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How to Survive in the Coldest Villages on Earth

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How to Survive in the Coldest Villages on Earth

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"I thought that you only chose modernization over the traditional" - "No, you can have both".

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Krigen har ikke et kvindeligt ansigt af Svetlana Aleksijevitj

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En barsk og bevægende kollektivfortælling om kvindelige, sovjetiske soldaters deltagelse i 2. Verdenskrig, som giver et sjældent og mesterligt fortalt indblik i krigens væsen og hverdag.

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It was a foggy morning in south Greenland as I stood on deck and peered at the mountains poking through the clouds. Our Adventure Canada expedition ship docked offshore, and we disembarked on Zodiac boats to what looked like a ghost town.

Scattered on the rocky shore were little white chunks of cryolite, a mineral once used in the production of aluminum. As the mist swept through the empty houses dotting the shorelines, we walked up to the mine-a pit spanning 755 feet long and 656 feet wide-and looked over at a glassy, water-filled bottom. Meandering through the abandoned mining town, relics of the past-old engines and bottles-mixed with fresh tire tracks and cigarette butts left by musk ox hunters passing through the area.

Founded in 1854, the town of Ivittuut (formerly Ivigtut) once held the world's largest reserve of naturally occurring cryolite. The Inuits, who liked to camp there during the summers, had long known about cryolite, which they would add to their snuff or tobacco. "In the beginning of the 18th century, there were samples of cryolite sent to Copenhagen, probably by a German named Karl Ludwig Giesecke, an employee of The Royal Greenland Trading Department (KGH) owned by Denmark," says Peter Barfoed, a former Ivittuut resident who now lives and works as an architect in Greenland's capital Nuuk. After Danish chemist Julius Thomsen patented a method to separate cryolite into soda in 1853, demand increased and mining production began the next year. According to The History of the Cryolite Industry 1847 - 1990, the mine reached its peak level of production in 1942 when 86,000 tons were shipped to the United States and Canada for aluminum production. Then again in 1985, right before the mine closed, shipment spiked to 110,000 tons.

Today, Ivittuut's deserted buildings, massive cryolite hole and above-ground cemetery are popular sights for expedition ships cruising Greenland. As with most places in Greenland, a boat is the fastest and easiest way to reach this historic site, as there are no roads connecting the vast country.

After the Nazis occupied Denmark in 1940 and America got involved in World War II in 1941, Ivittuut became a crucial site in the fight. Though Denmark operated the mine since 1854, the United States protected it during the war so that the Allies could mine the cryolite for use in fighter plane manufacturing. It was such a key site during the war, explains Barfoed, that around 500 U.S. soldiers guarded the mine and its 100 to 200 miners from the Nazis.

"There were big guns placed in strategic points ready to shoot German submarines," he says. "The first gun was placed in September 1940, long before the U.S. was officially involved in World War II." The U.S. Navy also built a naval base three miles away in Kangilinnguit, formerly called Grønnedal, and the U.S. Coast Guard built a base across the fjord from Ivittuut, holding hundreds more soldiers. According to Barfoed, during the 1940s, the majority of the cryolite was shipped to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a company called Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company or Pennsalt, where it was refined to be used in the production of aluminum.

If the Nazis were to get ahold of this critical resource, it would have been damaging to the Allies. "Without it, the Allied forces would not be able to win the Battle of Britain and bomb Germany," says Rie Oldenburg, a historian and head of education at Campus Kujalleq, a school in Qaqortoq, Greenland. To protect its location, no photographs of Ivittuut were allowed to be taken during the war, and no one was allowed to write letters to family or friends for fear that the Germans would intercept them.

The miners were a mix of foreigners, including Danish, Canadians and Americans, Barfoed explains, while indigenous Greenlanders labored in the kitchen. According to him, many local women also worked as nannies and housekeepers in private homes. By the time the site officially closed around 1987, Barfoed says more Greenlanders were working in the mine.

When I was exploring Ivittuut, I asked local Inuit about what it was like during the war and their relationship with Americans. They declined to answer, fearful that their responses would reflect poorly on the United States at a time when President Trump has focused his attention on their island nation. One local remembered watching a program on Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa (KNR), a public television station in Greenland, about four children from the nearby town of Arsuk being taken at gunpoint by American soldiers. They were eventually rescued, but the incident created mistrust between Greenlanders and Americans.

After the war, Denmark continued to mine the mineral until the site closed around 1987, and American influences lingered. "Culture in Greenland was Americanized: music, dancing, fashion. Greenland also became part of the Western hemisphere and part of the American defense system during the Cold War," says Oldenburg. "The American influence has been huge, but not always visible to the Greenlanders, who were not included in the decisions."

Curiously, American soldiers left behind something that would shape modern Greenland-Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogs. This allowed Inuits and Danish inhabitants to order name brand appliances, like General Electric stoves and refrigerators and boats that modernized the way of life in Greenland.

Barfoed remembers sailing from Copenhagen to Ivittuut with his family in 1952. His father worked for the Danish cryolite mining company in control of operations in Ivittuut, called Kryolitselskabet Øresund. He recalls seeing Sears, Roebuck postorder catalogs, and the next year for Christmas, he got his first electric train, an American Flyer.

Today, Ivittuut's main draw is tourism; around seven buildings are still in good shape with newly painted exteriors. A small, yellow house with blue trim and a red door used to be a clubhouse for the town's tennis court. Next door, a green building stands that was once the mine's office and a yellow building that was once a hospital. Today, the former hospital serves as accommodation for anyone passing through or looking to stay in the town on a hunting trip.

One of the most fascinating buildings is a large, dilapidated home where the head of the mine used to live called Slottet, or "The Castle," in Danish. In its heydey, it was a stately, white building with natural light beaming in from the glass windows and a stunning fireplace said to have been designed by Finn Juhl, a famous architect and brother of former mine boss Erik Juhl. Today, you can look inside and see rubble, smashed tiles and doors off their hinges.

During the war, American soldiers lived in barracks near the mine. Barfoed recalls playing in the then-abandoned buildings, which are now no longer standing, many years ago when they were used as storage for engines, furniture and beer.

Around 500 feet from the mine is a beautiful lake, a water intake for Ivittuut, where tourists can walk and spot wild musk ox. Travelers can also wander around the small cemetery, which is above-ground due to rock just below the surface and a lack of soil. On top of the hill overlooking the town is a large white anchor acting as a memorial to those lost at sea. A bronze plate near it is dedicated to the hundreds killed aboard the American SS Dorchester. While on its way to Ivittuut in 1943, the ship was shot and sunk by a German U-boat.

Visitors to Ivittuut are encouraged to act respectfully, not to enter the homes and to cause as little damage as possible to the fragile structures.

"It is a crown jewel of Greenland," says Barfoed.

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How This Abandoned Mining Town in Greenland Helped Win World War II

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It was a foggy morning in south Greenland as I stood on deck and peered at the mountains poking through the clouds. Our Adventure Canada expedition ship docked offshore, and we disembarked on Zodiac boats to what looked like a ghost town.

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Iñupiat servicemembers, 1945 Fort Richardson

From left: Wilfred Ryan (from Unalakleet) and Holger "Jorgy" Jorgensen (from Haycock & Koyuk). Photo shared from the Jorgensen Family Photo Collection.

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Explore firsthand stories from Alaska Native elders and veterans stationed in Alaska during World War II

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The Nazi Persecution of Black People in Germany | Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Afro-Germans before 1933

After World War I, the Allies stripped Germany of its African colonies. The German military stationed in Africa, known as the Schutztruppen, as well as missionaries, colonial bureaucrats, and settlers, returned to Germany with racist attitudes. Separation of white people and Black people was mandated by the Reichstag (German parliament), which enacted a law against mixed marriages in the African colonies.

Following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the victorious Allies occupied the Rhineland in western Germany. The use of French colonial troops, some of whom were Black, in these occupation forces heightened anti-Black racism in Germany. Racist propaganda against Black soldiers depicted them as rapists of German women and carriers of venereal and other diseases. The children of Black soldiers and German women were called "Rhineland Bastards."

Nazi Perceptions of People of African Descent

The Nazis, at the time a small political movement, viewed the "Rhineland Bastards" as a threat to the purity of the Germanic race. In his autobiography, (My Struggle), Hitler charged that "the Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily-resulting bastardization."

African German mulatto (a person of mixed white and Black ancestry) children were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military. With the Nazi rise to power they became a target of racial and population policy. By 1937, the Gestapo had secretly rounded up and forcibly sterilized many of them. Some were subjected to medical experiments; others mysteriously "disappeared."

Influence of Black Artists in Culture

Both before and after World War I, many Africans came to Germany as students, artisans, entertainers, former soldiers, or low-level colonial officials, such as tax collectors, who had worked for the imperial colonial government. Hilarius (Lari) Gilges, a dancer by profession, was murdered by the SS in 1933, probably because he was Black. Gilges' German wife later received restitution from a postwar German government for his murder by the Nazis.

Some African Americans, caught in German-occupied Europe during World War II, also became victims of the Nazi regime. Many, like female jazz artist Valaida Snow, were imprisoned in Axis internment camps for alien nationals.

In the early 1920s, African American jazz artists could not break through the racial divide in the US, so they took to Europe where they could perform with ever-growing popularity. The cultural movement of this music threatened the expansion of Nazi ideology, which held this music to be immoral. By the mid-1930s Nazi authorities banned all foreign, non-Aryan music in Germany, but the campaign to rid the country of jazz did not stop American artists from going abroad to share their art. The portrait artist Josef Nassy, living in Belgium, was arrested as an enemy alien and held for seven months in the Beverloo transit camp in German-occupied Belgium. He was later transferred to Germany, where he spent the rest of the war in the Laufen internment camp and its subcamp, Tittmoning, both in Upper Bavaria.

Black Prisoners of War

Black Europeans and Americans were also interned in the Nazi concentration camp system. Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nichols, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.

