Inuit Voices: Community-Based Archaeology across the North American Arctic

This special issue of Études Inuit Studies celebrates Inuit voices in community-based archaeology across the North American Arctic. Inuit communities and their ancestors have, of course, always been interested in and engaged with their archaeological histories, origin stories, and foundational narratives. Over the course of the past several centuries, many facets of these relationships have been systematically severed through intensive processes of colonization and bureaucratization, as well as the concomitant removal of heritage concerns from family and community hands (see papers in Nicholas and Andrews 1997; Rowley 2002). Over the past half-century, Inuit have responded to these processes of erasure through steady re-claiming of voice, power, and authority over (1) archaeological processes, (2) the materials and belongings they involve, (3) the places cultural objects are held “in trust”, and (4) the expanding ways in which archaeological knowledge is generated and used (e.g., Dawson et al 2018; Griebel et al. 2016; Loring 2008; Lyons 2013, 2016; Hillerdal, this volume). This work requires constant vigilance (and agitation) because the pernicious processes of colonizing proceed apace; thus, the act of decolonizing has no foreseeable end (Audla and Smith 2014; Auger 2018; Desmarais et al. 2021).

Centering Inuit perspectives in research is fundamental to shifting the ways that archaeological practice is carried out in the North. Non-Indigenous archaeologists, while often well-intentioned, have voracious appetites for scientific knowledge about the past (e.g., Ferris and Dent 2020). They/we travel North with both frequency and intensity, and are often unconditioned to taking “no” for an answer (Marek-Martinez 2021). Inuit decision-makers and cultural organizations—such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council (or ICC, representing Inuit member organizations in Alaska, Canada and Greenland) (2021) and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) (2018),—have asserted sovereign control over many aspects of research and practice and are now influencing permitting structures and demanding various levels of community consultation and participation in archaeological work. An ever-increasing proportion of archaeologists have embraced community practice, with its tenets of co-direction and co-creation of knowledge with Indigenous community members, land keepers, and knowledge holders, as a primary mode of practice. This orientation is ethically prompted and supported by the mandates of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and by funders who have changed their recommendations in response (e.g., Supernant 2020).

Few archaeologists, however, are formally trained to negotiate the complex transdisciplinary research and practice spaces demanded by community-based archaeology, especially those forms of collaboration truly directed by community heritage objectives (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2007). This work requires the disrupting, un-settling and un-disciplining of established modes of practice (Kelvin and Hodgetts 2020; Schneider and Panich 2022), and the simultaneous experimentation with new approaches to pedagogy and field training, awareness of cultural protocols, sensitivities to the ethics of care, attention to data governance, and practice in developing principles of community and capacity (e.g., Douglass 2020; Gupta et al. 2020; Laluk and Burnette 2021; Peuramaki-Brown 2020; Supernant et al. 2020). In asking how archaeology can help decolonize the way institutions (and practitioners!) think, Atalay (2019, 519) has endorsed the strength and veracity of the collective over the whims of the individual: “thinking-with, listening to and working alongside our community partners and the lands they are in relationship with…provide[s] models for how, and in which ways, our practices can be designed anew.” In the North, such collectivist thinking is essential to addressing the myriad challenges wrought by the climate crisis, a discussion led by Inuit activists (Watt-Cloutier 2015; Pokiak 2020). Here, the applied and multi-perspective nature of community-driven research is critical to assessment and mitigation efforts, and community archaeology can be a particular showcase for transdisciplinary research and applied practice (Desjardins et al. 2020; Friesen 2015; Hillerdal et al. 2019; Lyons et al. 2023; O’Rourke 2018).

This special issue has been organized in part to inspire the efforts of collective-thinking archaeological teams working across the circumpolar North. We take the ever-optimistic view that with enough will, change can be cultivated in all spaces of archaeological practice, whether in compliance, government, academia, or other sectors (Atalay 2019; Ferris and Dent 2020; Lyons et al. 2022; Novotny 2020; Rankin and Gaulton 2021). We recognize that there is no one way to conduct community-based archaeology, but close attention to several facets of practice is key. For instance, we can all learn from process-oriented narratives examining the origins and pathways of particular partnerships; the negotiation of their goals, forms, and directions, and/or the complexities, specificities, and dynamics of their personnel and trajectories (Martindale et al. 2016; Supernant and Warrick 2014; Wylie 2019). Another critical piece is the sustained engagement of youth alongside the encouragement, mentoring, and financial support of the careers of young Indigenous archaeologists. Together, such practices are shifting the politics of voice and knowledge generation in the heritage arena.

As guest editors, we sought to highlight a variety of long-term, community-based archaeology projects in this special issue. We invited a range of contributors to speak to the questions, ethics, successes, and missteps they have experienced in their respective contexts of work, in ways of their own choosing. We particularly wished to hear the perspectives of Inuit who conduct or work with archaeology. And we sought contributors representing different generations (with emphasis on emerging scholars), working contexts, and gendered orientations. All of the papers presented are written by teams of Inuit and their/our archaeological allies who are engaging in partnerships across Inuit Nunangat (the traditional Inuit territories of what is now Canada), Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) and Alaska. Contributors responded with a variety of perspectives and formats, writing project histories and narratives in plain language, capturing dialogues between research partners, and presenting segments of orally-relayed stories and contemporary experiences.

Representing Inuit in our/their own voices and languages was central to the goals of this volume. You will find four of seven papers first-authored by Inuit, including Kleist and colleagues, Gruben and colleagues, Gross and Friesen, and Ulujuk Zawadski and Chemko. A number of papers are fully translated into Inuit languages, including Gross and Friesen into Inuinnaqtun and Rankin and colleagues into Innuttitut. Kleist and colleagues wrote their paper in Kalaallisut and translated it into English. The abstracts of all additional papers are translated from English into regional Inuit languages, and in the case of Gruben and colleagues, into several dialects of Inuvialuktun. Four papers and this introduction are also translated into French.

