{"id":307,"date":"2016-11-30T21:53:40","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T04:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/annieguerin\/?p=307"},"modified":"2016-12-07T09:03:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T16:03:56","slug":"inuit-futurism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/annieguerin\/2016\/11\/30\/inuit-futurism\/","title":{"rendered":"Inuit Futurism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Annie Pootoogook’s\u00a0Women at her Mirror (Playboy pose)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

“Inuit artists have depicted their early interactions with settlers in speculative ways using futuristic imaginative concepts: a future imagery in the present”<\/p>\n

-anishinaabe-nehiyaw writer Lindsay Nixon from her piece\u00a0Visual Cultures of Indigenous Futurisms<\/a><\/p>\n

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Annie Pootoogook’s Drink and Draw 2012<\/em><\/p>\n

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“Technology is not divorced from or forced upon land but develops in relation to lands and the many beings land supports”<\/p>\n

Din\u00e9 writer Lou Catherine Cornum Din\u00e9 \u00a0from \u201cThe Space NDN\u2019s Star Map\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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“In Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), the Inuit people are known for carving portable maps out of driftwood\u00a0to be used while navigating coastal waters. These pieces, which are\u00a0small enough to be carried in a mitten, represent coastlines in a continuous line, up one side of the wood and down the other. The maps are\u00a0compact, buoyant, and can be read in the dark” https:\/\/decolonialatlas.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/12\/inuit-cartography\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"screen-shot-2016-11-27-at-2-22-33-pm\"Kananginak Pootoogook’s \u00a0<\/span>An inukshuk 1997<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Colonialism loves to plant \u00a0flags, and yell “mine” like a bunch of spoiled toddlers. \u00a0The race to claim ‘sovereignty’ in space, extended from a sense of colonial ownership and ‘discovery’ of spaces on earth. In the dominant western construct, the \u00a0race to ‘claim’ the arctic was not much different then their vision of putting a flag on the surface of the moon. To them it was all one and the same terra nullius.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Inuit futurism, an extension \u00a0of \u00a0Indigenous futurism, \u00a0works to push back against the white man planting flags, and reasserts the ongoing presence of \u00a0Inuit peoples and land. In Inuit futurism the Inuit experience is illustrated through film, \u00a0art, music \u00a0fashion, food sovereingty, and a discourse about a changing climate, as Inuit peoples and their cosmologies, unique histories, language and culture present, as anishinaabe-nehiyaw writer Lindsay Nixon \u00a0articulates, “futuristic imaginative concepts in the present” (Nixon 2016).<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about Annie Pootoogook and her death this past September 19th.<\/p>\n

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The more I explored her work, the media surrounding her death, the racist comments made by the police officer involved in her case, \u00a0the \u00a0more I \u00a0further realized how \u00a0fucking violent mainstream media\u2019s perpetuation of colonialism through perpetuation of \u00a0systemic racism actually is.<\/p>\n

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I first began this blog research by trying to \u00a0map out Annie”s family, \u00a0and other matriarchal Inuit artists from her community of Kinngait<\/p>\n

The first wave :<\/p>\n

Pisteolak Ashoona, Kenojak Ashevak, Jessie Oonark, amongst others,<\/p>\n

The second wave: Napachie Pootoogook, Janet Kigusiug,<\/p>\n

The third wave:<\/p>\n

Suvinai Ashoona, Siasie Kennally, Annie Pootoogook ( granddaughter of Pisteolak Ashoona, and daughter of Napachie Pootoogook).<\/p>\n

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*Annie Pootoogook’s \u00a0Pitseolak Drawign with Two Girls on the Bed’\u00a0<\/em> 2006. Depicting Annie, her mother Napachie Pootoogook and\u00a0\u00a0grandmother Pitseolak Ashoona.<\/p>\n

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I then began researching events that corresponded with the year pieces of Annie\u2019s art were made such as<\/p>\n

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Annie Pootoogooks’s Sobey Awards 2006.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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I then somehow fell down deep rabbit holes of western climate change rhetoric, CNN articles touting scientific vernacular of climate change as a new or emerging \u2018discovery’, \u00a0working to silence, dismiss and oppress Inuit knowledge, while simultaneously reinforcing a colonial construct of ‘the other’, resulting in countless colonial legislations, including blaming this ‘other’ for species extinction through over use, \u00a0and banning Inuit hunting and fishing practices. It was there I found my inspiration for my proposed\u00a0Timetraveller\u2122<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>episode treatment.<\/p>\n

I became a little overcome with the main stream use of \u00a0language surrounding climate change. \u00a0I read the first chapter, of\u00a0Tahltan writer Candis Callsion’s book “How Climate Change Comes to matter: The Communal Life of Facts”\u00a0<\/a>,The Inuit Gift<\/em>\u00a0, in which she addresses American main stream media surrounding \u00a0climate change. And \u00a0the danger of main stream media’s language surrounding climate change through the continual attempt to erase Inuit culture, cosmology, history, experience, connection to the land and food sovereingty through scientific vernacular. Callison spoke to the way mainstream language surrounding \u00a0climate change \u00a0“comes with its own set of baggage or rules, grammars, exceptions, and associations, confrontations with history, institutions, and power relations” (Callison 2014). She goes on to say \u00a0<\/span>\u201cThe absurdity of trying to sum up a lifetime of discrete observations layered on oral histories and community consensus about witnessing environmental change in one term is striking…<\/span>climate change is the \u00a0continued process of foreclosure on hope, begun by encounters with colonialism and the enduring structures it put in place via education and mechanisms (or lack thereof in previous eras) for governance, communication, accountability, and self-determination. The environment is also an extension of and constituent to culture” (\u00a0Callison 2014).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Callison also speaks at length with Sila Watt Coutier who sits on the Inuit Circumpolar Council, \u00a0who speaks to the ways Inuit experience of a changing climate is inextricably linked to Inuit culture and cosmology.<\/p>\n

“it\u2019s all connected. You have to look at the larger picture of how our hunting culture is not just about going out and killing animals; it is about pre paring our young people for everything, challenges and opportunities. And it is because of that disconnect between our children being prepared with the character building that a hunting culture gives and the institution separating that completely in terms of how to be taught, how to be patient, to be bold under pressure, to withstand stress, how to be courageous, how not to be impulsive, how to have sound judgment and wisdom. That is all the hunting culture that gives that”(Callison 2014).<\/p>\n