arctic indigeneities, media, and social justice

ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12 – 14, 2015 • UC DAVIS
SYMPOSIUM DESCRIPTION
Co-organizers Jessica Bissett Perea (Native American Studies) and Christyann Darwent (Anthropology)
have brought together scholars, artists, and activists to engage in critical dialogue about media
representations of arctic peoples, cultures, and environments, and their implications for 21st century social
justice movements.
This symposium is the result of collaboration between the UC Davis Native American Studies Department
and the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts to host a Visiting Artist Residency for the award-winning
Canadian Inuit vocalist Tanya Tagaq Gillis. This residency revolves around evening performances of her
multi-media piece “Tanya Tagaq in Concert with Nanook of the North.”
Tanya Tagaq Gillis along with Celina Kalluk, a Canadian Inuit author and vocalist, and Cathy Tagnak
Rexford, an Alaskan Iñupiaq poet, playwright, and community leader, will participate in a moderated
artists panel/conversation about arctic cultural (in)securities, including Inuit people’s ongoing experiences
with colonialism, food insecurities, murdered and missing Aboriginal women, and the role creative and
performing arts play in social justice movements. Celina Kalluk will join Tanya Tagaq Gillis in a lecturedemonstration on traditional Inuit throat singing in conjunction with the C. N. Gorman Museum’s
Canadian Inuit sculpture and print exhibit on Friday afternoon, and Cathy Tagnak Rexford will facilitate an
interactive theatre and drama workshop on Saturday morning.
Research presentations will be given by leading arctic scholars Jessica Bissett Perea, Beverley Diamond,
Ann Fienup-Riordan, Shari Huhndorf, Genevieve LeMoine, and Dylan Robinson. A significant aim of this
symposium is to establish an interdisciplinary Arctic Studies Center and/or Working Group at UC Davis that
would offer a forum to support faculty, students, staff, and community members interested in research
and advocacy in the circumpolar north.
This symposium is FREE and open to the public
with the exception of “Tagaq in Concert with Nanook of the North”
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE
Thursday, March 12
EVENT
MUSO/ETHNO FORUM:
Decolonizing Ethnomusicology
SPEAKER
TIME
LOCATION
Beverley Diamond, Canada
Research Chair in
Ethnomusicology,
Memorial University of
Newfoundland
4:00-6:00
pm
Everson Hall, Rm
266
SPEAKER/ PERFORMER
TIME
LOCATION
Beverley Diamond
1:00-2:30
pm
Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre,
Mondavi Center
RECEPTION
3:00-5:00
pm
Friday, March 13
EVENT
Keynote Lecture: Performing
Sovereignty, Social Justice and
Citizenship in Northern Canada
and Scandinavia
Canadian Inuit Art Exhibition
(Christel & Jurg Bieri Collection)
Gorman Museum/
Hart Hall Rotunda
Inuit Throat Singing: Informal
Lecture/Demonstration + Q&A
Tanya Tagaq Gillis and
Celina Kalluk, Nunavut,
Canada
4:00-5:00
pm
Pre-Concert Talk: “The Sound of
Eskimo,” Sounding Inuit: Listening
Critically to Tanya Tagaq Gillis’
Reclamation of Nanook of the
North
Jessica Bissett Perea,
Native American Studies,
UC Davis
7:00-7:30
pm
Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre,
Mondavi Center
Tagaq in Concert with Nanook of
the North + Q&A
Tagaq Trio
8:00-9:30
pm
Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
Saturday, March 14
EVENT
SPEAKER/PERFORMER
TIME
LOCATION
INTRODUCTIONS
Jessica Bissett Perea &
Christyann Darwent
Dylan Robinson, Canada
Research Chair in
Indigenous Music, Queen's
University
Shari Huhndorf, Native
American Studies &
Comparative Ethnic
Studies, UC Berkeley
Cathy Tagnak Rexford,
Independent Artist, Seattle
9:00-10:00
am
Vanderhoef
Lobby
MORNING REFRESHMENTS
Qimmiit Music: Native
Nationalism Goes to the (Sled)
Dogs
Picturing the Arctic: Culture
and the Politics of Indigenous
Land Claims
Theater Workshop
10:30-11:00
am
Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre
11:00 amnoon
noon-1:30
LUNCH
Arctic Cultural (In)Securities:
In Conversation with Visiting
Artists
10:00-10:30
am
Vanderhoef
Lobby
Tanya Tagaq Gillis
1:30-2:30
pm
Celina Kalluk
Cathy Tagnak Rexford
Candid Camera: Women and
Men in Donald B. MacMillan’s
Arctic Films and
Photographs—from Raw
Footage to Edited Production
Genevieve LeMoine, PearyMacMillan Arctic Museum,
Brunswick, Maine
2:30-3:00
pm
“The World is Changing,
Following Its People”: Lower
Yukon Perspectives on HumanAnimal Relations
Ann Fienup-Riordan, Calista
Education and Culture,
Anchorage, Alaska
3:00-3:30
pm
Arctic Studies Research
Working Group Discussion