After battling for freedoms and defending democracy worldwide, African American soldiers returned home in 1945 only to find themselves faced with the existing prejudice and "Jim Crow" laws. Despite segregation in the military at the time, more than one million African Americans were fighting for the US Armed Forces on the homefront, in Europe, and in the Pacific by 1945. Some African American members of the US armed forces were liberators and witnesses to Nazi atrocities. The 761st Tank Battalion (an all-African American tank unit), attached to the 71st Infantry Division, US Third Army, under the command of General George Patton, participated in the liberation of Gunskirchen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, in May 1945.

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After World War I, the Allies stripped Germany of its African colonies. The German military stationed in Africa, known as the Schutztruppen, as well as missionaries, colonial bureaucrats, and settlers, returned to Germany with racist attitudes. Separation of white people and Black people was mandated by the Reichstag (German parliament), which enacted a law against mixed marriages in the African colonies.

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Nunavut artists travel to GREENLAND | Nuuk International Film Festival

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Nunavut artists travel to GREENLAND | Nuuk International Film Festival

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The Vatican just renounced a 500-year-old doctrine that justified colonial land theft … Now what? — Podcast

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Last week, the Vatican finally distanced itself from the Doctrine of Discovery - a hundreds of years old decree that justified land theft and enslavement of people who were not Christian.

In this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient, political and Indigenous studies scholar Veldon Coburn explains why the Vatican's repudiation of the Doctrine is a huge symbolic victory. We also examine what this repudiation may mean for members of Indigenous Nations, what prompted this renouncement, and what still needs to happen.

Coburn said:

"For an Indigenous person like myself, it's profound because after four, five hundred years, since the first Papal Bull was issued, I didn't think I'd see it. Even though it may not have great material influence over my relationship with the colonial state, I do know that it's very difficult to get the church to change positions on things because, I mean, you had to twist their arm for a long time to get them to see that the sun was at the centre of the solar system and not the Earth."

Moral justifications for settler colonialism

Coburn explained how the Doctrine became the ideological justification for settler colonialism and enslavement in the Americas, Africa and much of the former colonies as well as the basis of a legal framework that continues to operate and support land dispossession today.

For example, Coburn brings up a 2005 court case involving the Oneida Nation. He said:

"I know people cherished Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she wrote the decision for the courts in 2005... It was kind of a cruel decision too. It's like, we stole your land. We get it. You're not getting it back. And then she explicitly cites the Doctrine of Discovery [denying] Indigenous title to the Oneida Nation in New York State."

We also get into the difference between western ideas about land and Indigenous Knowledge. And how ownership and commodification were central to this decree.

Coburn explained how the original decree declared Indigenous territories ready to be claimed because, under western Christian philosophies, land was to be used to generate profit. Coburn said:

"They viewed our 'non-usage' of the whole territory as wasting God's gifts. So these were to be exploited ... in market exchange for the creation of wealth."

The legacy of the Doctrine

While the Church's role in land theft was quickly taken up by new political entities, the lingering effects of the Doctrine are still evident in current legislative practices.

Christian and European supremacist ideas are evident in the decree: Indigenous Peoples and their existence on land was not sufficient evidence of proper governance. These ideas continue to function as a rationale for ongoing colonial practices.

A welcome symbolic gesture

For followers of the church, Coburn said, the Vatican's official repudiation may work to alleviate the moral stain of colonial plunder. It may also serve as an admittance of culpability.

Mostly, Coburn suggests, the repudiation is a symbolic gesture offered alongside many others.

"...as we've seen with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ... the symbolic has moved ahead quite quickly [while] the material aspects of our lived existence still linger in a state that's more resembling of the worst times of colonial assertions of sovereignty over it. So it really hasn't changed. They're still holding onto our land and saying, well, we said we're sorry. What more can we do? There's a lot more... the rightful return, restorative justice means: land back."

Read more
Capitalism and Dispossession by Veldon Coburn What is the Doctrine of Discovery?
Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery: Recommendations from the Assembly of First Nations on how to dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery

Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad (May 2022) (edited by David P. Thomas and Veldon Coburn): "This edited collection brings together a broad range of case studies to highlight the role of Canadian corporations in producing, deepening and exacerbating conditions of dispossession both at home and abroad."

The Vatican repudiates 'Doctrine of Discovery,' which was used to justify colonialism: "The 'Doctrine of Discovery' that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people's culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith."

RCMP arrest five land defenders on Wet'suwet'en territory as Coastal GasLink construction continues: Dinï ze' (Hereditary Chief) Gisday'wa says: "There's no such thing as Crown land in Canada ... It belongs to us, the Natives." In 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the Wet'suwet'en never gave up their Rights and Title to the territory in a landmark case called Delgamuukw-Gisdaywa.

Listen and Follow

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The Vatican just renounced a 500-year-old doctrine that justified colonial land theft ... Now what? - Podcast

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Last week, the Vatican finally distanced itself from the Doctrine of Discovery - a hundreds of years old decree that justified land theft and enslavement of people who were not Christian. In this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient , political and Indigenous studies scholar Veldon Coburn explains why the Vatican's repudiation of the Doctrine is a huge symbolic victory.

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Talking About Whiteness: A Bibliography | by Tré Ventour-Griffiths | Medium

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I promised a colleague I would put this together so here it is. Whilst Whiteness Studies is multidisciplinary, I have given vague subheadings to help direct people to themes they are interested in ... all these texts may well fit under multiple headings.

bell hooks, 1988. (Photo Credit: Montikamoss / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Talking About Whiteness: A Bibliography. I promised a colleague I would put this together so here it is. Whilst Whiteness Studies is multidisciplinary, I have given vague....

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More than money: the logic of slavery reparations | Slavery | The Guardian

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All over North America and Europe, universities, businesses and other organisations are investigating their historical connections to slavery. Some of these institutions once owned plantations or enslaved people. Others were established or maintained through donations from enslavers or their descendants. When an institution uncovers such histories, a question arises: what should the institution do to address the wrongs of the past, wrongs with consequences that continue to be felt today?

This question is part of a much larger debate: what does society owe the descendants of enslaved and colonised people? How can we measure the harms caused by the slave trade, slavery and colonialism when these harms span centuries and still shape our lives? Who can decide what ought to be done to repair these harms, and who should pay?

As a historian who specialises in the legacy and memory of slavery, these questions often land in my inbox. I have sat in dozens of meetings with board members of various institutions over the past few years - including those of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian - discussing how they should respond after discovering a historical link to slavery.

All these organisations wanted to publicly acknowledge that enslavement had led to a stratified society in which race and class intersect. However most of them were wary about facing demands for financial compensation, or a potential backlash from those who felt we should have moved on from slavery.

The idea of reparations is controversial, especially in countries that have failed to acknowledge that centuries of racial inequality have produced the stark social and economic inequalities of the present. Reparations start with this acknowledgement. The term "restorative justice", which I use interchangeably with "reparations", is usually associated with the legal system, as a method of dealing with crime. It prioritises repairing the harms suffered by the victim of an offence rather than punishing the perpetrator. It also seeks to understand the issues that caused the offence to happen.

When it comes to addressing the harms of slavery and colonialism, "restorative justice" is often a more palatable term than "reparations". Perhaps the latter seems coldly transactional, nothing more than a transfer of cash, whereas "restorative justice" implies collaboration and healing. But whichever term they use, groups that advocate for reparations almost never seek only money. Their work is grounded in an understanding that the social, the political and the economic are bound together and must be addressed together, creating the possibility of a better world.

Calls for such reparations have grown louder since 2020. The killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery in the US, followed by Black Lives Matter protests across the world, highlighted how often people are deemed dangerous and disposable, and how often the justice system fails them. Discussions about school and university curricula have revealed that certain aspects of the past are persistently obscured: both the inhumanity of colonial regimes and the longstanding and valuable contributions of minority ethnic communities.

Debates about reparations are both urgent and longstanding. Enslaved people have been demanding reparations since the 15th century, not long after European colonial enslavement began. One of the earliest recorded cases of reparations in the US (though "reparations" was not yet the term used) dates to 1783, when the state of Massachusetts ordered that a formerly enslaved woman, Belinda Royall, should receive a pension from the proceeds of her enslaver's estate, in acknowledgement of her unpaid labour.

Ironically, in the 19th century Britain and France voted that those who needed reparations were not the formerly enslaved but the enslavers. After the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, British plantation owners were granted huge compensation for the injury of having their "property" - enslaved people - taken from them.

At the heart of demands for reparations is the understanding that the past cannot be erased, and must not be ignored. Former colonial powers cannot undo the damage they inflicted on enslaved and colonised people, but they can engage in good faith with the descendants of those people, and work to address the systemic inequalities that exist today.

Yet 21st-century European and North American governments have resisted discussing reparations. When they do take steps to address present-day inequality and racism, they do so without explicitly connecting these problems to the legacies of slavery and empire. And so it is left to individual institutions to decide whether to investigate their histories, and what kind of reparations might be appropriate.

The efforts of these institutions, which are often beholden to shareholders, donors or alumni, are inevitably partial and constrained. However, there are reasons to be hopeful. Disorganised, insufficient and slow-paced as some of these initiatives may be, there are reasons to believe the debate will continue and intensify. There are grounds to trust in young people's demands for a fairer society. A post-reparations society may be on its way.

Making the connections

Greene King, which operates more than 2,500 pubs, restaurants and hotels in Britain, was founded by Benjamin Greene in 1799. He later became the owner of several plantations in the West Indies and was a vigorous supporter of slavery. In the 1830s, after the Slavery Abolition Act, he received compensation from the British government for having owned 225 enslaved people.

Almost two centuries later, in the summer of 2020, Greene King publicly acknowledged this history. The company announced a partnership with the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool; it promised to fund Black History Month initiatives, create opportunities for young people from Black and minority ethnic communities, and to develop a diversity strategy.

