Abstract
HMS Investigator, the British Navy vessel that discovered the North-West Passage in 1850, helped to stake Britain’s claim to Arctic territory. Her crew’s colonial attitudes towards the Indigenous Inuit inhabitants of the region have been perpetuated in archaeological interpretations of the ship’s impact on local Inuit communities and in media coverage of the rediscovery of the ship by archaeologists in 2010, which framed the ship as a symbol of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty. As climate change continues to fuel international debates about the control of Arctic resources and to negatively impact the Arctic archaeological record, Arctic archaeology promises to become increasingly political. In the Canadian Arctic, a range of collaborative projects that bring together archaeologists and Inuit community groups to better understand the human history of the north have made important steps towards decolonizing our discipline and could ripple outwards to support Inuit demands for a voice in international debates about Arctic sovereignty. Should we choose, these projects could also work to change the way the past is mobilized and presented beyond archaeological circles, contributing more directly to social justice on a broader scale.
Keywords
Introduction
In the summer of 2010, HMS Investigator, a sunken British Navy vessel, was discovered in the waters off Banks Island in Canada’s western Arctic, sparking a flurry of media coverage in Canada and abroad. As an archaeologist working with local Inuvialuit (western Canadian Arctic Inuit) to understand the human history of Banks Island, I am interested in the ways this coverage helped to perpetuate the colonial enterprise in which HMS Investigator originally participated. 1 Many articles stressed the impact of goods from the ship on local Inuit populations and many portrayed the ship as a symbol of Canadian sovereignty over Arctic waters. Both themes highlight the political dimension of archaeological research and interpretation in Canada’s Arctic, the former because it portrays Inuit culture as normative and static, the latter because it emphasizes European historic use over centuries of Inuit occupation in support of Canadian Arctic sovereignty.
Any discussion of Canadian sovereignty in the north is fraught with tensions resulting from the country’s colonial history, tensions which also permeate archaeological practice and interpretation in the region. Climate change, which has sparked recent concerns about who controls Arctic waterways, is also having a dramatic impact on the Arctic archaeological record. Here, I argue that as archaeologists and Inuit communities mobilize to address the problem, their collaborations could potentially ripple outwards and help Inuit organizations to reposition themselves within the Canadian nation-state. While Indigenous archaeology programs have made important steps towards decolonizing our discipline, these changes have yet to make a significant impact on the way the past is interpreted and presented beyond archaeological circles. I suggest that if we choose, Arctic archaeology could also contribute more directly to social justice in a broader arena.
The North-West Passage, past and present
The North-West Passage was, for centuries, a holy grail for European explorers. Many resources were expended and many lives lost in the search for a navigable route through the islands of the North American Arctic, which would provide a direct connection between Europe and Asia. Several routes through the Arctic islands do exist, but until recently they were blocked by ice year-round (Figure 1). In recent years, climate change has resulted in a massive reduction in Arctic ice cover, opening one or more routes through the North-West Passage in the summers of 2006–2008 and 2011 (Canadian Ice Service, 2004–2011). As Arctic ice continues to diminish, the passage will inevitably become a viable shipping lane, which has prompted an international dispute about its status.
Map of the North American Arctic showing the main routes of the North-West Passage.
Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic
The legal title to the Arctic islands was transferred from Great Britain to Canada by an imperial Order-in-Council in 1880 (Gaillard, 2001). With the exception of tiny Hans Island, which is claimed by both Canada and Denmark (Byers, 2009; Gaillard, 2001), Canadian sovereignty over the lands and islands of the Arctic archipelago is currently undisputed (Bartenstein, 2010). However, Canada’s control over Arctic waters has been challenged in recent years. The dispute is based on different interpretations of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Canada claims that the waters surrounding the islands of the Arctic archipelago are ‘historic internal waters’, which would give Canada the right to determine which ships may enter them (Gaillard, 2001). In contrast, the United States maintains that the North-West Passage is an international strait, which would mean that all ships are guaranteed transit access (Charron, 2005).