Open Forum (Round Table)
Vanderhoef
Lobby
Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre
Pre-Concert Talk
Jessica Bissett Perea
3:30-3:45
pm
3:45-5:00
pm
6:30-7:00
pm
Tagaq in Concert with Nanook
of the North + Q&A
Tagaq Trio
7:00-8:30
pm
Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre
AFTERNOON REFRESHMENTS
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Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre
Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre
ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
Tanya Tagaq in Concert with Nanook of the North
Tagaq reclaims the controversial 1922 silent film Nanook of the North, which is considered the world’s first
major work of non-fiction filmmaking, yet it is rife with contradictions. The film portrays the lives of an Inuk
family in Arctic Canada. Its director, Robert Flaherty, lived and worked with Inuit for years, but still included
staged scenes of buffoonery and feigned Inuit ignorance of modern accoutrements. Working with
composer Derek Charke (whose “Tundra Songs” Tagaq performed with the Kronos Quartet), Tagaq, along
with percussionist Jean Martin and violinist Jesse Zubot, performs a live accompaniment to the film’s silent
images of life in an early 20th-century Inuit community in Northern Quebec.
Drawing on her childhood on Nunavut’s Victoria Island, and on her mother’s memories of forced
relocation from the film’s Northern Quebec location, Tagaq’s sense of the sound of the Arctic spaces
shown in the film transforms the images, adding tremendous feeling and depth to what is a complex mix
of beautiful representations and racially charged clichés. Tanya Tagaq in concert with Nanook of the North
was commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival, where it premiered to critical acclaim in 2012
as part of Toronto International Film Festival First Nations. Tagaq was awarded the Galaxie Rising Star
Award at the 2013 Mundial Montreal for her showcase performance of the program.
Nala, wife of Allakariallak, photo by R. Flaherty (ca. 1920)
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Tanya Tagaq, photo by Ivan Otis (2013)
ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
FEATURED VISITING ARTISTS
Tanya Tagaq Gillis is an award-winning Inuit artist best known for extending the traditional genre of
Inuit vocal games into experimental musical scenes. Born and raised in Cambridge Bay in Nunavut, Tagaq
earned a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. Tagaq’s early career included
touring with Björk and appearing on her 2004 album, Medúlla. Tagaq’s debut album, Sinaa (2005), an
Inuktitut word meaning “edge,” was nominated for five awards at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards,
winning awards for Best Producer/Engineer, Best Album Design, and Tagaq herself won the Best Female
Artist award. Sinaa was also nominated for the Best Aboriginal Recording at the 2006 Juno Awards. In 2007
the world-renowned Kronos Quartet invited Tagaq to participate as co-writer and performer on a project
aptly titled “Nunavut,” which led to ongoing collaborations with the Kronos Quartet. Tagaq’s second
album, Auk/Blood (2008), won a Canadian Aboriginal Music Award and was nominated for two Juno
Awards: Best Aboriginal Recording and Best Instrumental Recording. In 2011, she released a live album
titled Anuraaqtuq, recorded from her May 2010 trio performance at the Festival International de Musique
Actuelle de Victoriaville. Her most recent album, Animism (2014), won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize, which
“rewards creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music by recognizing, then marketing the albums of
the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history.”
Tagaq’s ventures into film include contributing to various soundtracks, as well as a starring role in the short
film Tungijuq (What We Eat) (2009) with Cannes-winning Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk. This film was
selected for Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, and imagineNATIVE Film Fest in 2009.
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
Celina Kalluk is an independent artist who learned Inuit throat singing from her uncle’s wife in the
village of Resolute Bay, Nunavut, where she grew up in the Canadian High Arctic. Kalluk relocated to
Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, where she works as a writer and illustrator. Through her children’s book
“Sweetest Kulu” and her work on children’s schoolbooks, Kalluk has been working to preserve the
Inuktitut language.
