|
Abstract FROM TRADING POST TO TENT AND BACK AGAIN: SMITHSONIAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE EASTERN ARCTIC AND SUBARCTIC (1881-2007) Stephen Loring As part of the First International Polar Year 1882-1993, the Smithsonian Institution partnered with the US Signal Corps to establish a meteorological and astronomical observatory at the Hudson’s Bay Company Post at Ft. Chimo (Kuujjuaq) on the Koksoak estuary in Ungava Bay. Sent to man the post was the Smithsonian’s most prominent northern naturalist, Lucien Turner. Although constrained by the demanding regime of his observation and recording obligations, Turner was nevertheless able to develop a close rapport with Inuit and Innu families visiting the post, from whom he acquired an extraordinary array of scientific specimens and ethnological materials. The work of the Smithsonian’s pioneering arctic scientists was both intrepid and inspired, but suffered in that they were generally cloistered in their observation posts. Northern native peoples were viewed as part of the arctic ecosystem to be observed, cataloged, and described. For the most part the intellectual landscape of Innu and Inuit groups – the complex web of oral histories and observational knowledge pertaining to animals, weather, and the land – was overlooked and ignored. The Smithsonian collections are a powerful talisman for evoking knowledge, appreciation, and pride in Innu and Inuit heritage and serve as one point of departure for research during the 4th IPY in 2007-2008. Recognition that northern natives have an intellectual, moral, and socio-political mandate to participate in and inform northern research is a fundamental as well as a dramatic change in the practice of scientific research in the North.
|