Exploring Beringia: Arctic Encounters, Colonial Knowledges, Violent Legacies

With Peter Martin, University of Nottingham.

Part of the Cultural and Historical Geography Seminar Series.

In this seminar I will present ideas for a project I am currently developing relating to knowledge production and colonial legacies in the Arctic. The project will investigate the ways in which explorers and Inuit regularly worked together in the field to co-produce various types of geographical, environmental, cartographic and ethnographic knowledge. Drawing on the published and unpublished archival materials associated with three nineteenth century Arctic expeditions, this project will uncover and analyse further instances of these indigenous knowledge co-production processes.

Importantly though, the project will also investigate the ways in which the information co-produced during these expeditions was later co-opted to inform and coordinate various colonial governance practices in the Arctic. As will be discussed, these often had dire consequences for the indigenous peoples and communities living there. From the forced relocation of Inuit settlements, to the establishment of residential schools and the pervasive violence that took place within them, imperial Arctic knowledge not only facilitated the implementation of these practices but also provided their intellectual justification and legitimisation.

As scholars continue to tease out the problematic links between explorers, collectors, museums, archives and colonial administrators, the project will offer vital new insights into the ways in which imperial knowledge was produced the in Beringian region. It will therefore provide vital historical context to the multiple injustices that continue to be faced by Arctic indigenous peoples today.

All welcome. Free event.