Cathy Tagnak Rexford was born in Alaska and is of Iñupiaq, French, German, and English descent.
She is a poet and playwright and earned an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Grounded in
photography and lyric documentary, her poetry has appeared in various anthologies. Her chapbook Black
Ice appeared in Effigies: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing, Pacific Rim (2009), and individual poems
have appeared in Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry (2007) and To Topos Poetry International (1999). She is
the author of A Crane Story (illustrated by Sini Salminen, 2013). Her plays include The Namesake and, with
Challen Wilson, The Winter Overture; Rexford also works on short films. She has received fellowships from
the First Peoples House of Learning and the Rasmuson Foundation. Rexford currently lives in Seattle.
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
INUIT SCULPTURE AND PRINT EXHIBITION
Listening to the Stone:
Inuit Art from the Bieri Family Collection
C.N. Gorman Museum, January 6 – June 11, 2015
Mother and Child Running by Judas Ullulaq (Ooloolah), date unknown; 16 inches; soapstone, bone and antler
Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie/Courtesy Photo
(http://www.davisenterprise.com/arts/uc-davis-alumni-couple-lends-inuit-artwork-for-exhibition/)
This exhibition features contemporary Inuit stone sculpture and prints, privately
collected over the past 30 years by Christel and Jürg Bieri, both of whom are UC
Davis alumni. The works are both figurative and abstract, reflecting the wide range of
techniques, materials, and oral histories employed by contemporary Canadian Inuit
artists. The exhibition includes 58 sculptures and 14 drawings and prints by 45 artists
from throughout Nunangat (Inuit Regions of Canada).
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS
Beverley Diamond, KEYNOTE SPEAKER (Memorial University)
Performing Sovereignty, Social Justice and Citizenship in Northern Canada and
Scandinavia
Abstract: Human rights and social justice issues have been cast in specific ways in Arctic
indigenous communities in relation to divergent interests in resource rights, other economic
enterprises, international security, and the particular adjacencies and agendas of trans-polar
nations. In spite of monumental struggles in the face of relocations, residential schools, and
massive environmental change (to name only a few issues), Indigenous northerners have, in many
instances, claimed sovereignty and defined citizenship on their own terms. The Inuit-controlled
government of Nunavut in Canada (grounded in principles of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit), and the
transnational Sami Parliament in Scandinavia are perhaps two of the most prominent milestones
in this history. Through traditional performance genres, colonial ones, and innovative
contemporary production, performers have also played a significant role in these processes,
asserting relationality—between individuals and communities, between indigenous and settler
communities, between humans and environments—and thus defining citizenship. I want to speak
about how changes in several performance traditions reflect different approaches to sovereignty,
social justice and citizenship. I will focus on three pivotal examples: shifts in Inuit drum dance
performance, the impact of recording technologies on Inuit throat singing and Sami joik, and
reflections on Moravian hymns in the lives of Labrador Inuit. What Ana Maria Ochoa Gaultier
(2014) has recently argued about colonial Colombia could be argued equally for Arctic indigenous
communities: that contrasting ideas about “how the local should sound” are of fundamental
importance in reconfiguring concepts of nature/culture and colonial/modern, and in constituting
the politics of everyday life.
Ann Fienup-Riordan (Calista Heritage)
“The World is Changing, Following Its People”: Lower Yukon Perspectives on HumanAnimal Relations
Abstract: Animal-human-environmental relations form a critical nexus all across the Arctic and are
increasingly the focus of inquiry. These relations remain especially significant in southwest Alaska
where subsistence hunting and fishing are everyday activities during which animals are not viewed
as resources but as co-inhabitants of a sentient world and as non-human persons who like the
environment are responsive to human thought and deed. My brief remarks will touch on the many
qanruyutet (oral instructions) surrounding the treatment of neqa, a word that means both food
and fish, among Yup'ik people living on the lower Yukon River. Just as qanruyutet guide relations
among humans and between humans and animals, they guide human relations with the world
around them. Elders speak at length about these qanruyutet, as well as about their personal
experiences, to teach their youth not merely the physical features of land and sea but ways in
which one's actions elicit reactions in a responsive world.