Its acknowledgement came the month after the murder of Floyd. On both sides of the Atlantic, demands to address centuries of racism were loud and heartfelt. But these demands were not new. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a leading American civil rights group, has been calling for reparations from the US government since the mid-2000s. The Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe was established in 2001.

Some of the calls for reparations have focused on the financial industry. Many banks founded before the 19th century had close connections with the slave trade, funding plantation owners or merchants who invested in slave voyages. In 2004 a group of descendants of enslaved people filed a lawsuit against the insurance market Lloyd's of London for financing the ships that transported their ancestors to North America. Lloyd's denied the claim, and it was dismissed the following year.

Years later, on the same day Greene King made its acknowledgement, Lloyd's publicly apologised for its role in the slave trade. It pledged to work on increasing diversity among its employees, and in 2021 appointed an archivist to research the company's involvement in slavery.

The terms "reparations" and "restorative justice" were absent from the announcements by Greene King and Lloyd's. Instead, both companies used the language of multiculturalism and diversity. Hiring more staff from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds was a priority.

Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays have similarly recognised their links to slavery and stated their support for "diversity and inclusion". But they have done so without making any clear connection between the past and the low numbers of their employees from minority ethnic backgrounds. Making these connections is central to the work of reparations. Without them, we can never have a full understanding of the consequences of slavery.

Some institutions have not progressed much beyond simply acknowledging the past. In 2020, the National Trust released a report on its buildings' links to slavery, attracting ferocious criticism from those who continue to celebrate the British empire, or who regard the trust as an institution outside of politics.

The Bank of England, which owned enslaved people in several Caribbean plantationsin the late 1700s, details this past in its current exhibition Slavery & the Bank. Some of the display materials mention that descendants of enslaved people have called for reparations, but there is no suggestion that the Bank will pay reparations, or that the effects of slavery still exist today.

A better model is offered by the Rowntree Society, an educational charity. In February 2020, it decided to study the Rowntree family's connections to slavery (I served as an external consultant). A little over a year later, the society and its various trusts released a statement recognising the "lasting damage inflicted by the colonial global economy in countries where the Rowntree businesses operated". In referring to this damage as ongoing, and in declaring that history is "not closed" and that its "legacies ... continue to shape the present", the Rowntree Society departed from the approach taken by many other institutions: it acknowledged that its actions in the past continue to cause harm in the present.

In North America, some of the first private institutions to consider reparations were universities, hundreds of which have links to slavery. In 2003, Brown University's first Black president, Ruth J Simmons, commissioned an investigation into the institution's connections to slavery. Three years later, the report made a number of recommendations, which included memorialising the past, creating a research centre for the study of slavery and providing support - financial and otherwise - to local communities negatively affected by Brown's past. Most of these recommendations were put into practice. But in 2021, undergraduates voted that Brown should give reparations to the descendants of enslaved people affiliated with the university. Nearly two years later, the university has revealed no plans to do so.

$100m
Amount pledged by Harvard University to carry out recommendations from its 2022 report into its links to slavery

In the past few years, many more American universities have studied their links to slavery. In April 2022, Harvard released a report representing three years of research. The university's president pledged $100m (£80m) to carry out the report's recommendations, which included building relationships with the descendants of enslaved people who laboured within the university, or were enslaved by Harvard associates.

In 2019, Glasgow University became the first British university to set up a restorative justice scheme, pledging £20m to build a research centre in partnership with the University of the West Indies, for the study of public health and economic growth in the Caribbean, and the relationship between Caribbean and African countries. After Glasgow's commitment, other universities began to examine their past.

The University of Cambridge's main report into its involvement with slavery was released in September 2022. This report, for which I served on the external advisory board, is the product of rigorous research. Its recommendations are grouped into four themes: funding further research, memorialisation, engaging with Black British communities and developing links with universities in west Africa and the Caribbean. These recommendations are far less ambitious than Brown's or Harvard's, and the timeframe remains vague. Nevertheless, they leave open the door for further discussions, and for engagement with communities throughout Britain.

Earlier this month, following the recommendations of the University of Cambridge Legacies of Enslavement inquiry, the university's Trinity College announced plans to appoint an academic to work on its legacies of slavery. It also pledged to allocate £1m over five years to scholarships, including those specifically for Caribbean students. The college did not explicitly state that these initiatives were forms of reparations or part of any restorative justice plan. Nor did it mention any consultation with reparation groups in the UK or the Caribbean.

In February, the Trevelyan family, who are said to have once enslaved 1,000 people in Grenada, made a public apology. The family, who were awarded £34,000 in compensation after slavery was abolished in 1833, once owned Wallington Hall. The Northumberland country house stayed in the family for 150 years before being passed on to the National Trust. The Trevelyans announced that they planned to assign a community fund of £100,000 to the economic development of the island of Grenada. This extraordinary move raised questions about the sum allocated and how closely the family worked with other Caribbean groups such as the Caribbean Community (Caricom). However, the Grenada National Reparations Commission described the attempt at addressing the wrongs of the past as commendable.

This kind of engagement is absent from many institutions' efforts. Such absence, as well as the vastly different approaches taken by universities and organisations across Britain, reflect a lack of comprehension of what restorative justice requires: both an acknowledgement of continuing harm and sustained discussions with communities who have been shaped by slavery.

Regret is not equal to apology

Calls for compensation for victims of slavery began centuries ago, initiated by enslaved and formerly enslaved people themselves. In 1778, after slavery had been outlawed in the state of Vermont, Pompey Brakkee, an enslaved man, sued his "master" for refusing to free him. Towards the end of the American civil war, Gen William T Sherman ordered that freed families should receive a plot of land and the means to farm it ("40 acres and a mule"). This radical plan for land redistribution emerged from Sherman's discussions with Black Christian ministers. The order was reversed by President Andrew Johnson months later.

In the century after the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, European powers were less concerned with compensating formerly enslaved people than with establishing and maintaining their own empires. During the first half of the 20th century, European countries looked back on their colonial enterprises as philanthropic and "civilising", rather than as exploitative and economically motivated. But after the second world war, as more colonies declared independence, groups across the world put pressure on European governments to address the harms they had caused.

In 2001, reparations was one of the key questions of the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa. Even having the subject on the agenda was hugely controversial, and participating countries disagreed fiercely about the language of the final declaration, which ultimately left each to make up its own mind about whether to pursue reparations.

France declared slavery a crime against humanity and began a programme of memorialisation and education. Other countries, led by Britain, refused to issue a formal apology, fearing that to do so could result in a legal obligation to pay reparations. Instead, regret was deemed a safer response. In 2006, the prime minister, Tony Blair, expressed "deep sorrow" for the slave trade. His statement included a call to "rejoice at the different and better times we live in today". These words obscured the fact that the times are still profoundly shaped by the existence of slavery.

In 2014, Caricom, which is composed of 15 member states, put forward a 10-point reparations plan. Among other demands, it called for a formal apology from European governments; a repatriation programme for people of African descent in the Caribbean wishing to return to Africa; European investment in Caribbean public health and literacy programmes, and debt cancellation. Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and other former colonial powers rejected the plan.

The nearest example we have of a state undertaking reparative justice measures, and acknowledging them as such, is the Netherlands. Last December, the government apologised for the country's role in slavery and established a fund of €200m (£170m) to raise awareness of the Netherlands' history as a colonial power, as well as "fostering engagement" and "addressing the present-day effects of slavery". However, the apology was seen by some descendants of enslaved people in Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean as having been sprung on them without warning and little collaboration. The Netherlands government said it would consult on future plans with descendant communities.

We cannot allow countries to leave the work of reparations to individual institutions, which will naturally have their own priorities and agendas. Not only do governments have the capacity to offer reparations on a far larger scale but, most importantly, countries, not just institutions and individuals, invested in and benefited from slavery.

Pro-slavery laws were passed in the British parliament; Britain's wealth, like that of many European countries, derives in part from slavery and empire. Regret is not equal to apology, but when Blair expressed regret on behalf of the UK, he at least made it plain that if you live in the UK, your life has been shaped by the legacies of slavery - even if you have never been to a Greene King pub, visited a National Trust property or invested with Barclays.

Giving up power and control

Some institutional efforts seem little more than a public relations exercise. Others simply repurpose a company's existing diversity policies. One could reasonably argue that such corporate initiatives can and should be part of a reparations strategy. But too often reparative agendas begin and end in the institutions that develop them, with little consideration for the work that must be done in society as a whole.

The wider political context also shapes institutional thinking, especially for those institutions whose funding derives partly from the government. Last year, the minister for women and equalities, Kemi Badenoch, announced a history curriculum overhaul, under which children would receive a so-called balanced account of the British empire, learning about its "benefits" as well as its horrors. Given such announcements, it is unsurprising that universities and cultural institutions produce reports that sound progressive but are not too ambitious or contentious.

Controversies over how we should remember the past, such as rows over statues as well as the school syllabus, can paradoxically distract from the inequalities and discrimination that exist in the present. Worsening income inequality, growing poverty, hunger and homelessness are, of course, experienced disproportionately by the descendants of enslaved and colonised people.

Those who have suffered most from the brutality of slavery and colonialism should determine the restorative justice agenda. This requires institutions to give up control and power - something that many are unwilling to do. Even scholarly research into communities affected by slavery can be exploitative, with few research grants going to academics from these communities.

Restorative justice, in the context of the legal system, divides participants into victims and perpetrators. Some reparations groups challenge this division, pointing out that it positions enslaved Africans and their descendants as powerless. We know that people of African descent, forcibly transported across the ocean, were instrumental in their liberation. We know that today, marginalised communities continue to share histories on their own terms, and to push for reparations. The Pan-Afrikan Stop the Maangamizi campaign has called for a parliamentary commission of inquiry for truth and reparatory justice in Britain. The Black Curriculum works to bring Black British history into schools, while in Wales an inclusive curriculum is on its way. Restorative justice is inherently a collaborative process, one that requires institutions to share some of their power.