Investigator and the colonial legacy
HMS Investigator was part of Britain’s initial claim-staking exercise in what is now the Canadian Arctic. When Sir John Franklin’s expedition in search of the North-West Passage went missing in 1845, the massive search effort was responsible for mapping large areas of Arctic coastline and claiming vast tracts of territory for the British crown. Investigator, captained by Robert McClure, was one of the many vessels that went in search of Franklin. While it located no trace of Franklin’s party, it did succeed in documenting the existence of the North-West Passage (Osborn, 1969). In October 1850, McClure and his men sighted the frozen strait north of Banks Island that formed the ‘missing link’ to the northern passage. Attempting to sail through it the following summer, the Investigator became trapped in the ice of Mercy Bay (Figure 1). Her crew spent two winters there before abandoning ship in 1853.
The journals of four Investigator crew members, Captain Robert McClure (Osborn, 1969), surgeon Alexander Armstrong (Armstrong, 1857), Inuktitut translator Johann Miertsching (Neatby, 1967) and able seaman James Nelson (Nelson, 1967), reveal their attitudes towards the ‘Esquimaux’ (Inupiat and Inuit) they encountered. Much of the language used to describe the Inuit depicts them as primitive and inferior. They are repeatedly portrayed as unsophisticated, unsavoury and immoral. Epithets used to describe them include: ‘these savage subjects of our most Gracious Queen’ (Armstrong, 1857: 151), ‘uncivilized’ (Nelson, 1967: 763), ‘simple children of nature’ (Neatby, 1967: 45), ‘filthy’ (Armstrong, 1857: 96), ‘animals’ (Armstrong, 1857: 154) and ‘thieving’ (Osborn, 1969: 62).
The European attitudes reflected in these accounts share the ethnocentrism of many scholarly works of the day. For example, Samuel George Morton’s (1839) ranking of the intelligence of ‘races’ based on cranial capacity placed Caucasians above all others and Herbert Spencer’s (1860) concept of cultural evolution posited an inevitable ‘advancement’ from ‘primitive tribes’ to ‘civilization’. Like these texts, the journals were both a product of and contributed to a colonial discourse within nineteenth-century Europe. Portraying the Indigenous peoples encountered during colonial expansion as primitive served to highlight the accomplishments of Europeans, and helped justify the colonial enterprise by presuming European cultural and racial superiority (see Said, 1978).
Archaeology of Investigator goods
The colonial legacy embodied by Investigator, with its Eurocentric stance and discourse of Indigenous inferiority, has influenced previous archaeological interpretation related to the ship. When Investigator was abandoned in 1853, her crew cached most of her remaining supplies onshore (Osborn, 1969: 288). These goods, and the tins and barrels in which many of them were stored, were discovered and utilized by Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) 2 groups from neighbouring Victoria Island, as indicated by oral histories (Stefansson, 1913) and finds of wood and metal from the ship on numerous Inuinnait archaeological sites on Banks Island (Hickey, 1984; Hodgetts et al., 2009; Schledermann et al., 1975; Toews, 1998; Webster, 1996).
Archaeologist Clifford Hickey (1984) proposed that Inuinnait culture underwent a significant transformation due to the influx of goods from the Investigator. He argued that groups closest to Mercy Bay had exclusive access to these objects, which put them in an advantageous trading position. Neighbouring groups compensated by increasing their procurement of other valuable exchange items, such as native copper and soapstone. According to Hickey, these unequal trading relationships and the resulting intensification of trade were responsible for a number of observed differences between Inuinnait and other Inuit groups. He suggests that the unusually large number of named Inuinnait territorial groups (‘-miut’ groups) developed in the second half of the nineteenth century to exploit local concentrations of trade resources. He also argues that the strong Inuinnait emphasis on trade and exchange partnerships developed at this time.
Hickey marshalls very limited evidence in support of his hypothesis. He presents ethnographic accounts (Jenness, 1922; Stefansson, 1913, 1919) and archaeological evidence from his own work on Banks Island and that of others (Hickey, 1984: 19–20, 22; Manning, 1956) to demonstrate that ‘literally tons of valuable metal and wood, as well as other materials and manufactured goods’ (Hickey, 1984: 19), were collected by Inuinnait from the Investigator. He also argues that the higher prevalence and larger size of copper items collected by early twentieth-century ethnographers from the Inuinnait than among those gathered by the Franklin search parties in the mid-nineteenth century indicates a marked increase in the use of native copper (Hickey, 1984: 28). However, he fails to consider the context in which these collections were obtained. The Franklin search parties had relatively limited contact with small numbers of Inuinnait, and obtained only items that could be spared during these brief encounters. Inuinnait would probably have been reluctant to part with their copper tools under such circumstances. Subsequent ethnographers engaged in much more intensive and prolonged interactions with Inuinnait, and were tasked with gathering artifacts for large museums. They therefore had more opportunities to trade for a broader range of goods and would have preferentially selected larger copper items for museum displays.