I conclude that while there are many fruitful connections between Yup'ik knowledge and
Western science, it is important to recognize and respect profound differences between world
views. One excellent way to understand these connections and differences is through long-term
collaborations with communities. Only by working together can we begin to understand not only
what is occurring but why people believe it to be so.
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
Shari M. Huhndorf (UC Berkeley)
Picturing the Arctic: Culture and the Politics of Indigenous Land Claims
Abstract: The post-1960s era has seen major indigenous land claims settlements in the U.S. and
Canada, and these land conflicts have become a key subject of contemporary Native
culture. What can culture contribute to our understanding of colonial dispossession and ongoing
land conflicts? Can it support indigenous claims to land, and if so, how? This paper engages these
questions through an analysis of Erica Lord’s multi-media installation Native American Land
Reclamation Project (2000), which thematizes the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and an
online map created in conjunction with the film Atanarjuat (2001), which represents the newly
formed territory of Nunavut.
Genevieve LeMoine (Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum)
Candid Camera: Women and Men in Donald B. MacMillan’s Arctic Films and
Photographs—from Raw Footage to Edited Production
Abstract: Historic photographs and motion picture film are a rich source of information, but like all
documentary evidence they are complex, their meaning mediated by the eye behind the camera,
and indeed the camera itself. Donald B. MacMillan’s photographs and films, produced over his
long career in the Arctic (1908–1954) represent a unique opportunity for such interpretation.
Unlike many other photographers and filmmakers in the north MacMillan spent extended periods
living and working in several communities, developing long-term relationships with families that
persisted for decades. And although he lectured extensively using his photographs and films, his
images were typically created without any predetermined narrative structure and were rarely
staged. In the raw footage, and 1000’s of photographs he produced, it is possible to get a glimpse
of many aspects of every-day life for men and women. Not surprisingly, much of this has been lost
in the transition to edited film and published photographs. Interpreting the content of such
images requires understanding the context of their production, including the relationship among
the individuals on either side of the camera and their motives in participating in the production of
the images.
Dylan Robinson (Queen’s University)
Qimmiit Music: Native Nationalism Goes to the (Sled) Dogs
Abstract: To what extent should composers who write works about Indigenous culture be held
accountable to understanding the social and political context of those communities their music
represents, and addressing this context through their compositions? This presentation compares
classical compositions written for Inuit throat singers including Alexina Louie’s Take the Dog Sled
(2009) and Derek Charke's Cercle du Nord III. I here confront art music’s fixation on the sonic allure
of difference, and its sanitized depictions of the North’s beauty and references to qimmiit, or sled
dogs, in particular. Drawing upon the discourse of Indigenous literary nationalism that questions
the efficacy of Indigenous creative practice for Native communities, I examine how these musical
representations of dogsled travel perpetuate an idyllic “idea” of north for southern audiences.
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
Jessica Bissett Perea (UC Davis)
“The Sound of Eskimo,” Sounding Inuit: Listening Critically to Tanya Tagaq Gillis’
Reclamation of Nanook of the North
Abstract: This talk explores the innovations of Inuit vocalist Tanya Tagaq Gillis, focusing
specifically on “Tanya Tagaq In Concert with Nanook of the North.” The work, commissioned by
the Toronto International Film Festival and premiered to critical acclaim in 2012, is a collaborative
multimedia piece performed as live accompaniment to screenings of Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook
of the North (1922) featuring improvisations by Tagaq, violinist Jesse Zubot and percussionist Jean
Martin over a pre-recorded soundscape of arctic field recordings and samples of Inuit vocal games
by composer Derek Charke. Tagaq’s voice serves as an intervention to racialized and gendered
colonial logics that resonate throughout historic cue sheets and contemporary scores written for
Flaherty’s film, comprising what I call “the sound of Eskimo.” Tagaq’s reclamation of Nanook of
the North amplifies diverse understandings of what “sounding Inuit” in the twenty-first century
can mean by unsettling colonial representations of Inuit-ness characterized by primitivism, loss,
and silence. This study is positioned as a critical conversation between the interdisciplinary fields
of American music studies and critical Inuit studies, drawing on Beverley Diamond’s “alliance
studies model” to address how Tagaq’s social justice-oriented performance practices express a
transformative futurism via sustainable relationships between humans, animals, and
environments. Tagaq’s musical modernities make audible the complicated histories of settler
colonialism in the Americas, histories that hold implications for the ways in which “ethnic” musics
in the Americas are taught and studied.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Jessica Bissett Perea (Assistant Professor of Native American Studies, University of California, Davis)
is a San Francisco-based musician, educator, and scholar. She was born in Anchorage, Alaska, is an enrolled
member of the Knik Tribe, and her innovative dissertation research and dedication to community outreach
were recognized with a 2010 Alaska Native Visionary Award, presented by the Alaska Native Heritage
Month Board of Directors. Her research and teaching focus on music, sound, and media studies; critical
race and gender studies; Alaska Native and Circumpolar Inuit cultures, histories, and politics; African and
Native alliances and cultural production in the Americas; and research ethics and methodologies.