The brutal past, the bleak present

For too long, we have been told lies about the past. Even during decolonisation in the second half of the 20th century, colonial powers scrambled to portray themselves as benevolently granting independence after centuries of enlightened rule. But over the past few decades, new narratives have emerged. These narratives challenge the old monochromatic tales of brave conquests and civilising missions. They reveal the brutality of the past and the bleak realities of the present: continuing discrimination, inequality, trauma and violence.

Such realities must not be ignored. Without understanding the history of slavery and colonialism, we cannot understand the extent to which societies today are shaped by systemic racism, unfair distribution of assets, inequality and violence - and how all of these have led to despair, marginalisation and disenfranchisement in parts of the population.

Restorative justice, which recognises the role of marginalised groups, is key to enabling people to lead decent and dignified lives. A post-reparations world might acknowledge the complexity of the colonial past in its entirety, including the damage caused by racial hierarchy; it would not be afraid to discuss the ways in which race and ethnicity, class, gender, religion, ableism and age intersect. A post-reparations society would focus on education and civic participation so that current and future generations can address the challenges of climate change, health inequalities, systemic racism, gender-based violence and poverty; it could encourage us to rethink the notion of happiness, one that is not based on instant and individual gratification but on collective achievement. It would be a society able to build a reconciled collective memory.

As the populations of North America and many European countries become more diverse, and as wealth inequality continues to grow and climate change disproportionately affects the descendants of colonised people, we can expect calls for reparations to become increasingly loud.

We will also hear loud objections, from those who benefit from the status quo or who cannot imagine a different world. But it is only through confronting the past that we can reimagine our future - and it is only through reparations that this new future can take shape.

British slavery and reparations in numbers

3.1 million
The estimated number of enslaved Africans Britain transported to its colonies between 1640 and 1807. This accounted for 50% of all enslaved Africans kidnapped and transported to the colonies during that period. About 2.7 million are thought to have survived the gruelling journey, known as the "middle passage", and been forcibly resettled in the Caribbean, North and South America, and elsewhere. It was the largest forced migration in human history.

1787
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded. The movement to abolish the slave trade grew in the decades that followed, drawing widespread support across the country.

1783
A formerly enslaved woman, Belinda Royall, won one of the first recorded cases of reparations in the US in the form of a pension.

1791
Thousands of enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) rose up against slavery in a revolution that was pivotal for the global abolitionist movement.

1807
Britain passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, which formally ended the country's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

£20 m
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most British colonies, included a £20m compensation package for enslavers, approximately 40% of the government's total annual expenditure.

2013
Caribbean heads of state formally established the Caricom Reparations Commission. The 10-point plan called for debt cancellation as well as funding for a repatriation programme, cultural institutions, public health, a literacy campaign, psychological rehabilitation, and technology transfer.

2015
British taxpayers fully repaid the money borrowed by the government to compensate enslavers.

2019
The University of Glasgow became the first university in Britain to set up a restorative justice scheme, which pledges £20m to build a research centre in partnership with the University of the West Indies.

2022
The Dutch government formally apologised for its historical role in slavery.

0
The amount of financial compensation Britain has paid to enslaved people and their descendants still stands at zero.
Additional research by Aamna Mohdin Sign up for the Cotton Capital newsletter for a weekly look at the series and next steps, direct to your inbox
A special Cotton Capital magazine will be published on Saturday 1 April. To order copies from the Guardian bookshop visit guardianbookshop.com/cotton-capital

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More than money: the logic of slavery reparations | Olivette Otele

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It's not just about payment. It is about engaging in good faith with the descendants of enslaved people and addressing inequalities - to make a better future possible

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Explore our youth-generated learning resources. The modules are free to use in classrooms, training settings, workshops, self-study, or anywhere else where learners are interested in better understanding and navigating the ongoing legacies of colonization today.

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Der er danskere i de fjerneste hjørner af verden. Stéphanie Surrugue rejser nu i sporet på tre danskere, som sætter betydelige aftryk på verden allerlængst fra Danmark. Det fører hende til rygende vulkaner langt ude i Stillehavet, ned i skræmmende og mørke minegange i Australien og til en højtidelig maoriceremoni i New Zealand, hvor hun bliver bedt om at synge solo. Udløber: 23. okt 2023

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Der er danskere i de fjerneste hjørner af verden. Stéphanie Surrugue rejser nu i sporet på tre danskere, som sætter betydelige aftryk på verden allerlængst fra Danmark. Det fører hende til rygende vulkaner langt ude i Stillehavet, ned i skræmmende og mørk

Se næste episode: 19. MAR 2023 | 6:00

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Der er danskere i de fjerneste hjørner af verden. Stéphanie Surrugue rejser nu i sporet på tre danskere, som sætter betydelige aftryk på verden allerlængst fra Danmark. Det fører hende til rygende vulkaner langt ude i Stillehavet, ned i skræmmende og mørke minegange i Australien og til en højtidelig maoriceremoni i New Zealand, hvor hun bliver bedt om at synge solo.

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Canada: university president to take leave amid controversy over Indigenous ancestry claim | Indigenous peoples | The Guardian

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The president of a Canadian university has apologized and is taking a leave of absence after allegations that she falsely claimed to be Indigenous, in the latest high-profile case of apparent cultural identity fraud.

Vianne Timmons, who is president of Memorial University of Newfoundland, said that she would be taking a six-week leave after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published a report last week questioning her claims that her father's great-great-grandmother was Mi'kmaq.

"While I have shared that I am not Mi'kmaq and I do not claim an Indigenous identity, questions about my intentions in identifying my Indigenous ancestry and whether I have benefitted from sharing my understanding of my family's history have sparked important conversations on and beyond our campus," she said in a statement on Monday.

Timmons said she "sincerely regrets any hurt or confusion" and that she "deeply apologies to those impacted".

The incident is the latest in a string of events involving prominent figures who have been accused of overstating their claims to an Indigenous identity, prompting fresh debate about who can make such claims - and whether embellishments and falsehoods should be treated as fraud.

Though Timmons told the CBC that she had not claimed to be Indigenous, she had listed membership with the Bras d'Or Mi'kmaq First Nation in Nova Scotia, which is not recognized by other Indigenous groups or by the federal government. She also accepted an award in 2019 from Indspire, an Indigenous-led charity, which on Tuesday still listed her as Mi'kmaq on its website.

When Dr Megan Scribe, an assistant professor in sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University, saw Timmons' statements, she said her first thought was: "Oh no, again?"

"Even after learning some of the circumstantial details ... it all starts to blur. Because there have been so many confirmed and potential cases of identity fraud at universities in the last year," said Scribe, who is Ininiw from the Norway House Cree Nation and the education director for the Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research and education center based at the university.

Other recent cases include Carrie Bourassa, a former professor at the University of Saskatchewan, who was suspended after her claims to multiple Indigenous identities were challenged. She resigned from the school in 2022.

In October, the CBC published an investigation into Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a former judge and then professor at the University of British Columbia, about discrepancies in her claims to Indigenous history.

It's a feature of colonialism that allows settlers to legitimize their claim to these territories

Dr Megan Scribe of Toronto Metropolitan University

At the time, Turpel-Lafond said that she had trusted her father's account of having Cree heritage. Some of Turpel-Lafond's honorary degrees were revoked, and she recently told the Canadian Press that it was "liberating" to be freed of the honours, as it allowed her to "focus on what really matters in her life." She cautioned that "trial by media is rampant" and could lead to "wrongful convictions".

And in 2021, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, faced a backlash after reports emerged that cast doubt on the Indigenous identity of several faculty members. The following year, a 32-page report by Indigenous academics called on the school to apologize and create a process to validate Indigenous identities.

Since colonization began, white Canadians have often pretended to be Indigenous, from white people dressed as Indigenous "performers" at 20th-century fairs to Canadian summer camps where children were told to pretend to be Indigenous as an element of "play".

Scribe said that falsely claiming Indigenous heritage remains "an emerging feature of settler colonialism" and is "now taking root in our society in a more structural, systemic way".

"It's a feature of colonialism that allows settlers to legitimize their claim to these territories," she said.

As more cases emerged, institutions have made missteps in addressing issues. And it's often fallen on Indigenous people to guide schools in making change.

But efforts to investigate allegedly fraudulent claims aren't without risk: in January 2021, Michelle Latimer, a film-maker, sued CBC journalists, most of whom were Indigenous, after they probed her heritage. The lawsuit was dropped in 2021.

In 2022 lawyer Jean Teillet, who specializes in Indigenous rights law, wrote an extensive report for the University of Saskatchewan that examined Indigenous identity fraud.

It covered the history of this type of fraud and methods used, including the reliance on embellished or concocted personal stories, DNA testing, and the "grooming" Indigenous elders by using manipulation to provide legitimacy to claims of Indigenous identity.

Teillet called on universities to better address such issues, and cultivate better relationships with Indigenous peoples.

"It is crucial to create more meaningful and close relationships with Indigenous peoples, and not just with respect to the partnerships necessary for identity verification," she said.

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Canada: university president to take leave amid controversy over Indigenous ancestry claim

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The president of a Canadian university has apologized and is taking a leave of absence after allegations that she falsely claimed to be Indigenous, in the latest high-profile case of apparent cultural identity fraud.

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New NL First Nation bound by red tape, questions on cultural identity

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Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation, which includes Mi'kmaq from all across Newfoundland, stands to become the largest First Nation band in Canada with more than 104,000 applicants for membership since 2008.

That is, if the band and the federal government can figure out who belongs.

Qalipu, which means "caribou" in Mi'kmaq, is a "new" band, having been officially established in 2011. It's also what Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada calls a "landless band," meaning that it does not manage any government-owned reserve lands..

Membership does come with access to Canada's medical, educational and social programs for Indigenous Peoples, and is defined by the applicant's status as a Indian, under Canada's Indian Act.