Hickey himself admits: ‘there is little empirical verification that the proposed changes within Copper Inuit society discussed here actually took place, or if they did that they are causally related to the recovery of the material from the Investigator depots’ (1984: 27). Hickey suggested ways to test his model archaeologically, for example by looking for material evidence of new socio-territorial groupings in the late nineteenth century (1984: 29). In invoking an external trigger to account for cultural differences between Inuit groups, the model was based on a tacit assumption that Inuinnait society would otherwise have persisted unchanged throughout the period in question, and that the unique historical trajectories of regional Inuit groups prior to European contact could not account for their differences. Had Hickey continued his research on Banks Island, his findings and subsequent developments in archaeological theory may have caused him to rethink the model and its underlying assumptions, but his research moved in other directions.
There are several issues at play in this discussion of Hickey’s model. The first relates to the evidence used to support his argument, which is weak. Hickey acknowledges that his work is speculative, and presents it as a hypothesis that could be tested archaeologically, so it is perhaps unfair to criticize him for a lack of evidence. Causation is a second issue, because while one might be able to demonstrate or refute the proposition that a number of changes took place in Inuinnait culture following the abandonment of the Investigator, it would be considerably more difficult to demonstrate a causal relationship between the two. The challenge of demonstrating causation is widespread in archaeology and not isolated to this particular case. A final issue, and perhaps the most important, is the underlying basis for the hypothesis. Even if there were evidence to support its different components, the model flows from several problematic assumptions. It implies a belief that Inuit culture should have been relatively uniform across the Arctic, and that deviations from the ‘norm’ could not be due to internal processes.
Like the journals of the men aboard Investigator, and indeed all histories including this one, Hickey’s work is a product of its times. He was writing prior to recent theoretical developments in the archaeology of colonial encounters. While archaeologists used to think that such cultural interactions resulted in a one-way flow of ideas and change from colonizers to colonized, we now recognize the agency of Indigenous actors (e.g. Ferris, 2009; Rogers, 1990; Rubertone, 2000). Archaeologists like Hickey also framed cultural interactions as ‘culture contact’, emphasizing initial encounters and creating a false divide between the preceeding ‘prehistoric’ period and the resulting ‘historic’ one. Today, archaeologists take a broader temporal perspective, examining these interactions as part of the ongoing historical processes of all groups involved (e.g. Lightfoot, 1995; Murray, 2004; Pauketat, 2001; Silliman, 2005). We also recognize the complexity and fluidity of individual and group identities in such situations (e.g. Gosden, 2004; Loren, 2008; Lyons and Papadopoulos, 2002) and acknowledge that cultural interactions are characterized by continuity as well as change (Silliman, 2009). Rather than focusing on how Investigator goods ‘transformed’ Inuit culture, today’s archaeologists would prefer to examine the ways in which those goods were incorporated into or resisted by existing cultural practices and structures of meaning.
Despite these shifts in archaeological theory, one of the main themes in the media coverage of the Investigator rediscovery in 2010 was the impact of her goods on local Inuit. The find made headlines on Canada’s national television news, and appeared in newspapers across Canada and in numerous other countries. A number of these articles suggest that goods from the ship precipitated important changes in local Inuit culture: Metal and wood taken from Investigator had a major impact on the material culture of the traditional inhabitants of the Western Arctic … Clifford Hickey has published a series of significant studies demonstrating [their contribution to] cultural change among the area’s people. (Globe and Mail, 2010; see also Times of India, 2010; Stechyson, 2010)
Members of Parks Canada’s underwater archaeology service were also quoted as saying the ship had a ‘major impact on [Inuinnait]’ (Bernier in CBC News, 2010) and ‘substantially affected [Inuinnait] material culture and way of life’ (Harris in Struzik, 2010).
