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Dynamic Inuit Social Strategies in Changing
Environments: A Long-Term Perspective
DAN
T. Max Friesen
Abstract
This paper presents an overview of the International Polar Year (IPY)
research programme Dynamic Inuit Social Strategies in Changing
Environments: A Long-Term Perspective. For this project, research
teams from six separate multi-year subprojects performed fieldwork
across much of the Canadian Arctic. Fieldwork and analysis revolved around two primary processes critical to the understanding
of Inuit history: first, is the migration from Alaska to the east by the
earliest Inuit, known as ‘Thule’, an apparently rapid event which
replaced populations of the earlier, and culturally very different
Dorset tradition; second, is the transformation of Thule Inuit into
their more diverse recent cultural forms, involving abandonment of
some regions, combined with major changes in settlement patterns,
artifact form, architecture, economy, and social organization. The
ultimate goal of the project is to understand the variable roles of
climate change and social structures on the culture change which
can be observed during the past 800 years of Inuit history.
Introduction: Background and development of the
project
with modern archaeometric methods such as sourcing of
materials based on trace elements and stable isotopes, in
an effort to reconstruct interactions as a central set of phenomena needed to understand Inuit history. Inspired by
the concept of a ‘Polar Year’, the original proposal was
built around a single intensive field season, during which
several teams would disperse across the eastern Arctic to
collect oral histories and excavate important sites. Sites
would be chosen on the basis of their proximity to modern Inuit communities in order to allow collaboration with
Inuit organizations; thus, the title ‘Arctic Connections’
was intended to signify not only connections between past
peoples, but also connections between archaeologists and
Inuit communities.
This pre-proposal was based on two of the six primary
themes identified by the international IPY planning process. First was Theme 2: Change in Polar Regions. This was
a natural fit for archaeology, and would be manifested by
our emphasis on interaction as a driver for social change in
Inuit societies over the past 1,000 years. Second was Theme
6: Human Societies in Polar Regions. Again, this was a
This paper presents an introduction to the International
Polar Year (IPY) project Dynamic Inuit Social Strategies
in Changing Environments: A Long-Term Perspective. A
more concise version of the project title, Dynamic Inuit
Societies in Arctic History (DISAH), will be used throughout the remainder of this paper. To provide context for
the project, this section will present a brief history of the
development of the project, emphasizing how academic
goals intersected with complex administrative processes
at the international and national levels.
In January of 2005, as part of the Canadian IPY planning process, a small group of researchers submitted a preproposal for a project entitled ‘Arctic Connections through
Space and Time: The Archaeology of Inuit Interaction’.
This proposal concentrated on evidence for interaction in
the Arctic, as manifested in phenomena such as trade, information exchange, and conflict. The researchers envisioned
combining Inuit oral history and archaeological excavation
Keywords
International Polar Year, archaeology, Thule, Inuit, Canadian Arctic, climate change.
T. Max Friesen
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada
E-mail: [email protected]
Geografisk Tidsskrift
Danish Journal of Geography 110(2):215‑225, 2010
Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2) 215
logical fit for the project, allowing the proposed research
to contribute to the theme’s emphasis on the ‘cultural, historical, and social processes that shape the sustainability
of circumpolar human societies’.
Following the pre-proposal stage came an interlude
when projects at local, regional, and national levels joined
together as international consortia, in order to receive formal approval from the international IPY committee. By
May of 2005, a number of like-minded projects with researchers from Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greenland,
Norway, and Sweden collaborated on an international proposal originally entitled ‘Cultural and Social Strategies in
Dynamic Arctic Environments: Diachronic Perspectives
on Movement and Communication’, with Hans Christian
Gulløv of the Danish National Museum as lead applicant.
This eventually morphed into the final international proposal, entitled ‘Dynamic Social Strategies in Arctic Environments: Long-term Perspectives on Movement and
Communication’ (DSS). At this point, 33 researchers were
listed, and an additional country, the U.S.A., had been
added. Of course, as an umbrella for what was envisioned
as a multiplicity of interconnected sub-projects, the frame
of reference was very broad, covering the Canadian Arctic,
Greenland, Fennoscandia and Northern Russia.