Christyann Darwent (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Davis) currently
serves as Editor for Arctic Anthropology: A Research Journal about Arctic Peoples. She has directed or
participated in archaeological field research in northern Alaska, Nunavut, and Greenland. Her research
examines how animal skeletal remains from archaeological sites can shed light on past human subsistence
economies and past environments. In collaboration with Vet Genetics, she is using ancient DNA to
understand the origin and movement of Qimmiit or dogs across the Arctic and by extension their human
companions (2013, Journal of Archaeological Science). Work with G. LeMoine and J. Darwent has focused on
understanding the history of Polar Inughuit people in northwest Greenland (2007, Arctic Anthropology;
2010, Danish Journal of Geography). She has been working in the Kotzebue and Norton Sound areas to
document the archaeology of Thule-Iñupiat peoples—most recently in collaboration with the Native
Village of Shaktoolik.
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
Beverley Diamond (Professor of Music, Canada Research Chair in Ethnomusicology, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, St. John’s) established and directs the Research Centre for the Study of
Music, Media, and Place. Diamond is known for her research on gender issues, Canadian historiography,
and indigenous music cultures. Her research on indigenous music has ranged from studies of traditional
Inuit and First Nations song traditions and Saami joik, to indigenous audio recording, traditional protocols
for access and ownership, and, most recently, expressive culture in relation to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission on residential schools in Canada. Most recently she co-edited Aboriginal Music in
Contemporary Canada. Echoes and Exchanges (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2012) which received a Choice Academic
Book award. Active in the development of ethnomusicology in Canada at Queen’s University, York
University as well as Memorial University, she has been recognized for moving Canadian music studies in
new directions and mentoring a generation of scholars who have greatly expanded the histories of cultural
diversity. Diamond currently serves as the President of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2013–15). She was
elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2008, named a Trudeau Fellow (2009–12), and a Member of the
Order of Canada (2013).
Ann Fienup-Riordan (Calista Education and Culture, Inc., Anchorage, Alaska; Independent Researcher,
Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution) received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the
University of Chicago in 1980. She has lived, worked and taught in Alaska as an independent scholar since
1973. During the last twenty years, she has changed the way she works in response to changing needs. In
1976–77 she carried out field work on Nelson Island in the “classic” anthropological tradition of participant
observation, publishing the results in her first book, The Nelson Island Eskimo. Since then she has been
involved in half-a-dozen collaborative research projects including work for the Association of Village
Council Presidents, the Yupiit Nation, the Toksook Bay Traditional Council and for the Coastal-Yukon
Mayors’ Association and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in their efforts to organize the Yup’ik
mask exhibit “Agayuliyararput: Our Way of Making Prayer”. Since 1999 she has worked with the Calista
Elders Council on a number of community-initiated projects, reflected in her major publications, including
Wise Words of the Yup’ik People: We Talk to You because We Love You, Yuungnaqpiallerput/The Way We
Genuinely Live, and Ellavut/Our Yup’ik World and Weather: Continuity and Change on the Bering Sea Coast. In
recognition of her work with Alaska Natives, she received the Alaska Federation of Natives President’s
Award in 2000, and in 2001 the Governor’s Award for Distinguished Humanist Educator.