In discussing the transformative effect of Investigator goods on Inuinnait culture, the media were drawing from both Hickey’s work and Parks Canada’s underwater archaeology service. Neither the journalists nor the underwater archaeologists acknowledged the speculative nature of these ideas. Nor did they reflect on the assumptions about European and Indigenous culture that underlay them. This lack of critical rigour is perhaps understandable among journalists working to tight deadlines and among Parks Canada’s underwater archaeologists, who may not be familiar with recent literature on Indigenous-colonizer interactions since their unit focuses primarily on European and Euro-Canadian archaeological sites from the last 500 years. Both groups failed to evaluate the weight of evidence in support of Hickey’s hypothesis due to their limited familiarity with his work. They also failed to recognize or question the underlying assumptions. Archaeologists who study encounters between colonizing Europeans and Indigenous peoples may have rejected normative notions of Indigenous culture in which change occurs only in response to external stimuli, but these ideas are still prevalent among many mainstream Canadians and persist in corners of our discipline. Few non-Indigenous Canadians today would espouse the openly disparaging attitudes of the Investigator’s crew towards the Inuit, but apparently straightforward statements about the Investigator’s ‘massive impact’ on Inuinnait culture mask a series of assumptions about the inequality of Inuit people and Europeans, and inadvertently perpetuate them.
The Investigator discovery and Arctic sovereignty
The media were also quick to frame the ship as an assertion of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic (e.g. BBC News, 2010; Martin, 2010b, 2010c). This angle was promoted by Jim Prentice, Canada’s environment minister, who flew north to join the project shortly after the vessel was located. His comments during interviews via satellite phone from Mercy Bay were largely responsible for the link between the ship and Arctic sovereignty. A Calgary Herald article from July 28 states: ‘Finding a relic linked to the discovery of the Northwest Passage represents a reasserted Canadian claim to Arctic sovereignty, says Environment Minister Jim Prentice’ (Martin, 2010a; see also Schwass-Bueckert, 2010). Here, Prentice is presumably linking the discovery of the North-West Passage by Investigator with Canada’s claim to Arctic waters as ‘historic internal waters’ via the transfer of legal title from Great Britain to Canada in 1880.
Another, less frequently quoted, aspect of Prentice’s connection between the HMS Investigator find and Canadian Arctic sovereignty opens a number of questions about the role of the archaeological record in substantiating such claims. In an article in Macleans, Canada’s weekly news magazine, Prentice is quoted as saying the ship ‘represents the convergence of the history of Arctic adventure with the history of Inuit occupation. This is a continuous record of our sovereignty’ (Gohier, 2010). Here, he seems to be implying that the ship, since it became an important source of raw materials for local Inuit following its abandonment, also invokes the long history of Inuit land use in the region in support of Canada’s claim to Arctic sovereignty.
Sovereignty and the Indigenous archaeological record
Why, then, did Prentice not go one step further and invoke the Indigenous archaeology, also being investigated by the Parks Canada team, as an expression of Canada’s claim to Arctic sovereignty? In addition to the search for the Investigator, the team examined a neighbouring site believed to belong to the Thule Inuit period. The Thule were the direct ancestors of modern Inuit populations in the region, who first migrated into the area from Alaska around AD 1250 (Friesen and Arnold, 2008). Their archaeological sites could be used to argue for many hundreds of years of occupation of the region’s land and waterways by Canada’s Inuit. Why did these archaeological remains not feature in the sovereignty rhetoric?
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The site has since been radiocarbon dated to the beginning of the Dorset period, c.2400 BP uncal (Cary, 2012). These people descended from an earlier wave of Arctic migrants and were not directly ancestral to modern Inuit populations, so it would now be difficult to suggest that the site represents ‘a continuous record of Canadian sovereignty’, but during Prentice’s visit, the Thule attribution was unquestioned. The ‘Thule’ site may not have been invoked alongside Investigator as support for Canada’s Arctic sovereignty simply because a stone tent ring (Figure 2) does not have the same visual impact as a 36-metre-long ship (Figure 3). However, I believe the oversight also relates to Canada’s colonial history and the ambiguous place of Indigenous cultures within modern nation-states. Britain’s original claim to what is now Arctic Canada was based, like all colonial claims, on a denial of the territorial rights of the Indigenous population. Within the present context of settled Inuit land claims and varying degrees of self-government across Canada’s north, there remain tensions between sovereignty claims by the nation-state and its Inuit people.