The approval of this proposal by the international IPY
office gave it legitimacy, but not money. In fact, one of
the ironies of the IPY process was that it was intended to
function at a fully international level, but all funding was to
be acquired through highly variable national mechanisms.
In the case of Canada, a relatively large funding pool was
eventually created, to which Canadian subcomponents
of the international DSS proposal could apply. However,
rather than emphasizing all six of the major themes promoted by the international IPY committee, two subthemes
were to guide all Canadian research: ‘Health and WellBeing of Northern Communities’ and ‘Climate Change
Impacts and Adaptations’. While these are both laudable
research themes, they were not an easy fit for the original
goals of the ‘Arctic Connections’ pre-proposal. In relation
to the first subtheme, none of our proposed research was
centred explicitly on the well-being of modern northern
communities, despite our proposed close interactions with
Inuit communities. In relation to the second subtheme, our
original research design stressed social, historical, and cultural phenomena at least as much as climate change, despite
our recognition of the importance of this last phenomenon.
Judging ‘climate change’ to be the most natural fit with
many of our goals, at this point the project was reconceived,
with its new title designed to cover several important bases,
216 Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2)
by a) incorporating environmental change into the core of
the research design; b) maintaining an emphasis on Inuit
social phenomena; and c) signalling a close connection to
the international level ‘DSS’ IPY proposal of which this
was a part. This led to the final title, ‘Dynamic Inuit Social Strategies in Changing Environments: A Long-Term
Perspective’ (or, Dynamic Inuit Societies in Arctic History (DISAH)). DISAH was finalized in March 2006, and
has remained extremely close to its original formulation
through the planning, fieldwork, and initial data analysis
stages. Following is a brief overview of the framework for
this research.
Project description and research plan
Key issues in Inuit archaeology
Inuit have lived in the eastern Arctic for approximately 800
years, their culture having developed in the Bering Strait
region during the preceding centuries (Maxwell, 1985;
Dumond, 1990; McGhee, 2004). Although the Inuit past
in the eastern Arctic is complex, to some degree it can be
seen to revolve around two primary processes or sets of
interconnected events: first, is the migration from Alaska
to the east by the earliest Inuit, known as ‘Thule’, an apparently rapid event which replaced populations of the earlier,
and culturally very different Dorset tradition; second, is the
transformation of Thule Inuit into their more diverse recent
cultural forms, involving abandonment of some regions,
combined with major changes in settlement pattern, artifact
form, architecture, economy, and social organization.
Current explanations for the first of these processes, the
Thule migration, remain unresolved and even controversial,
and are based on two quite different sets of factors. The
earliest comprehensive explanation, originally suggested
by Mathiassen (1927), revolved around the centrality of
bowhead whaling to the Thule economy, and posited the
presence of large, unexploited whale populations to the
east of Alaska as a major factor attracting Thule migrants.
In the 1970s, this hypothesis became linked to climate
change, with the suggestion that the warming of the Medieval Warm Period led to increased bowhead ranges that
drew pre-adapted Alaskan whalers to the east (McGhee,
1969/1970; McCartney, 1977). The exact geographic extent
to which bowhead populations expanded, and the issue of
whether the Atlantic and Pacific bowhead populations met
during this period, remain unresolved (Dyke et al., 1996).
