  His first major work, Best Left as Indians, examined the history of the Yukon through the lens of Aboriginal-European contact. 

Ken has worked with Aboriginal peoples and organizations and with government agencies responsible for Indigenous affairs across Canada and in New Zealand and Australia. He assisted with Aboriginally-themed documentaries produced by Northern Native Broadcasting Yukon, assisted with land claims research and participated in a variety of national and international collaborations, including serving on the Research Advisory Committee of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Read more about Ken here. 

This event is presented by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research