Stone tent ring with remains of whale bone posts at site QaPv-5 (photo courtesy of Edward Eastaugh). Parks Canada archaeologist swimming over the bow of HMS Investigator (photo courtesy of Parks Canada, Brett Seymour, NPS).
Canada, Inuit, and international governance in the Arctic
Inuit from across Canada have been gaining increasing political autonomy in recent decades and have settled land claims agreements with the federal government. The 1984 Inuvialuit Final Agreement in the Western Arctic was followed in 1993 by the Nunavut Land Claims agreement, which led to the creation of Nunavut in 1999. In 2005, the Labrador Inuit Land Claims agreement created the Nunatsiavut regional government within the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Nunavik Inuit Land Claims agreement was settled in northern Quebec in 2006 and negotiations are ongoing to establish a regional Inuit government like that of Nunatsiavut. These land claims agreements were negotiated under different administrations, predominantly Trudeau’s Liberals in the 1970s and early 1980s, Mulroney’s Conservatives from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, and Chretien’s Liberals from the early 1990s to the early 2000s.
In addition to these varying degrees of self-government, Inuit also participate in a ‘diffuse international constituency of people, states and organizations’ (Nichol, 2010: 78) that emerged following the Cold War and promised a cooperative regime for Arctic governance (Dittmer et al., 2011). Canada, under Mulroney and Chretien, played a prominent role in the negotiations that led to the creation of the Arctic Council, perhaps the most notable of these institutions. Founded in 1996, the Arctic Council is a high level intergovernmental forum to ‘provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic states, with the involvement of the Arctic Indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection’ (Arctic Council, 1996). The Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), a major international NGO representing the Inuit of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukotka, is one of several Indigenous groups with permanent participant status.
While previous administrations did not have a perfect record on Inuit issues, 4 recent policies of the Harper government indicate a break with the cooperative spirit of the Arctic Council and the various land claims and self-government agreements between Inuit organizations and the Canadian government. Since 2007, Harper has invoked the slogan ‘use it or lose it’ with reference to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic (Bartenstein, 2010: 69), which ignores the fact that Inuit have been ‘using’ the region for generations (Byers, 2009; Simon, 2009). Beyond the rhetoric, recent actions on the international stage indicate a new unwillingness by the Canadian state to include Inuit organizations in Arctic governance. The UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) was established to help coastal states determine the outer limits of their continental shelves, over which UNCLOS grants them sovereign rights for the purpose of exploration and exploitation of natural resources (UNCLOS, 1982: Article 76). The Ilulissat Declaration of 2008 affirmed the willingness of five coastal Arctic states (Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the USA) to cooperate to resolve current and potential disputes over Arctic maritime boundaries (Byers, 2009; Zellen, 2009). In asserting themselves as the most legitimate participants in the CLCS process, these states have marginalized Indigenous peoples (Arnold, 2012).
The ICC and Inuit Tapirit Kanatami (ITK), Canada’s national Inuit organization, see the Ilulissat Declaration as a transgression of their rights (ICC Canada, 2008). In response, they created the Circumpolar Declaration on Inuit Sovereignty, which asserts their right to self-determination in the Arctic, and to participation in international decision-making forums on Arctic issues (ICC, 2009). They argue that Canadian land claims and self-government processes require the federal government to include them in international discussions of Arctic sovereignty (Arnold, 2012: 115–116). They also draw on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), using it to challenge the state-centred bias of customary international law (Nichol, 2010).