Some have said Qalipu's history could be considered a microcosm of Canada's Nation-to-Nation dealings with First Nations peoples, with problems coming from attempts to make a bureaucratic process compatible with cultural identity. The band's enrolment process has been widely criticized for taking too long to establish and for being founded without the inclusion and knowledge of Mi'kmaq cultural nuance.

The enrolment committee is made up of an equal number of federal government and First Nations representatives.

Applicants once included on a list of more than 23,000 affirmed "founding members" of Newfoundland's Mi'kmaq have been rejected for membership in Qalipu First Nation for failing to prove their connection to their culture through tangible documentation, among other reasons.

Elder Calvin White lives in No'kmaq Village. (Nic Meloney/CBC)

Flat Bay No'kmaq Village Elder Calvin White said he asks himself every day "How did we get here?"

White, one of the region's well-known elders and an original co-founder of the organization that helped to create Qalipu, was denied himself from the founding members list, but has since received membership.

Three of White's six children were denied membership. Two of those rejected, said White, grew up and were educated in Flat Bay, but both moved away from Newfoundland for their jobs as adults. Their geographical distance from their home, says White, has nothing to do with their heritage.

"I just can't figure out how families could be divided because of where they lived and because [their kids] pursued a opportunity to do better for themselves."

White said hundreds of these situations have unfolded. His sister's three grandchildren, all under the age of eight, were raised in the same home in the Flat Bay area, by the same parents. The eldest and youngest children have membership, the middle child does not.

White said he knows a family in which identical twins with Mi'kmaq ancestry, raised in Newfoundland, have different membership status.

It's a contentious subject in Mi'kmaq communities, said White, given the history of their people in Newfoundland.

The Flat Bay band council office. (Nic Meloney/CBC)

In 1949, when Newfoundland joined Confederation, Mi'kmaq communities were not recognized as First Nations under the Indian Act. The Indian status of their membership was undetermined by Canada.

After years of voicing their concern, in 1972 a group of Newfoundland Mi'kmaq formed the Federation of Newfoundland Indians (FNI). The group's attempts to obtain status under the Indian Act were fruitless, and led to a Federal Court action in 1989, in which the FNI sought a declaration that its members were Indians within the meaning of the 1867 Constitution Act.

The legal action sparked nearly 20 years of intermittent negotiations between Canada and the FNI, filled with dissension and occasionally in-fighting from the Mi'kmaq.

In 2008, Qalipu First Nation was officially recognized with the passing of an Agreement in Principle. The agreement established an enrolment process and a committee to oversee the creation of a founding members list, based on criteria that included being "of Canadian Indian Ancestry" and being "a member [or descendant] of a pre-confederation Mi'kmaq community."

The agreement also required that by the time the band was officially recognized, applicants to Qalipu must self-identify and be accepted by INAC as a member of the Mi'kmaq Group of Indians of Newfoundland.

At the time, it was estimated that the band would be similar to, or smaller in size to the FNI, which had about 10,000 members. But nearly 104,000 people from across the country applied to become Qalipu members. The population of Newfoundland and Labrador in the 2016 Census was 528,448.

The overwhelming spike in applications led the enrolment committee to rethink the ways in which they would determine who was Newfoundland Mi'kmaq and who was not. More time and resources were added, and the result was an addition to the FNI's agreement with Canada.

This Supplemental Agreement was intended to give the committee "greater precision on the nature of the evidence that Applicants shall provide."

An application for membership in the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation. (Colleen Connors/CBC)

FNI and Canada established a points system in which applicants who did not reside in within the 67 approved Mi'kmaq communities, were given scores. Membership was approved at 13 points, and was based on how much tangible evidence applicants could provide under five sections:
Frequent visits to an area of Newfoundland's Mi'kmaq. (4 points) Frequent communications with members of Newfoundland's Mi'kmaq. (2 points) Residency in Newfoundland. (3 points) Membership in an established Mi'kmaq organization. (9 points) Maintenance of Mi'kmaq culture and way of life. (9 points)
The fifth section, which has been the subject of much debate, requires that applicants show proof of their knowledge of Mi'kmaq culture as well as proof that they've participated in "cultural, religious, ceremonial and traditional activities."

Mi'kmaw Dave Baldwin of Corner Brook failed to prove that section. Despite being described by community members as a man "that epitomizes the Indigenous way of life," Baldwin was denied membership by one missed point.

As Baldwin lives in Corner Brook, one of the 67 affirmed Mi'kmaq communities in the province, he shouldn't have been processed under the points system. It was put in place for those who lived away from the communities. Baldwin said his questions to INAC on the issue were never answered.

"I've been an Indian all my life," said Baldwin, 65.

"I don't need a card in my pocket to tell me who I am. I got the bloodline. All my brothers and sisters and cousins, they got their [membership], but they turned me down by one point because of culture. Never practised culture. That's so far-fetched. That was a real slap in the face to me."

Dave Baldwin was denied membership in the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation. (Brian McHugh/CBC)

Baldwin, who served as Chief of the Corner Brook Mi'kmaq Band in the 1970s, said he's experienced all aspects of his culture - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

As a teenager, he said he was called "every name in the book" for being Indigenous. At 19, Baldwin said he was badly beaten by police officer "because I was a 'g-d' Indian, they said."

Baldwin said he was stunned by the initial rejection, so he appealed.

"I called and asked [INAC], how can I appeal this? You don't want any proof of anything?" said Baldwin.

"They told me to submit the same application. The one they denied. They told me they couldn't even look up my file. The whole thing was a joke."

As of December 2017, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada mailed more than 4,800 appeal decision letters to applicants, and there were about 8,000 decisions left to be made. Baldwin has yet to receive his.

'A mess of problems'

Brendan Mitchell, chief of Qalipu First Nation, has been at the band's helm since 2015. He said he's acutely aware of the concerns people like Baldwin are voicing. He calls the enrolment process "broken."

"I don't how they couldn't get that extra point to get to 13, people who've lived in Indigenous communities all their life," said Mitchell.

"The big problem in this whole enrolment situation really is the points system."

Brendan Mitchell, Chief of the Qalipu First Nation. (Nic Meloney/CBC)

Mitchell adds it's just one of "a mess of problems," but the points system is specifically failing what he calls "away from home" Mi'kmaq - people who have left the province to better themselves.

"[Newfoundland and Labrador] still has the highest unemployment rate of any province in Canada, so what did people do a few years ago? They moved away to go to school, or to get a job to feed their families and move them ahead."

Mitchell said that while the supplemental agreement and points system, which were established before he became Chief, have been "damaging" to the band, he's unable to walk away from it.

"If myself and our council today said to the government 'we don't want to be part of the supplemental agreement anymore,' it wouldn't stop it," he said.

"It's a binding agreement set hard in place, supported by Bill C-25. . . .The Minister [of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs] and others tell me 'we have an agreement in place, and we're going to see it through.'"

"The creation of Qalipu First Nation gave them the opportunity to come out and be accepted."

Mitchell said the situation often keeps him up at night. He said he's been subjected to "personal insults, harassment and slander," and said Qalipu's "legitimacy" is questioned by First Nations Organizations like the Assembly of First Nations, the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs and the Mi'kmaq Grand Council.

Many in the region say that Qalipu is open to applicants that could knowingly have no Mi'kmaq ancestry, but want access to resources like medical and educational funding.

Mitchell admits that the volume of applications requires a process in which applicants are "verified" as members of Newfoundland's Mi'kmaq communities, but said he won't "make apologies" to Canada for the number of applicants.

"Canada and the FNL said at the time that this can't be right, and asked where have these people been for 40-50 years?

"The individual motives of these people, I'm not sure what they are. They self-identified on the paperwork . . . but I think the creation of Qalipu First Nation gave them the opportunity to come out and be accepted. If you think about it, in this area, we're the new majority."

'Ideological differences'

Mi'kmaw author and Elder Victor Muise said he has a hard time even thinking about the situation of his people right now.

Muise has been sharing traditional knowledge for many years, and has been an powerful, though soft spoken voice in the fight to change the process. He was added to Qalipu's founding members list, but his brother was denied membership after applying, and appealing, under the supplemental agreement.

Muise says he still can't figure out why, and that he's been left frustrated and disheartened.

"The whole thing's been a mess since the original agreement," he said.

Elder Victor Muise was also denied membership. (Nic Meloney/CBC)

Muise said he believes the creation of any band under Canada's Indian Act is destined for "straight discrimination." He said there's no place for Canadian politics in the Mi'kmaq communities because fundamentally, there are too many "ideological differences" between First Nations' and Canadians' ways of living to reconcile, especially if the Canadian government always has control.

"The people in the government have come along in a way where they need documents and numbers to justify [Indigenous] rights and life," he said.

"It don't work like that here. We need to meet you and grow and understand how you are, not just who you are. It's never going to change with them."

Muise said recently he's been getting calls from Mi'kmaq all over Canada, people he's known since they were children, who are wondering what to do because their status has been taken away.

One of them, a first-year university student, called crying because she wasn't sure if she could stay in school without funding assistance. Muise said the anguish of his community has left his "soul and spirit blank."

"I just remind them to stay calm, love one another, dance, sing and speak their language," he said.

"Because that's all we've got. We've got to do it ourselves, we've got to adapt, because the government won't ever change."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Victor Muise was denied membership in Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation. In fact, Victor Muise's brother was denied membership.

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New NL First Nation bound by red tape, questions on cultural identity

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Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation, which includes Mi'kmaq from all across Newfoundland, stands to become the largest First Nation band in Canada with more than 104,000 applicants for membership since 2008. That is, if the band and the federal government can figure out who belongs.

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Ivalu er forsvundet. Hendes lillesøster leder desperat efter hende, men faren er ligeglad. Den grønlandske natur rummer hemmeligheder. Hvor er Ivalu?

