KULCHYSKI, Peter and Frank James TESTER, 2007 Kiumajut (Talking Back): Game management and Inuit rights 1900-1970, Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 316 pages.

Kulchyski and Tester’s history of 20th century game management in the eastern Arctic is an important addition to a growing canon of literature on this topic. It should prove essential reading not only for Arctic historians, but also for anyone undertaking the study or practice of wildlife management in the contemporary Arctic. As this volume demonstrates, the ongoing privileging of scientific epistemologies and methods, and misperceptions of Indigenous hunting practices and relationships with animals in the 21st century, have their roots in the development of Canadian wildlife biology over the past century or more. Influenced by the work of Sartre, Kiumajut explores the 20th century management of wildlife through the framework of “totalisation.” In the Canadian context this, the authors argue, was an attempt by the state to absorb Inuit “into the dominant social forms” (p. 7) through the creation of needs—for waged employment, for housing, for the trappings of settlement life—and through the weakening of Inuit relationships with and dependence on Arctic animals. According to Sartre, history is the interplay between totalitarianism and resistance, and the authors make the case that in their earlier volume, Tammarniit(Mistakes) (1994), they concentrated only on the totalising aspect of eastern Arctic history. The title of this current volume suggests that the emphasis has now shifted to Inuit resistance to this process. The authors are quick to point out that this is not a second volume to accompany their 1994 work, although this history of wildlife management and the birth of organised resistance certainly makes an excellent companion piece to that earlier history of Inuit resettlement. The first four chapters of Kiumajut follow the history of the management of wildlife in the eastern Canadian Arctic from 1900 to 1970. Focusing predominantly on caribou, these chapters also delve into the history of the management of musk-ox, polar bears, migratory birds, and walrus. Conservation policy prior to World War II was heavily informed by the demise of wildlife across North America and by ethnocentric and paternalistic state relations with Indigenous hunters. The authors explore the role of southern whalers, traders and trappers in the increased demand for meat and pelts, while the blame for the perceived demise of species was placed firmly on the shoulders of “primitive natives.” In the years following World War II, the personalities and culture of the Dominion/Canadian Wildlife Service heavily informed the management of caribou and other wildlife. The authors examine the flawed assumptions on which scientific “fact” was based—the privileging of certain “expert” non-Inuit witnesses to the exclusion of others, reliance on contested methodologies such as aerial surveying, and perhaps most importantly, the framing of Inuit as primitive destroyers of the very animals on which they depended. As a result, a “caribou crisis” was constructed, leading to inter alia the resettlement of Inuit and provisions to restore caribou populations through the management of Inuit life. Attempts by the Canadian Wildlife Service to “educate” Inuit feature strongly throughout the first four chapters, as the authors critique the paternalistic booklets that were distributed to teach Inuit “correct” caribou hunting methods, and to inform Inuit of the bright possibilities of settlement life and formal employment. Three themes permeate these first four chapters. The first of these explores two questions that appear to have weighed heavily on many branches of the Canadian government through much of the 20th century: What are Inuit? And what is to be done about them? Trying to determine if Inuit should be categorised as Indians, Canadian citizens, or something else, appears to have been at the heart of wildlife management, and the many other totalising processes that effected …