Return to the Investigator
In this context, it is not surprising that Prentice, a minister in Harper’s cabinet, framed the Investigator as a symbol of Canada’s historic claim to sovereignty in the Arctic. He flew north at considerable expense to Canadian taxpayers in order to provide ‘on the spot’ interviews promoting this message. While he may not have deliberately deflected attention away from the much longer record of Inuit occupancy and use in the region (indeed, he did appear to acknowledge the long-standing Inuit presence in the region in at least one interview), his presence at the Investigator site and his commentary clearly gave primacy to European history over Inuit history in establishing Canadian sovereignty. Inuit leaders have suggested that Harper’s ‘use it or lose it’ approach to Arctic sovereignty ignores the current Inuit presence in the region. The case of the Investigator shows that Harper’s government also places limited importance on the long history of Inuit occupation attested by Inuit oral history and the archaeological record in staking Canada’s claim over Arctic ice and waters, despite the fact that previous governments have, in part, based such claims on historic Inuit use of the region 5 (Arnold, 2012; Byers, 2009; Dittmer et al., 2011). The federal government portrayal of the Investigator rediscovery works alongside its participation in the Ilulissat Declaration and its position on UNDRIP to further undermine the right of Inuit organizations to a voice in international decisions about territorial boundaries and resource rights in the Arctic.
Climate change and Indigenous archaeology in the Arctic
As global warming impacts the north, it is not only spurring debates about control over increasingly ice-free waterways and the resources of the ocean floor, but having a dramatic effect on the Arctic archaeological record. Climate change is being felt first and most profoundly in polar regions, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models predict that the greatest increases in temperature and precipitation will occur in high northern latitudes (IPCC, 2007: 14–15). Temperature increase, sea level rise, increased precipitation and flooding, coastal erosion and permafrost melt have all been observed and are predicted to accelerate in the Arctic (Barr, 2009; IPCC, 2007; Olynyk, 2007) and will have a negative impact on archaeological heritage (Blankholm, 2009; Chapman, 2002; Goetz, 2010; UNESCO, 2007). Indeed, archaeological sites in the Canadian Arctic are already being affected (Olynyk, 2007).
In recent decades, archaeologists have recognized that our reconstructions of the past have very real implications in the present, particularly in former settler colonies like Canada. Work such as Hickey’s, which fails to recognize the dynamic nature of Indigenous culture, reflects and helps to perpetuate the marginalization of Indigenous people in the present (e.g. McGuire, 1992, 2008; Trigger, 1984, 1989). Colonial structures are further perpetuated in archaeological practice, which has generally involved non-Indigenous archaeologists evaluating, interpreting and controlling Indigenous archaeological heritage (e.g. Atalay, 2006; McNiven and Russell, 2005). This post-modern critique has spawned a diverse range of collaborative projects, often labelled ‘Indigenous archaeology’, in which archaeologists (an increasing number of them Indigenous) and Indigenous groups work together to tell the stories of the Indigenous past, 6 and Indigenous people are equal partners in all stages of the research process (e.g. Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson, 2007; Colwell-Chanthaphonh et al., 2010; Kerber, 2006; Nicholas and Andrews, 1997; Peck et al., 2003; Silliman, 2008; Smith and Wobst, 2005; Watkins, 2000). This notion of archaeology ‘with, for and by’ Indigenous peoples (Nicholas, 1997) underlies a growing number of projects in the Canadian Arctic.
European archaeologists arrived in the Arctic in the 1920s and began interpreting and presenting Inuit history for the outside world, alienating Inuit from the interpretation of the archaeological record. However, beginning in the 1970s as Inuit mobilized politically and the Inuvialuit and Nunavummiut filed land claims, several projects attempted to engage Inuit more fully in archaeological research (Rowley, 2002). In the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s archaeological field schools were offered by the Northern Heritage Society (Bertulli, 1985; Bielawski, 1984, 1989), the Nunatta campus of Arctic College (Rigby and Stenton, 1992; Stenton and Rigby, 1995), the Igloolik Archaeology Field School (Rowley, 2002) and by the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife and the Avataq Cultural Institute and the Makivik Corporation in northern Quebec (Bielawski, 1989; Rowley, 2002). These projects all involved local youth in fieldwork projects and engaged in most, if not all, of the following activities: engaging elders or entire communities in site visits and presentations of results, helping to develop archaeology-based curriculum at the high school or post-secondary level, bringing together oral history and the archaeological record, and attempting to open a dialogue between Inuit and western ways of knowing about the past.