The second set of explanations for the Thule migration
revolves around social factors. These include both ‘pushes’
and ‘pulls’ (Anthony, 1990) – in this case, reasons to leave
the western Arctic, and reasons to move to the east. The
pushes have often been implicit, and are based on the fact
that at the time of the migration, the Bering Strait region
was a complex melting pot of peoples with diverse identities, interacting in complex networks of trade, alliance,
and warfare (e.g., Mason, 1998; Maschner, 2000; Harritt,
2004). This was an ideal social and demographic environment to produce ambitious, status-seeking individuals and
groups, and also to create conditions in which some might
be tempted or forced to leave due to demographic stresses,
fear of blood feuds, or other related factors (Arnold &
McCullough, 1990; Stevenson, 1997). ‘Pulls’ to the east
based on social factors revolve around the acquisition of
meteoritic iron from Cape York in Northwest Greenland
(McGhee, 1984), or smelted iron and other European goods
from Norse settlers in Greenland (cf. Holtved, 1944; McCullough, 1989; McGhee, 2004). In this scenario, trade
goods including iron were sought not only due to their
importance to Inuit technology, but also because Thule
Inuit society contained at least incipient social hierarchies
in which powerful individuals acquired and redistributed
exotic materials in order to enhance their prestige and social
authority (e.g., Sheehan, 1995; Whitridge, 1999; Friesen,
2000).
The second major process in Inuit history is the transformation from Thule to modern Inuit. This was a complex,
multilinear process which involved regional population
shifts, changing subsistence strategies, altered settlement
patterns, changes in architecture including a greater emphasis on snow houses, and changes in material culture. These
changes occurred from approximately AD 1400 onward,
although the rate and nature of change varied across different regions, with, for example, complete abandonment
of much of the northern part of the original Thule range
(e.g., McGhee, 1984; Maxwell, 1985); a shift from landbased winter occupations to snow house villages on the
sea ice in the central regions of the Arctic (e.g., Savelle,
1987; McGhee, 2004); and a shift from smaller houses to
large, communal dwellings in parts of Ellesmere Island,
Greenland and Labrador (e.g., Petersen, 1974/1975; Kap­
lan, 1980; Richling, 1993; Schledermann & McCullough,
2003).
As with the Thule migration, explanations for these
changes fall into two main categories: those relating to
changing environments, and those relating to social and
cultural factors. The connection to climate change again
appears to be significant, with changes in Inuit lifeways
generally coincident with the ‘Little Ice Age’, a region-
ally variable period of lower temperatures, increased sea
ice, and changing distributions of major plant and animal
species (e.g., Fitzhugh, 1997; Woollett et al., 2000; Henshaw, 2003), potentially resulting in major changes to the
Thule economy (e.g., Savelle & McCartney, 1988; Sabo,
1991). However, other, equally compelling explanations
also exist for the Thule-Recent Inuit transition. Most importantly, much of this period coincides with increasingly
intense interactions between Inuit and European newcomers. Europeans were a source of material, either traded
or scavenged, employment of various kinds, and ideas.
The archaeological record is rich with the evidence for the
fluctuating presence of these phenomena, especially trade
goods, over time (e.g., Friesen, 1994; Henshaw, 2000). Furthermore, Europeans brought epidemic diseases which had
a major negative impact on many local populations leading
to movement, abandonment, or change (e.g., Keenleyside,
1990; Fortuine, 1992). Finally, Inuit society itself was not
static during this period, and social dynamics within regional groups, households, or other social units could also
drive observed changes (e.g., Kaplan, 1980; Stevenson,
1997).
Cross-cutting research problems
In sum, Inuit culture history in the eastern Arctic can be
seen as fertile ground for exploring the impacts of an environment demonstrably influenced by climate change on the
one hand, and social factors on the other, as they pertain to
the development of human societies. However, there is currently no agreement on the nature and relative importance
of these factors, either as they impact the Thule migration, or the Thule – Recent Inuit Transition. While each
of these processes coincided to some degree with climate
change, other potential factors, including interaction with
others (Dorset Palaeo-Eskimos, subarctic First Nations,
and Europeans), and internal social processes were also
demonstrably operating during this period. Therefore, we
are left with two primary challenges: 1) determining the
relative importance of these various factors on the observed
Inuit culture changes, including the relationships between
factors; and 2) understanding the dynamic role of Inuit
social structures and mechanisms (‘strategies’) in shaping,
enabling, or in some cases constraining the Inuit perceptions of and responses to these various factors.