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Essential Readings on the Problems of ‘Tribe’ | Foluke's African Skies

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In 2018, I gave a presentation at The International Student Conference for Africa (TISCA) at the University of Leicester. The focus of the presentation was broadly on the legal implications of fundamental constitutional change on the continent of Africa - not constitutional change in individual nation-states, but a wide-ranging reinterpretation of what the continent looks like, how it operates... essentially what the meaning of Africa has been, is and could possibly be. One of the things I touched on in my presentation was the concept of 'tribe' in Africa. My contention was, and is, that the sociological space the word 'tribe' occupies is problematic in its historical origin and contemporary use. Therefore, it remains an inherently flawed unit and tool of analysis of African realities (or indeed any reality in which 'tribe' is deployed as a unit of intellectual examination). Though my presentation was quite broad (... and probably too long!) this was the point that most people wanted to discuss with me about after the talk. Subsequently, I have had conversations about this problematic concept of 'tribe', both on-line and offline. While several people engage with the arguments in a reflective way (I do not expect people to agree with me, just hear what I am saying), I also note that a number are often quite adamantly wedded to the questionable expressions sometimes used to give form to our realities. Such people are reluctant to investigate beyond the precarious antecedantal contested narrative ground upon which these realities rest. So, I have decided in this post to basically... show my working. What follows are excerpts from the works of a few researchers, academics and writers who have done the work on the fallacy of 'tribe.' It should be noted that there is a nuance here. The arguments do not predicate themselves on the non-existence of the polity designated 'tribe', however, they rely on identifying a fundamental schism between the rigidity of what the word 'tribe' means and the divergent realities on the ground. These realities diverge, both from the rigid linguistic designation and from each other. Therefore, I contend that deploying 'tribe' as a unit of intellectual examination is an unsound academic practice.

It should be noted that from the readings below, the suggestion is that 'tribe' has no definition that matches reality. It describes nothing that exists or has existed. Which is why I do not suggest alternatives here. Choosing another word to be co-terminous ignores the fact that it is the social space the word occupies that is problematic and that is what makes the word problematic. Therefore, 'What word shall we use instead?' is not the right response.
PS: If there are any readings that you think are important, but that I have not included, please put them in the comments section.
MacEachern, Scott, et al. "Genes, Tribes, and African History." Current anthropology 41.3 (2000): 357-384.
'This paper discusses the inherent weakness of the concept of "tribes" and the problems of linking these artificially created units to patterns of human genetic variation. ... If the types themselves, in this case African tribes, are incorrectly characterized as static and essentially timeless entities, then the conclusions drawn from these comparisons are certain to be debatable.' 'Appendix 3 (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994:470-72) includes the "tribal"/ethnic names under which samples were collected, and these ethnonyms make it abundantly clear that such collection sometimes took place with very little knowledge of local cultural milieus and very often involved highly mixed samples. Thus, for example, the "Bantu Hutu" group contains people denominated as Tutsi and Twa as well as Burundian and Rwandan, the "Bantu Maconde" group includes people identified only as "African," the "Bantu Kenya" group contains Luo people, the "Bantu Nyaturu" group contains individuals identified as Sandawe, the "Fulani" population contains Hausa and Kanuri, the "Nilo-Saharan" group contains people identified as Bantu, the "Nubian" population contains people identified as Egyptian, an "Unspecified [Khoisan]" population is sampled from Zimbabwe, and so on.' 'For Africanists, however, even more striking may be the uncritical acceptance of dated Western models of "tribal" or "ethnic" identification (the two terms are used essentially interchangeably) in The History and Geography of Human Genes. It has become increasingly obvious over the past 30 years that static, bounded, monolithic anthropological models of group identity are unsatisfactory, failing as they do to capture the dynamic and responsive nature of those sociocultural units throughout the world. It is abundantly clear that many of the "tribes" so beloved of (even modern) Western commentators are not entities preserved unchanged from ancient times but rather the relatively recent products of intense participation in regional networks of political, social, and economic interaction.' '"Tribal" and/or ethnic identities have never been primordial and immutable, in Africa or elsewhere, and it is possible in many cases to trace sets of historically and socially contingent processes that have brought these modern identities into being.' ' In a number of cases, African "tribes" were the (conscious or unconscious) creations of colonial administrators and professionals, including ethnographers, with other interests in colonial government. The motivations behind this manipulation of identities were various; they included administrative convenience and the establishment of easily governable entities that could be controlled and taxed, divide-and-conquer strategies, and the creation of power bases by local and foreign elites. To these ends, communities were divided or forcibly amalgamated and "tribes" created out of whole cloth. Even languages, the "powerful ethnic guidebook . . . essentially complete" of Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994:23), were manipulated and modified to support the goals of both indigenous and foreign players in the processes of colonialism'
Salamone, Frank A. " Colonialism and the Emergence of Fulani Identity." Journal of Asian and African Studies 20.3-4 (1985): 193-202.
'Ethnicity is a process and not an event. People use it to achieve desired goals. During the
Colonial period, the groups who became "The Fulani" negotiated and shaped their identity in conformity with British expectations in order to attain and ensure British support in maintaining their favored position in the colonial hierarchy' 'No ethnic group, however, has impermeable boundaries, for people can and do change ethnic identities (Barth 1969). Neither, moreover, does any group's boundary remain permanently fixed. If there is a reason for maintaining separation between groups, then even the most minute differences will be exploited in order to sustain the separation.' 'Ethnic groups, in sum, exist to promote and organize interactions between and within groups organized on the mythic principle of common descent.' 'Ethnic identity is a type of political identity. It is a means of mobilizing support to attain perceived goals, support which calls upon the principle of ethnicity, or presumed common descent (R. Cohen 1978). That it changes over time to suit various situations has been established in numerous places.'
Lowe, Chris, Tunde Brimah, Peal-Alice Marsh, William Minter, and Monde Muyangwa. " Talking About 'Tribe': Moving from Stereotypes to Analysis." Africa Policy E-Journal (1997)
' Tribe is used for millions of Yoruba in Nigeria and Benin, who share a language but have an eight-hundred year history of multiple and sometimes warring city-states, and of religious diversity even within the same extended families.' 'anyone concerned with truth and accuracy should avoid the term " tribe " in characterizing African ethnic groups or cultures. This is not a matter of political correctness. .." tribe " does not contribute to understanding identities... ' '"If by tribe we mean a social group that shares a single territory, a single language, a single political unit, a shared religious tradition, a similar economic system & common cultural practices, such a group is rarely found in the real world,"
(The following are the key points outlined in the article - bulletpointed for brevity)

Tribe has no coherent meaning

Tribe promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness, obscuring history and change.

In the modern West, tribe often implies primitive savagery

Images of timelessness and savagery hide the modern character of African
ethnicity, including ethnic conflict.

Tribe substitutes a generalized illusion for detailed analysis of
particular situations

Tribe reflects once widespread but outdated 19th century social theory.

Social theories of tribes resonated with classical and biblical education.

Tribe became a cornerstone idea for European colonial rule in Africa.

Commonly when Africans learn English they are taught that tribe is the term that English speakers will recognize. But what underlying meaning in their own languages are Africans translating when they say tribe? Most words use in African languages would translate to nation, people, country etc

Ethnic divisiveness in Africa takes intensely modern forms.

Given a choice between words that express truths clearly and precisely, and words which convey partial truths murkily and distortedly, we should choose the former over the latter.

Darden, Keith, and Harris Mylonas. " The promethean dilemma: Third-party state-building in occupied territories. " Ethnopolitics 11, no. 1 (2012): 89
'Colonial powers in Africa were successful in creating national, ethnic or broad tribal identities out of a diverse patchwork of local kinship ties (Young, ). In Malawi, an assemblage of kinship groups was successfully converted into Chewas and Tumbukas (Posner, ).'
Gathara, P ' WHAT IS YOUR TRIBE? The Invention Of Kenya's Ethnic Communities' March 5, 2018

For rather than something indelibly encoded into the African genetic make-up and over which one exercises little choice, tribe turns out to be largely an artificial construct. The fact is, there is a marked difference between how ordinary Africans, including Kenyans, think of tribe and its origins and what history and social science has to say about it.