A series of archaeology projects since the late 1990s have attempted to engage Inuit communities at all stages of the research process from design through implementation. Examples include the Inuvialuit Living History Project (Lyons et al., 2011), the Aulavik Archaeology Project on Banks Island (Hodgetts, 2010; Hodgetts et al., 2009), the Iqaluktuuk Project near Cambridge Bay (Friesen, 2002), Dawson’s work near Arviat (Dawson et al., 2011; Lyons et al., 2010), the Central Coast of Labrador Community Archaeology Project (Loring and Rosenmeier, 2000) and ‘Understanding the Past to Build the Future’, an investigation of Labrador Inuit Métis history (Rankin, 2009). All of these projects seek to integrate oral history into archaeological interpretation and engage Inuit of all generations in the investigation of their past. Many also seek to facilitate dialogue about and access to archaeological research results through project websites and other innovative web-based products.
Climate change, which facilitated the rediscovery of the Investigator and has acted as a catalyst for sovereignty debates in the Arctic, will also help to intensify the political dimension of archaeological research in the Arctic. Its destructive impact on the Arctic archaeological record means that we must act swiftly to assess and mitigate current damage and predict future impacts. Difficult choices will have to be made in order to prioritize sites for protection and excavation. As we face these challenges, our work will inevitably play into ongoing debates about other, perhaps more important, issues facing the north, and about who should have a voice when decisions are made. As the Investigator example illustrates, archaeologists in the Arctic, as elsewhere, have historically served to reinforce colonial attitudes towards Indigenous people through both interpretation and practice. Climate change has turned the world’s attention northward and provides an opportunity for a ‘de-colonized’ Arctic archaeology to contribute to the broader decolonization of Canadian society in a more meaningful way than it might otherwise.
Conclusion
Many have argued that, whether we explicitly acknowledge it or not, archaeology is always political (e.g. Bender, 1998; Haber and Gnecco, 2007; McGuire, 2008; Meskell, 2002; Trigger, 1989). Arctic archaeology promises to become more overtly so as climate change precipitates contests over resources and damages archaeological sites. As the case of the Investigator shows, archaeological research in the Canadian Arctic, because it both explores and is a product of our colonial history, has implications for the question of Arctic sovereignty and how it is asserted, established and contested. For archaeologists working in all northern countries, the ways in which we choose to make archaeological heritage management decisions in the context of global warming will have implications on the broader political stage.
Inuvialuit legal scholar Gordon Christie (2011) suggests that all international forums for Arctic decision-making work within a sovereignty discourse premised on the assumption that defined territories can be controlled by bodies with supreme authority, in this case nation-states. He suggests that in recent decades Inuit people have been working within this discourse, seeking to transform the ways the concept of sovereignty functions in the international arena. In positioning themselves as both ‘a people’ and ‘an Indigenous people’ and calling on international instruments such as the UN Charter and UNDRIP, they are challenging the ‘absolute’ nature of territorial sovereignty and pressing nation-states to engage with them in ‘intergovernmental’ relations. However, Christie argues that these efforts ‘still revolve around a fairly robust notion of “supreme power” vested in sovereign states’ (Christie, 2011: 336) and derive from a European colonial world view. He suggests the Inuit could adopt an alternative strategy, stepping outside the sovereignty discourse and approaching these issues from an Inuit-centred perspective embedded in concepts of responsibility and respect in the interrelations between land and people. This would reveal the sovereignty model as a historically situated cultural construct by highlighting the alternative normative universe of traditional Inuit culture, in which decision-making is structured according to the appropriateness of particular actions rather than focusing on who has the right to decide how to act (Christie, 2011: 341–342).
The media response to the rediscovery of HMS Investigator in 2010 highlights the ways in which archaeological heritage can be mobilized in debates about Arctic sovereignty. The Investigator, past and present, also highlights the inherent contradictions within colonial attitudes towards Inuit people, which have led to their ambiguous position within the modern Canadian state. Arctic archaeologists have a growing record of respectful collaboration with Inuit at all stages of the research process, drawing from multiple perspectives and traditions of thought. By working with Inuit as equal partners in addressing the impacts of climate change, archaeologists and other researchers can help the Inuit to reposition themselves along the lines proposed by Christie in relation to the Canadian nation-state and in the international arena. As archaeologists working from the western normative structures of our discipline forge meaningful partnerships with Inuit, meeting them not as decision-makers inviting input but as partners in a shared enterprise, we give them grounds to demand that the Canadian government do the same.