These primary concerns lead to a series of further questions, which include, but are not limited to: What were the
precise mechanisms through which climate change influenced Inuit cultural development in particular regions?;
How were altered environments or changed prey behavGeografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2) 217
iours and population densities perceived and dealt with in
the context of households, communities, and wider social
networks?; How did the Thule social system, originating
in the complex and densely populated social milieu of
the Bering Strait region, become altered by different, and
changing, environments in the east?; and, How do dynamic
social strategies such as trade, alliance, and population
movement allow Inuit to both buffer potential difficulties,
and take advantage of new opportunities, resulting from
changing environments?
The project was designed to address these questions
through multiple programmes of field research, the pooling
of a variety of theoretical approaches, and the integration
of palaeoenvironmental data with archaeological data. In
terms of theoretical frameworks, the projects are linked by
two general perspectives. First, is the recognition that in
order to understand the ways in which human societies are
organized and change, one must be aware of both environmental factors and the historical trajectories and internal
dynamics of individual societies (e.g., Trigger, 1989; Barnard, 2004; Sassaman, 2004). Second, the various projects
shared the position that social and cultural change cannot
be understood fully through research into only one scale of
social structure; rather, society is best seen as multi-scalar
(e.g., Marquardt, 1985; Gamble, 1999; Whallon, 2006).
As a result, human social change, including that relating
to environmental factors, can only be understood if one
considers archaeological correlates, and actions, of individuals, families, households, local groups or communities,
regional groups, and larger entities often called ‘traditions’
or ‘cultures’ by archaeologists. In terms of methodology,
due to the overwhelming contribution of animal foods to
the Inuit diet, and the usually excellent preservation of bone
in Arctic contexts, all projects had a methodological focus
on zooarchaeology.
More specifically, fieldwork, analysis and interpretation
addressed the following four interconnected issues:
A) The timing and nature of the Thule migration (subprojects 1 and 2). Currently, there is significant controversy over whether the Thule migration occurred around
or shortly after 1000 AD (e.g., Maxwell, 1985; Morrison,
1999) or much later during the 13th century AD (McGhee,
2000, 2004; Friesen & Arnold, 2008). This issue has major
implications for understanding the ways in which climate
change impacted the migration, since climates were not
stable during these crucial centuries, and linkages between
the earliest Thule socioeconomic organization and the environment are poorly understood. DISAH research into the
218 Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2)
chronology of early Thule occupations, the routes taken
by Thule migrants, and the nature of their earliest adaptations in the east is intended to further our understanding of
whether environmental factors played a role in attracting
Thule to the region.
B) Variability in Thule economic and social organization
(subprojects 1, 2, 3, and 4). In terms of economy, Inuit
societies interacted with their environments most directly
through hunting, fishing and gathering, which imposed tight
constraints on (but were not the sole determinants of) settlement patterns, site seasonality, and population densities.
Although Thule were justifiably famous for their prowess
in hunting bowhead whales (e.g., Savelle & McCartney,
1988; McCartney & Savelle, 1993), there are also regions
in which caribou, seals, walrus, fish, and other resources
were primary (e.g., Taylor, 1963; Grønnow et al., 1983;
Morrison, 1983; Stenton, 1991), however this variability
remains poorly understood. As is the case with economy,
Thule social organization is imperfectly understood, but
clearly varied along a number of axes including degree
of social ranking, nature of leadership, size and composition of households, nature of gender roles, and character
of interaction with neighbouring groups as manifested by
trade, conflict, or economic cooperation (Grier & Savelle,
1994; Park, 1997; Friesen, 1999; Whitridge, 1999; Savelle
& Wenzel, 2003). DISAH provides a series of case studies
illustrating the relationships between economic and social
spheres of Thule life. This is crucial to the broader research
strategy, because to understand the eventual changes in
Inuit social organization coincident with climate change,
one must first understand the ‘starting point’, in this case
represented by Thule socioeconomic organization.
