Colloquium Summary #2

Sarah Schmitt
The Meaning of Ice: People and Sea Ice in Three Arctic Communities
Dr. Shari Fox Gearheard
Broad Research Question
Understanding the arctic environment and the human place in it; namely in
terms of home, food, freedom, tools and clothing.
Relevant Background and Theory
Between the years 1979 and 2013, there has been a 14% loss of all arctic
sea ice per decade; of this ice, less of it is young and it has a lower volume
than ever before. Specifically, sea ice extent change in NW Greenland led to
inaccessible hunting grounds for much of the year, beginning in the 1990s.
Methods
The author sought out to perform a number of siku-Inuit-hila (ice-Inuitweather)-based interviews with Inuit people in three arctic communities:
a) Barrow, Alaska (whaling is a principal trade)
b) Qanaaq, Greenland
c) Clyde River, Canada
As mentioned before, her questions focused on the central concepts of:
home, food, freedom, tools and clothing.
Findings
Some very poignant stories were told in each of the following contexts:
a) Home: seal fetus toy growing up, hunting poster, story of dogsledding,
place to play
b) Food: providing for family, sled dogs as family, story of the exciting
pursuit of a polar bear, whale hunt (motifs of organization and
teamwork)
c) Freedom: ice is the trails that connect people (travel), families, gossip;
sled dogs garner much respect, as they are integral to freedom
d) Tools/Clothing: representative of sea ice as a practice. Parkas keep
people warm and afloat if they fall in the water. There is ingenuity in
many Inuit tools/clothing such as guns, sleds, saws, oil lamps.
Conclusions/Why Do We Care?
The introduction of sea ice as a cultural landscape or ethnographic landscape
is critical. The book she and her collaborators created not only presented a
pressing series of environmental issues (loss of sea ice extent, loss of
hunting grounds, potential for offshore drilling/seismic testing near narwhal
breeding grounds, etc), but it situated these issues in the specific context of
the culture and people who live in the arctic and call it home. As Gearheard

so poignantly concluded this presentation, Ice is a language, a way of life

and a way of knowingin a word, its love.