Shari M. Huhndorf (Professor of Native American Studies and Comparative Ethnic Studies, University
of California, Berkeley) received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. Her
research and teaching focus on the areas of interdisciplinary Native American studies, contemporary
literary and visual culture, cultural studies, gender studies, and American studies. Professor Huhndorf is the
author of two books, Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination (Cornell University Press,
2001) and Mapping the Americas: The Transnational Politics of Contemporary Native Culture (Cornell
University Press, 2009), and a co-editor of Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture
(University of British Columbia Press, 2010), winner of the Canadian Women’s Studies Association prize for
Outstanding Scholarship. At Berkeley, Professor Huhndorf is affiliated with the Center for Race and
Gender, the Interdisciplinary Program in American Studies, the Designated Emphasis in Gender and
Women’s Studies, and the Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues. She is a former member
and chair of the executive committee of the Division of Twentieth-Century American Literature of the
Modern Language Association. She also served for a decade on the board of the directors of the CIRI
Foundation, which provides educational funding and cultural programs for Alaska Natives in her home
community. She received a 2013 President’s Award from the Alaska Federation of Natives for her
contributions to Native education and a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Division of Social Sciences
at UC Berkeley.
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 12‒14, 2015
Genevieve LeMoine (Curator, The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College, Brunswick,
Maine) received her PhD in Archaeology from the University of Calgary in 1991. Her research focuses on
technological change in prehistoric and historic cultures in high Arctic Canada and Greenland. LeMoine has
published numerous articles examining the ways in which Inuit women organized their labor and adopted,
and adapted to changing technology. In addition to archaeological data she has integrated textual and
photographic records from nineteenth and early twentieth century American exploration expeditions into
her research, throwing light on the sometimes fraught interactions of Inuit and explorers. Recent articles
include “Elatu’s Funeral: a glimpse of Inughuit-American relations on Robert E. Peary’s 1898-1902
expedition” in the journal Arctic, and, with C. Darwent, “Furs and Satin: Understanding Inughuit Women’s
role in Culture Contact through Clothing,” in North By Degree: New Perspectives on Arctic Exploration edited
by Susan Kaplan and Robert Peck. She has also published exhibit catalogs on Canadian Inuit art and Inupiat
caribou-skin masks.
Veronica L. Passalacqua (Curator, C.N. Gorman Museum, University of California, Davis) is a writer,
curator, and scholar of Native North American art. Receiving her MPhil in Museum Studies from Oxford
University in 1996, her research emphasis is contemporary Native American art with a specialty in Native
American photography. Her curatorial practices are based on collaboration with contemporary Indigenous
artists in national and international exhibitions held at Autry National Center, Eiteljorg Museum, Pitt Rivers
Museum, Navajo Nation Museum, Barbican Art Gallery, as well as the C.N. Gorman Museum.
Dylan Robinson (Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario) is a
Stó:lō scholar currently working in the traditional and ancestral territory of the Haudenosaunee and
Anishinaabe peoples. His research focuses upon the sensory politics of Indigenous activism and the arts,
and questions how Indigenous rights and Settler colonialism are embodied and spatialized in the public
sphere. His current research documents the history of contemporary Indigenous public art (including
sound art and social arts practices) across North America. This project involves working with Indigenous
artists and scholars to collaboratively imagine new models for public engagement and to create new public
works that acknowledge Indigenous histories of place and speak to contemporary Indigenous experience.
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ARCTIC INDIGENEITIES, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
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Generously Sponsored by a Research Working Grant from the UC Center
for New Racial Studies (Director, Howard Winant)
UC DAVIS Sponsors
C.N. Gorman Museum (Curator Veronica Passalacqua)
Department of Anthropology (Chair Li Zhang/ C. Darwent)
Department of Music (Chair Henry Spiller)
Department of Native American Studies (J. Bissett Perea)
Department of Theater and Dance (Chair Jon Rossini)
Division of Humanities, Arts & Cultural Studies Dean’s Office (Dean Susan Kaiser)
Division of Social Sciences Dean’s Office (Dean Ron Mangun)
Hemispheric Institute of the Americas (Director Chuck Walker)
Herbert A. Young Society (Dean Ron Mangun)
Institute for Social Sciences (Director Joe Dumit)
Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts (Executive Director Don Roth)
Offices of the Chancellor and Provost (Chancellor Katehi, Executive Vice Chancellor and
Provost Ralph Hexter)
Additional Sponsorship
Andrew Mellon Foundation, Performing Arts Grant
Graphic Design
John Darwent, Assistant Editor, Arctic Anthropology
Staff Assistance
Sheline Calvert, Priscilla Cordova, MaryJane Miller, Erum Syed
(Departments of Anthropology & Sociology, and Program in Middle East/South Asia Studies)
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