C) The role of climate and social interaction in Inuit culture
change (subprojects 3, 5, and 6). Several projects have as
their primary goal the high resolution understanding of
particular key instances of Inuit culture change following
the Thule period. In these cases, social, economic, and environmental factors are being drawn into the interpretation
of changing patterns of architecture, population distribution, economies, and artifact form. Indicators of interactions with ‘outsiders’ especially Europeans, are emphasized
where present.
D) Reconstruction of palaeoenvironments through a variety of data sets, and assessment of their linkages to Inuit
culture change (subprojects 2, 3, 5, and 6). Several projects collected primary palaeoenvironmental data, includ-
ing pollen and diatoms from cored lakes located directly
adjacent to archaeological sites, and variable frequencies
of bowhead whale bones and other macrofossils on dated
beach ridge sequences. Among the major challenges being
addressed are the difficulties in correlating palaeoenvironmental sequences with archaeological events, given the
difficulties inherent in providing precise chronologies for
both (e.g., Jones et al., 1999), and the recognition of short
term fluctuations, in addition to broad long-term trends,
in climate records.
Subproject descriptions
The themes, problems, and interpretive threads identified
in the previous sections are being addressed through six
subprojects (Figure 1). Each approaches a subset of the
overall project goals in a different region of the eastern
Arctic, and each is focused on one part of the Inuit past.
Following are brief overviews of each, in roughly chronological order from the earliest Thule Inuit migration to the
19th century AD.
1) Environment and Society during the Thule Migration
(Max Friesen, University of Toronto). Project 1 was intended to reconstruct the chronology, economy, and social
organization of early Thule occupations in order to understand the mechanisms which allowed Inuit to successfully
colonize a new environment in the Cambridge Bay region
of southeastern Victoria Island, Nunavut. This region is
vital for resolving key issues in the study of the Thule migration, for two reasons. First, it is located on one of two
possible routes from Alaska to the east. Second, nearby
Dorset sites were occupied until the early 13th century,
and possibly later, leading to the possibility that Dorset
and Thule came into face-to-face contact in this region
(Friesen, 2004). Over the IPY period, fieldwork occurred
in cooperation with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society of
Cambridge Bay, with three primary field activities. First,
a combined elders’ oral history camp and archaeological
survey occurred at the traditional fishing and caribou hunting camp Huluraq, northeast of Cambridge Bay. Second
was investigation of three large Late Dorset ‘longhouse’
aggregation sites located on the south coast of Victoria Island 40 km west of Cambridge Bay. By understanding the
Figure 1: Map of the North American
Arctic, indicating locations of the six
subprojects.
Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2) 219
Figure 2: Elders and archaeologists discuss an early Thule house
at the Pembroke site near Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Photo: T. Max
Friesen.
chronology and change through time in this series of over
ten longhouses, we could address the possibility of contact
between Thule and Dorset in this region (Park, 1993, 2000;
Friesen, 2000). Third, we excavated at the Pembroke site
(Figure 2), which is the earliest Thule site in the region, and
thus provides insight into the nature of social and economic
organization during a migratory episode.
2) Timing and Causes of the Early Thule Migration (Arthur
Dyke, Geological Survey of Canada; James Savelle, McGill
University). Project 2 is also centred on the Thule migration, but from very different methodological and regional
perspectives. Its primary goal relates to the potential role of
bowhead whales in the migration, by addressing the issue of
whether ice-free seas expanded during the Medieval Warm
Period to create a ‘bowhead corridor’ in the central Arctic.
In recent times, there has been a large zone in the central
Arctic which has been beyond the range of the Pacific and
Atlantic bowhead whale populations. However, it has long
been hypothesized that during the Medieval Warm Period
the two whale populations may have met, and thus provided an impetus in the form of a high-ranked resource to
Thule migrants. For this project, researchers surveyed the
‘central bowhead corridor’ to search for proxy evidence for
past bowhead ranges, particularly in the form of naturally
beached bowhead carcasses on beach ridges dating to the
Medieval Warm Period (Figure 3). A second goal of this
project was to determine the nature of early Thule occupations during the Medieval Warm Period in this central bowhead corridor region. Thus, the research involved survey for
early Thule sites, followed by targeted excavation of those
judged to date to the early part of the migration.