"What is a tribe?" asks Mahmood Mamdani, the Executive Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research. "It is very largely a creation of laws drawn up by a colonial state which imposes group identities on individual subjects and thereby institutionalises group life... Above all, tribe was a politically driven, totalising identity." "The politicisation of ethnic identity began with the colonial experience," says Prof. Kimani Njogu in the recent Africa Uncensored documentary titled In Tribe We Trust. According to the book Ethnicity and African Politics by Crawford Young, "although the ethnic labels... have pre-colonial origins, they became comprehensive and rigidly ranked categories only in the colonial period; they were heavily influenced by imperial codifications and further transformed by politicised actions in the last half-century."
In pre-colonial societies, as Young explains, ethnicity was a fungible cultural artefact, one that was not necessarily encoded into one's genes, attached to particular homelands or imbued with ideas of political sovereignty. Individuals and even entire societies could navigate in and out of them. In fact, even the ideas of kinship and shared ancestry were "notoriously malleable to serve contemporary social or ideological purposes. But once rooted in the social consciousness, mythology convincingly impersonates reality." The important takeaway is that rather than ancient "nations", today's ethnicities are a creation of the colonial era - "state-sponsored tribal ethnographies and romantic essentialised notions of tribal culture", as Parsons describes them. Recognising that the tribe was a colonial-era invention is empowering because it means it can be disinvented or reimagined; tribe is not destiny.
Mafeje, Archie. " The ideology of 'tribalism'." The Journal of Modern African Studies 9, no. 2 (1971): 253-261.
I am inclined to think that the problem in Africa is not one of empirically diversified behaviour but mainly one of ideology, and specifically the ideology of 'tribalism'. European
colonialism, like any epoch, brought with it certain ways of reconstructing the African reality. It regarded African societies as particularly tribal. This approach produced certain blinkers or ideological predispositions which made it difficult for those associated with the system to view these societies in any other light. In South Africa the indigenous population has no word for 'tribe'; only for 'nation', 'clan', and 'lineage' and, traditionally, people were identified by territory- 'Whose [which Chief's] land do you come from ?' In many instances the colonial authorities helped to create the things There is a real difference between the man who, on behalf of his tribe, strives to maintain its traditional integrity and autonomy, and the man who invokes tribal ideology in order to maintain a power position, not in the tribal area, but in the modern capital city, and whose ultimate aim is to undermine and exploit the supposed tribesmen. First, it over-simplifies, mystifies, and obscures the real nature of economic and power relations between Africans themselves, and between Africa and the capitalist world, almost in the same way as the term 'feudalism', applied to Latin America, camouflages the crucial role played by international finance-capital and imperialism in accentuating and perpetuating the existing social formation in that part of the world. Secondly, it draws an invidious and highly suspect distinction between Africans and other peoples of the world. The patronising concession of'call them the same' is more likely to produce resentment than to facilitate communication. Thirdly, it is an anachronistic misnomer which impedes cross-cultural analysis. called 'tribes', in the sense of political communities; this process coincided with and was helped along by the anthropologists' preoccupation Often used to signal anachronistic hordes of people seemingly resistant to centralised governance, even the New Oxford Dictionary contends that: '[i]n historical contexts the word tribe is broadly accepted (the area was inhabited by Slavic tribes), but in contemporary contexts it is problematic when used to refer to a community living within a traditional society. It is strongly associated with past attitudes of white colonialists towards so-called primitive or uncivilized peoples living in remote undeveloped places. For this reason it is generally preferable to use alternative terms such as community or people' The 'tribe' as a concept emerged as a legacy of colonial knowledge but now functions as part of the wider grammar of neo-colonial power. Contemporary imperial practices have reinvigorated these forms of knowledge, something we can see in racialised dynamics and demands of the bolstered 'far right' in Western Europe and North America. The tribe as an 'invented tradition' is a political project, one which has profound implications for the USA's longest war. Whilst these 'imagined communities' may indeed have salience on the ground, the manner in which 'tribes' are denied a synchronicity - they are 'unchanging' and 'different' to us - contributes to a distancing and reification that does a disservice both to the Afghan peoples and to more fine-grained understandings of 'tribe' as a term. In order to overcome these provincial colonial knowledges and the violence they perform in the Global South, we must question what constitutes legitimate 'knowledge' and 'authority' and be aware of, and agitate against the multiple and layered prejudices, violences, and erasures that structure the lives on the 'wrong' side of the colonial equation. with 'tribes'. This provided the material as well as the ideological base of what is now called 'tribalism'. Is it surprising then that the modern African, who is a product of colonialism, speaks the same language?
Manchanda, N. (2018). The Imperial Sociology of the 'Tribe' in Afghanistan. Millennium, 46(2), 165-189.

''the British wrongly believed that Tanganyikans belonged to tribes ; Tanganyikans created tribes to function within the colonial framework.'' John Iliffe, 'A Modern History of Tanganyika'

In conclusion, you cannot legitimately study something you have created for the express purpose of studying it. You cannot uplift a group when each time you address them, you verbally wrestle them to the ground. My people. My people.

See also

Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. "One tribe, one style? Paradigms in the historiography of African art." History in Africa 11 (1984): 163-193.

African woman, lawyer, teacher, poet and researcher. Singer of songs, writer of words, very occasional dancer of dances. I seek new ways of interpreting the African experience within our consciousness to challenge static ideology.

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Essential Readings on the Problems of 'Tribe'

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In 2018, I gave a presentation at The International Student Conference for Africa (TISCA) at the University of Leicester. The focus of the presentation was broadly on the legal implications of fundamental constitutional change on the continent of Africa - not constitutional change in individual nation-states, but a wide-ranging reinterpretation of what the continent looks like, how it operates...

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Rise of Empires: Ottoman - Official Trailer Netflix

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'Rise of empires' on Netflix.

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Rise of Empires: Ottoman - Official Trailer Netflix

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Insights from Coastal Arctic Indigenous Observers

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Insights from Coastal Arctic Indigenous Observers

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Perspectives from community-based observers on the impacts of rapid and unprecedented Arctic environmental change

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Race and Blackness in Early Islamic Thought: Teaching Modules: Engaging Religion: Center for Religion 

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Center for Religion & the HumanA research center of the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Indiana University Bloomington

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The concept of "race" in the early Islamic world is bounded not by a single word, but emerges from a matrix of terms such as 'irq (one's root), nasab (one's lineage) 'unṣur (one's stock or tribe), and shu'ūb (one's people), all of which indicate what scholars of race refer to as a "lineage-essentialist" understanding of how human heredity and groupings work. In pre-Islamic Arabia, it was commonly believed that people carry their ancestors' core biobehavioral material from generation to generation in the form of both lineage and legacy (ḥasab); various sayings of Muhammad, meanwhile, aver that one makes one's legacy through pious acts and belief. However, Muhammad also expressed doubt that his community would be able to set aside their atavistic understandings of genealogical prestige, saying, "my community has four things from the age of ignorance that it will not relinquish: boasting of inherited merit ( aḥsāb), insulting one another's lineages ( ansāb), praying for rain from the stars, and [public] mourning." Muhammad's concerns for his community's break with its myopic past are in keeping with the Qur'an's affirmation of human diversity as part of the work of God's creative genius. For example, believers are told, "And one of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the diversity of your languages and colors. Surely in this are signs for those of sound knowledge."

True to Muhammad's concern that ideas of genealogical prestige would outlive him, throughout the period of Islam's early expansion into Persia and Byzantium, writings generalized ideas of lineage to all of humankind apace with these accelerated interethnic encounters, constructing what Zoltan Szombathy has referred to as a "universal genealogical chart." The core of this chart was Noah's three sons-Sam, Ham, and Yafet. Each son was said to have inherited a portion of the earth and become a progenitor of people with distinct qualities from their brothers' brethren in those spaces; these qualities were, in turn, hierarchized. As Islam developed into a lettered world-system, acquiring paper-making technology in the early 8 th century and, concomitantly, prioritizing translation and bookmaking at unprecedented levels, a separate understanding of the origins human difference also came to prominence in the writings of scholars. Their model was inherited from Hellenistic thinkers whose ideas shared early Islam's late Antique environment and stated that the world was divided into multiple, roughly latitudinal "climes," or environmental aggregates that influence the body's humors in common ways, making people look alike and producing similar ecosystems and organisms. Far northern climes were associated with extreme whiteness, and far southern climes with extreme blackness, while central climes were associated with an ideal humoral balance and considered most conducive to civilization. In popular imagination, Noah's genealogy was mapped onto this geographical scheme: collectors of apocryphal isrā'īliyāt (tales told by Jews and Christians that were imported into Muslim texts) traced the descendants of Noah's allegedly blackened son, Ham, across the earth, finding his offspring in such far-flung places as the Maghrib, or modern Morocco, eponymous for being the world's farthest western point, and the unspecified lands of the "south" ( al-janūb), as well as in places more in keeping with Biblical narrative, such as Canaan and Nabatea. Yafet, meanwhile, was said to people the north with his children, including in parts of Europe and Central Asia, but also fabled and vilified places like Gog and Magog. Sam occupied the world's temperate zones and gave rise to, among others, the Arabs.

It is important to note that these divides in bodily constitution and family roots were not constituted purely by "blood," the way we often speak of race in the modern period. Instead, the four humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm) and different bodily fluids (breast milk, blood, seminal issue) all were part of a nuanced understanding of how one's physical and psycho-emotional self were constituted and could be reproduced or changed across generations. The ramifications of bringing in a new tributary to one's family line sometimes looked different in life than they did in law: through and the institution of umm walad (literally, mother of the son), children born of relations between slave-concubines and their male owners were born free and carried their father's family name and ethnicity, even if they did not "look the part." Genealogy also flows patrilineally in wedlock. A number of the literary works below explore the tensions that incongruities between one's apparent race and one's legal status engender, particularly in the case of freed or freeborn black-Arab people, who were often mistaken for slaves.