As an inversion of the normative/colonial order, we present the papers in this volume in a geographic configuration from north to south (Figure 1). Fittingly, this places Mari Kleist, the first Greenlander to have received a PhD in archaeology, and her colleagues, Matthew Walls (University of Calgary), Genoveva Sadorana, Otto Simigaq, and Aleqatsiaq Peary (Inughuit knowledge holders), as the opening paper. Kleist and partners begin with the assertion that access to heritage is not the inherent right of archaeologists; rather, the right to collaborate must be earned. Working through the contingencies of vast distances during Covid, they use their work at Avanersuaq, in Northwest Greenland, to discuss how productive and mutually beneficial research frameworks can be developed. Sean Desjardins (University of Groningen), Sylvie LeBlanc (Nunavut Department of Culture and Heritage), and Elders George Qulaut and Eulalie Angutimarik document and share Igloolik/Iglulik Elders’ memories of and reflections on an important ancestral campsite at Avvajja during recent site visits. Together, their narratives provide a commentary on meaning-making in archaeology and heritage management and the practice of intergenerational knowledge transfer.

Figure 1

Map showing the community-based archaeology projects represented in this issue in order of presentation

Figure by F. Steenhuisen

Moving south and west, two papers focus on Inuvialuit and Inuinnait heritage initiatives. Members of the Inuvialuit Living History Project team, led by Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre Manager Ethel-Jean Gruben (with Ashley Piskor [University of Western Ontario], Mervin Joe [Parks Canada, Inuvik], Lena Kotokak [Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre], Natasha Lyons [Ursus Heritage Consulting], Lisa Hodgetts [University of Western Ontario], Kate Hennessy [Simon Fraser University], Elizabeth Edgerton [Inuvialuit Living History Project], David Stewart [Inuvialuit Communications Society], Charles Arnold [Arctic Institute of North America], and Chris von Szombathy and Jasmine Lukuku [YupLook]), dialogue about the ongoing creation of a new website that builds on and expands the original, launched in 2012: www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca. The conversation reflects on the politics of engaging and representing the individual histories, family experiences, and viewpoints of the six communities of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, on disrupting privilege through practice, and on celebrating the work together through its successes and challenges. Pamela Hakongak Gross, now the Nunavut Minister of Education, and Max Friesen (University of Toronto) provide lessons learned from nearly 25 years of successful collaboration between Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq/Kitikmeot Heritage Society in Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay), Nunavut, and researchers from the University of Toronto. They reflect on the original reasons for pursuing the partnership, the organic evolution of their decision-making model, the variety of project deliverables generated through the pursuit of different project members’ interests, and the great longevity of the partnership.

The final series of papers crisscross the Arctic as we move south. Krista Ulujuk Zawadski (Carleton University) and Ericka Chemko (formerly of Inuit Heritage Trust [IHT]) offer their shared perspective on archaeological field schools sponsored by IHT across Nunavut in the first decade of the 2000s. These collaborators speak to the cultural and practical considerations necessary to foster the interest, engagement, and training of Inuit youth in archaeology, and the role IHT has played in this work. On the west coast of Alaska, Charlotta Hillerdal (University of Aberdeen), with Alice Watterson (University of Iceland), M. Akiqaralria Williams, Lonny Alaskuk Strunk and Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland (Quinhagak community members), provide a multivocal narrative about the unfolding of a decade of collaborative archaeology at Nunalleq, the ancestral site of the Quinhagak community. Several generations of Yup’ik talk about the myriad nature of community interactions engendered by the project, from the youth who grew up with the dig to the role it has played in engagement with the Yuptun language, the return to traditional dance, and intergenerational identity making.

Our most southerly paper comes from Northern Labrador, where Lisa Rankin (Memorial University of Newfoundland) describes the work of the Nunatsiavut Heritage Forum with colleagues Jamie Brake (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeology Office), Lena Onalik (Nunatsiavut Government Archaeology Office), Joan Anderson (White Elephant Museum, Makkovik), Marjorie Flowers (Hopedale Inuit Community Government), Nicholas Flowers (Pirurvik Centre, Iqaluit), David Igloliorte (Apvitok Sivumuak Society, Hopedale), Inez Shiwak (Rigolet Heritage Society, Rigolet), and Anthony “Jack” Shiwak (retired from the Rigolet Heritage Society, Rigolet). Since 2010, this annual multi-day workshop has brought together Nunatsiavummiut heritage specialists, researchers, and regulators to discuss issues of shared interest and promote local research priorities, including its role in generating tourism and heritage outreach resources.

We close this introduction with heartfelt thanks to our contributors for the thoughtful, provocative, and insightful pieces they have written. The tone of these papers is hopeful and constructive, and their content is instructive and forward-facing. Many long-term community partnerships are nurturing young people, working in service of the sovereign needs of Inuit communities, integrating Inuit and Western sciences and knowledges, growing local economies, and fostering always necessary cross-cultural engagement. As part of their deliverables, many of these project teams are producing web-based heritage resources targeted to education, outreach, and tourism. In some regions, such as in Quinhagak, Alaska, communities are working with archaeologists to build infrastructure to repatriate and house ancestral belongings. Inuit archaeologists, such as Mari Kleist and Krista Ulujuk Zawaski, are earning PhDs and putting them to work serving Inuit interests. We are encouraged by the emergence of such a variety of forms of inclusive practice driven by Inuit goals and leadership, and we look forward to being a part of the new wave of Inuit-directed archaeology that these projects inspire.