220 Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2)
Figure 3: Arthur Dyke recording naturally stranded mid-Holocene
bowhead whale cranium. Photo: James Savelle.
3) Palaeoenvironments and Thule Social Change on Melville Peninsula, Nunavut (Sarah Finkelstein, University of
Toronto; Julie Ross, Government of Nunavut). The Melville Peninsula has been occupied for at least 4000 years,
however very little research has focussed on its Thule period occupations. This project was designed to reconstruct
regional Thule socio-economic organization, to produce the
first palaeoenvironmental records from Melville Peninsula,
and to analyze the two data sets together to understand
the ways in which they are related. The two IPY field seasons incorporated a joint field-school for Nunavut high
school and college students in cooperation with the Inuit
Heritage Trust. Excavations focused on a large Thule site
near the community of Hall Beach, which included several
houses with extremely well preserved architecture, material
culture, and faunal remains. A second focus of fieldwork
involved collecting ecological data and sediment cores
from several lakes in the vicinity of the archaeological
sites at Hall Beach (Figure 4). The cores are being used to
generate high-resolution, multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental
records based on both geochemical and biological (pollen,
algae) indicators. These records are being compared with
published data from the better studied Baffin Island region
(e.g., Zdanowicz et al., 2000; Wolfe, 2003) to determine
how the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age affected
ecosystem function.
4) Thule Settlement Patterns and Seasonal Procurement
Strategies in Coastal Nunavik (Daniel Gendron, Avataq
Cultural Institute). Nunavik, consisting of Inuit land in
northern Québec, has seen only limited archaeology relating to the Thule Inuit period. Project 4 was designed to
Figure 4: Jennifer Adams removing algae from rocks in Sarcpa Lake,
interior Melville Peninsula, to obtain information on the chemical
and physical status of freshwater ecosystems. Photo: Sarah Finkelstein.
redress this situation through two intensive field seasons
exploring linkages between climate change and Inuit society in the coastal region of Nunavik. The project is coordinated by Avataq Cultural Institute, the cultural arm of
the Nunavik Inuit Association. In coastal Nunavik, Thule
Inuit winter sites are almost exclusively located on islands,
with very few semi-subterranean dwellings located on the
mainland. In contrast, Spring, Summer, and early Fall sites
appear to be located on both the mainland and on these
same islands. However, the time depth of this pattern, and
the degree to which it changed over time, has not yet been
explored. Therefore, a key goal of this project is to determine whether this pattern has been constant throughout the
Thule/Inuit period, up to the early 20th century, or if the pattern has changed; and if so, what triggered these changes.
Fieldwork occurred in the Inukjuaq region, and was centred
on a Thule site on one of the islands on the coast of Hudson
Bay (Figure 5). Research methods included survey, site
mapping, excavation of houses and middens, and analyses
of artifact and zooarchaeological assemblages.
5) The Komaktorvik Archaeology Project: Inuit Household Economies from the Thule to Historic Periods in
Northern Labrador (Peter Whitridge, Memorial University of Newfoundland; James Woollett, Université Laval).
Project 5 focussed on long-term change in Inuit household
economies in northern Labrador. It involved two seasons
of archaeological survey and excavation, with one season
spent at the large Labrador Inuit winter village of Komaktorvik 1 (IhCw-1), at the mouth of Komaktorvik Fiord,
Figure 5: Community members visit a Thule house excavation in
progress at Drayton Island near Inukjuak, Nunavik. Photo: Avataq
Cultural Institute.
and the second spent in the Nain region (Figure 6). Data
collected are being used to characterize the organization
of household production (of food, fuel, raw materials, and
manufactured goods) in the pre-contact and post-contact
periods through integration of social, economic, historical
and palaeoenvironmental evidence (Kaplan & Woollett,
2000; Woollett et al., 2000). Ultimately, the project seeks
to understand the interaction of climate change, Inuit social dynamics, and interaction between Inuit groups and
other peoples such as Innu, Dorset, and various European groups (Basque whalers, Moravian missionaries,
Hudson’s Bay Company traders, and Newfoundland fishers). Fieldwork included survey and palaeoenvironmental sampling, site mapping, excavation of dwellings and
middens, and analyses of zooarchaeological and artifact
Figure 6: Julia Ford and Sacha Auclair-Vincent excavating House
11 at Green Island 6, northern Labrador. Photo: James Woollett.
Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2) 221
rivers, and coastal locations were undertaken, followed by
excavation of important sites, including a large site relating to Taltheilei (ancestral Chipewyan) occupations. The
results will be used in the Nunavusiutit curriculum by the
Department of Education.
Conclusion
Figure 7: Oral History Research with Inuit Elders from Arviat,
Nunavut. (From left) Philip Kigusiutuak, Louis Angalik, Luke Kiniksi, Donald Uluadluak, Natasha Lyons, Mark Kalluak. Photo:
Peter Dawson.
assemblages. The results are currently being integrated
with oral history and traditional use data collected by
community researchers in Nain, and during arranged visits
by elders at the field site.
6) Resilience, Transformational Change, and the Origins
of Caribou Inuit Culture (Peter Dawson, University of
Calgary; Steven Ferguson, Fisheries and Oceans Canada;
Lisa Hodgetts, University of Western Ontario). This project
investigates Caribou Inuit origins, which have been the
subject of debate for nearly a century. Unlike their Thule
predecessors who relied heavily on the hunting of sea mammals, the early Caribou Inuit began to inhabit interior rivers
and lakes year round sometime prior to the 19th century
(Birket-Smith, 1929). Factors such as population growth
on the coast, the onset of the Little Ice Age, the withdrawal
of Chipewyan due to disease and shifting trade relations,
and the introduction of new technologies such as the rifle
have all been suggested as potential causes (Burch, 1978;
Stewart, 1993; Csonka, 1994, 1995). This project studied
the development of the Caribou Inuit cultural pattern using
an integrative approach for examining complex adaptive
systems. This project uses Resilience Theory (Gunderson
& Holling, 2002) to assess changes in Late Thule and historic Caribou Inuit societies, as indicated through survey,
excavation, palaeoclimatic indicators, zooarchaeology, and
Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (traditional ways of knowing; Figure 7). Fieldwork was centred on the Maguse River system
near Arviat, where archaeological surveys of selected lakes,
222 Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 110(2)
As of early 2010, all major DISAH fieldwork has been
completed. In the broadest sense, it is clear that the concept
of an ‘International Polar Year’ was a success, in that the
fieldwork, and subsequent interaction between researchers,
occurred on a greater scale and with broader geographic
coverage than would ordinarily be possible. Equally important has been the direct participation of and collaboration
with a broad spectrum of Inuit cultural and community
organizations, as well as representatives of the Nunavut and
Federal Governments. Collectively, the project’s participants have addressed critical questions relating not only to
the relationship between climate change and social change,
but also to the dynamic social strategies through which past
Inuit coped with, reacted to, and took advantage of environmental change. Ultimately, we hope that the historical
perspective developed by project members will provide
long-term context for discussions around modern social
and environmental issues in the North.
The project is now entering its final phases, in which
data are analyzed and interpreted, and project participants
begin to deliver conference presentations and publish
scholarly articles, including the three interdisciplinary papers which follow in this journal issue. Over the next few
years, we anticipate an increased pace of publication, much
of which will derive from our concluding symposium in
2011. At this symposium, the specific data and interpretations generated by the six subprojects will be brought
together to address our broader goals, and in particular the
dynamic ways in which internal and external forces impact
Inuit social, cultural, and economic change.
Acknowledgements
Project participants gratefully acknowledge the Canadian
Program for the International Polar Year. We also thank
the organizers of the GeoArk workshop in Copenhagen for
a very stimulating and informative event. Finally, many
thanks to my co-applicants listed above in connection with
the various subprojects, for their forbearance and their vari-
ous written submissions on which I have drawn for the
subproject descriptions.
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