Is it enough to work with our Indigenous partners to restructure archaeological practice and hope that change will eventually flow outwards to the broader community, or do we have an ethical obligation to actively work to decolonize archaeology as perceived beyond the borders of our discipline? How should we respond when colonial attitudes are perpetuated, generally unwittingly, in representations of archaeological interpretation or the archaeological record in the mainstream media? Atalay argues that archaeologists have a responsibility to ‘[change] the mindset of people on a much broader scale as to what is expected from archaeological knowledge production’ (2008: 38). Raising awareness that the presentation of the past can help to maintain and legitimize colonial power structures in the present will be an important part of this process.
The media coverage of the Investigator rediscovery provided an opportunity for Arctic archaeologists to tap in to the media attention to raise awareness (for example, through letters to the editor) among ‘non-experts’ in southern Canada and beyond of the power imbalances perpetuated in some of the articles. However, media attention is fleeting. How can we reach out to broader audiences on a more ongoing basis, in ways that are proactive rather than reactive? In Arctic archaeology, as in post-colonial contexts throughout the world, attempts to move archaeological practice and interpretation towards a more equitable distribution of power have involved rethinking the products of our research so that they are more relevant, accessible and meaningful for our Indigenous collaborators. Collaborative research is immensely rewarding and produces valuable results, but also requires a substantial investment of time and energy in developing and nurturing the professional and personal relationships upon which it is based and developing a broader range of products for its different target audiences (Lyons, 2011). It is therefore important that any strategy for reaching out to mainstream audiences is pragmatic and builds on existing products. In the Canadian Arctic, the desire to create outcomes useful for Inuit audiences has meant a growing emphasis on web-based platforms for exploring and interacting with virtual representations of material culture and various forms of traditional knowledge, and on curriculum development for local schools. Both are potential vehicles to reach out to a wider audience. We could supplement these existing products with materials and activities that challenge visitors and students to think about how the presentation of the past can perpetuate colonial power relations in the present. While it is true that anyone with internet access can engage with the online content already being developed by Indigenous archaeology projects in the Arctic, these sites are likely to attract people primarily from within the archaeological and Indigenous communities. Having museums and other organizations link to our sites through their own sites could help to expand this audience. The curriculum tools being developed by the collaborative Arctic archaeology projects described above are aimed primarily at Inuit school children from the region in which the research takes place, but also contribute to curriculum themes and goals that are taught across the country. We could substantially increase their impact by encouraging their use in schools in southern Canada as well. Such strategies could obviously be employed by Indigenous archaeology projects in other parts of the world.
The question of advocacy is one that has long been addressed by our colleagues in socio-cultural anthropology, where there is an extensive literature on ‘action anthropology’, ‘advocacy in anthropology’ and ‘applied anthropology’. As we engage more closely with living communities (Indigenous and otherwise) in our work, we are increasingly faced with questions of how our work might contribute to social justice for our collaborators. Whether, how and to what degree we choose to advocate are personal decisions, but the unavoidably political nature of archaeology means that our discipline is ‘at least partly about social justice’ (Zimmerman in Haber and Gnecco, 2007: 406) and our work has the potential to contribute to decolonization beyond our disciplinary boundaries.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Edward Eastaugh who produced Figure 1 and shared his experiences as a member of the 2010 Parks Canada Investigator Re-discovery Project team. Many thanks also to my colleagues at Parks Canada who discussed the project with me. Parks Canada kindly granted permission to reproduce 
. Natasha Lyons pointed me towards several Indigenous archaeology projects in the Arctic and sent me a copy of her forthcoming 2012 article. Three anonymous reviewers provided thoughtful, constructive comments that led me to reflect more carefully on a number of issues. I am very grateful for their insights. I am grateful, too, for the support provided during the writing of this manuscript by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, both at Cambridge University, and a British Academy Visiting Fellowship. All opinions, errors and oversights are, of course, my own.