Many popular Arabic works subscribe to a narrative of intractable divides between the three forks in humanity's family tree, and style those portions of humanity at the Islamic world's edges-especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and the southeastern Indian Ocean-as filled with hybrid humanoids and outré phenomena. By contrast, mannered works that subscribe fully to the theory of climes admit some capacity for change: a person who moves from the south to the north and has several generations of family there may find that their family's appearance, cultural attitudes, and intellects change with time. And so, racialization and the hardness or softness of color lines differ in the early Islamic context across genre and social class, as well as across time and space. The following sources piece together a broad range of such genres, from popular epics to elite treatises, and from visual arts to documentary sources. To facilitate their use, I have annotated each source. Because the literary and social construction of a culture's core (i.e. a default, often invisible "us") is central to the making of race, below you will find sources not only on the Arab-Muslim world's "others," but on the formulation of Arab identity itself. Race is also inherently gendered, and as such, sources on marriage, concubinage, and other gender-based assimilatory legal structures in the early Arab-Muslim community are also featured here.
Harry T. Norris, The Adventures of Antar (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1980).
This book offers a translation and analysis of portions of the most famed epic in the Arabic language, the story of the half-Abyssinian and half-Arab pre-Islamic hero, 'Antarah b. Shaddād. The text's existence is first attested in the twelfth century, but such epics often circulated orally for significant amounts of time prior. It is based on the life of 'Antarah, a warrior-poet who was born enslaved in the tribe of 'Abs and grew to massive historical and legendary renown. Norris offers only the sections of the text in which 'Antarah is traveling in Yemen and East Africa, traversing Egypt and Abyssinia. Sub-Saharan portions of Africa are referred to in Classical Arabic as the Bilād al-Sūdān, or "lands of the blacks," and so the black-skinned 'Antarah's journeys there offer fodder for discussions of the intersection of race and culture.
'Antarah ibn Shaddad, War Songs, trans. James Montgomery (New York: NYU Press, 2018).
As a half-black poet working in Arabic, the historical 'Antarah has often been grouped with a collection of pre- and early Islamic poets known as the aghribat al-'arab, or "crows of the Arabs:" men born to East African mothers and Arab fathers and raced as black who wrote about their sense of marginalization in Arabia ("crow" is a common epithet for black-skinned people in Classical Arabic). These poets' status and works are now considered emblematic of Arabian racial dynamics in their era. 'Antarah is often quiet about his race in the collection ( dīwān) of his poems, beautifully translated by James Montgomery, but one sees flashes of it here and there amidst 'Antara's more central meditations on the already mercurial life of a warrior. Montgomery also has translated a handful of poems by "pseudo-'Antarah" from his aforementioned epic, allowing the reader to compare between 'Antarah's historical self and his afterlife as a literary figure.
The Adventures of Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan: An Arab Folk Epic, translated by Lena Jayussi (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999).
The story of the Yemeni king Sayf b. Dhī Yazan is, like that of 'Antara, a popular epic of some renown. Its existence as a text can be traced only to the Mamluk period in Egypt, sometime between the 13 th and 16 th centuries, and the story overall is much more magical than 'Antara's. Sayf himself is a half-Abyssinian hero who passes as Arab and who is fated to bring the "prophecy" of the people of Sam's subjugation of the people of Ham to fruition. The action in the text follows a historical moment of aggressions between the Abyssinian kingdom of Axum and the Yemeni kingdom of Himyar, which in history resulted in the decades-long occupation of Yemen by Abyssinian ruling powers in the middle of the sixth century.
Ibn Qutaybah, Excellence of the Arabs, trans. Sarah Bowen Savant (New York: NYU Press, 2017).
This treatise was written in response to the fulminations of a largely Persian upper-middle class against the privileging of Arab-identified people in the Muslim society of Baghdad and its environs in a literary movement known as shu'ūbiyya, sometimes rendered as "Persian nationalism." In it, Ibn Qutaybah staunchly defends Arabs' elite standing, basing his arguments on the purported civilizational advancement of pre-Islamic Arabians, the centrality of Arabia and its denizens to Islam, and so on. The work offers a study in identity construction and counter-construction.
Al-Jāḥiẓ, "The Boasts of the Blacks Over the Whites" (Fakhr al-Sūdān 'alā-l-Bīḍān), translated by Tarif Khalidi. Islamic Quarterly 25 (1981): 3-51.
The 9 th-century literatteur al-Jāḥiẓ is one of the most prolific early-'Abbasid authors and is known especially for pioneering various epistolary genres, including the munāẓara, or disputation, which conventionally pitted two entities (i.e. the sword and the pen) against one another in a contest of rhetoric. In this text, al-Jāḥiẓ elects to vaunt the "Blacks," often expressed literally as sūdān or as Zanj, a term later used to indicate Bantu-speaking peoples but that connoted black people in general in early sources. Throughout this work, much of which is tongue-in-cheek, al-Jāḥiẓ takes commonplace negative stereotypes, such as the Zanjs' love of dance and revelry, and argues for their positive aspects. He also lists the well-known and admired figures of Sub-Saharan African heritage in his era. The work is therefore useful for guiding discussions of stereotyping and "counter-storytelling," or the practice of giving anecdotes to help change peoples' minds about a racialized group, much of which echoes with modern conversations about race in the West.
Paul Hardy, "Medieval Muslim Philosophers on Race," in Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, ed. Julie K. Ward and Tommy L. Scott (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002).
This essay offers an account of how later medieval Muslim Arabophone thinkers, and particularly the North African political historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), thought about the relationship between environment, fitness, and natural slavery. This is done with emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africans' perceived natural slavery and developing through-lines between Aristotelian writings and Muslim authors.
Rachel Schine, "Conceiving the Pre-Modern Black-Arab Hero: On the Gendered Production of Racial Difference in Sīrat al-amīrah dhāt al-himmah," Journal of Arabic Literature 48 (2017): 298-326.
This essay explores the relationship between premodern Arab-Muslim understandings of female biology and reproductive sciences and the making of race. The article works across the Arabic epic tradition and various near-contemporary commentarial, belletristic, and medical texts.
Touria Khannous, "Race in Pre-Islamic Poetry: The Work of Antara Ibn Shaddad," African and Black Diaspora, vol. 6, no. 1 (2013): 66-80.
Khannous' essay explores race and blackness in the writings of the pre-Islamic warrior poet 'Antarah ibn Shaddad in view of pre-Islamic societies' understandings of genealogy. She argues for the persistence of racialized genealogical thinking in the Islamic era.
Chouki el Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Beginning with a preliminary exploration of race and slavery in the Qur'an and early literature, Chouki el Hamel's study focuses primarily on the ongoing question of the racial and social status of haratin, or "freed people" in Morocco and its southern neighbors, with a particular focus on the slaving practices and discourses around enslavability under the Moroccan ruler Moulay Isma'il. Though it is prohibited for Muslims to enslave fellow believers, this book richly explores the issues of ascribing unbelief to racial groups. It also offers accounts of how local people grapple with negative associations with blackness in North Africa.
Jere L. Bacharach, "African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East: The Cases of Iraq (869-955) and Egypt (868-1171)," International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 (1981): 471-495
Typically, Muslim military slavery is associated with Turkic peoples, who were often placed in relatively more prestigious cavalry positions. However, large numbers of Sub-Saharan African military slaves were also tasked with military duties, typically as infantry. Bacharach's essay explores how different early Islamic regimes developed racially distinguished military units. He considers how various powers worked with Sub-Saharan African polities diplomatically and economically and made use of trans-Saharan slaving.
J.T. Olsson, "The world in Arab eyes: A reassessment of the climes in medieval Islamic scholarship," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77 (2014): 487-508.
Olsson's essay sheds new light on how articulations of geographic race relate to the prevalent anti-blackness of medieval Arab-Muslim writings. He questions why-when the world, as divided into "climes," is thought to have extreme environments that warp the intellect and body at both its farthest southern and northern points-one does not find a concomitant anti-white set of attitudes in these same works. By supplementing understandings of humors and the climate with other theories of civilization that are found in medieval Arabic encyclopedic and geographic sources, Olsson complicates the relationship between geography and race.
Robert Hillenbrand, "The Image of the Black in Islamic Art: The Case of Islamic Painting," in The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art, David Bindman, Suzanne Preston Blier, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
Hillenbrand's essay is one of the few to tackle the question of blackness in Islamic artworks, and particularly in manuscript illuminations from the Persianate world. He offers a range of images depicting Africa and Africans, but also depicting magical creatures and jinn, and writes on the relationship between human physical blackness and certain aspects of Islamic demonology and cosmology as they appear in the visual arts.
Zoltán Szombathy, "Genealogy in Medieval Muslim Societies," Studia Islamica no. 95 (2002): 5-35.
Szombathy discusses the types of social prestige and meaning that were attached to genealogy ( nasab, pl. ansāb) in medieval Muslim societies. He also sketches the "universal genealogical chart" through which Arab-Muslim thinkers extrapolated their ideas of descent and lineage construction to other parts of the globe, primarily through the lens of apocryphal writings on the offspring of Noah. These genealogies, in effect, produce global race.
Peter Webb, Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam (Edinburgh UP: Edinburgh, 2016).
Webb's book explores the question of how Arabs became an ethnos, the origins of which have typically been identified with the pre-Islamic period. By reading scripture, exegeses, and other early prose works against the grain, Webb theorizes that Arab identity in fact crystallized due to the outward migration of Arabian peoples from the peninsula in the early Islamic period, with formulations of ethnic "Arabness" first detectable in the 8 th century. Webb's work is an important part of the conversation about identity construction in the premodern world.
Elizabeth Urban, Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves, and the Sons of Slave Mothers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
Building on Webb's work, Elizabeth Urban layers a rich gender analysis into the question of how Arab ethnicity was formulated in Islam's earliest centuries, with particular consideration paid to how foreign concubinage features in the standardization of patrilineal descent. Her work also broadly explores the role of "unfree" populations in the construction of Muslim identities, be they enslaved men or women or non-Arab, Muslim affiliates known as mawālī.
Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Antrim's book explores pre-modern Arab-Muslim world concepts through literature, geographic works, and maps. She examines how thinkers divided the world in ways that were both local and universal, and in so doing examines the way in which a sense of self (and other) is attached to a sense of place.
David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Goldenberg dissects the development of one of history's most pernicious myths, common to writings across the Abrahamic faiths: that Noah cursed the offspring of one of his sons, Ham, with being both black-skinned and eternally servile to his other children, who together constitute all of non-black humankind. Moving from the racially uninflected origins of this story in the Hebrew Bible through various commentarial traditions, Goldenberg traces this myth's movement and change across time.

Rachel Schine holds a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. She is presently a postdoctoral associate and instructor of Arabic literature and culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. She has published on topics relating to blackness, racialization, and kinship structures in premodern Arabic storytelling in, among others, the Journal of Arabic Literature and al-'Usūr al-Wustā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists

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Race and Blackness in Early Islamic Thought

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The concept of "race" in the early Islamic world is bounded not by a single word, but emerges from a matrix of terms such as 'irq (one's root), nasab (one's lineage) 'unṣur (one's stock or tribe), and shu'ūb (one's people), all of which indicate what scholars of race refer to as a "lineage-essentialist" understanding of how human heredity and groupings work.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR
Carissa Chew is a History PhD Student and Teaching Assistant at the University of Hawai‛i at Mānoa. Her academic research explores the identities of people of mixed Black and South Asian heritage in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda in the period 1940-1980. After graduating with a first class BA in English Literature and History from the University of Edinburgh, Carissa completed an MPhil in World History at the University of Cambridge. From September 2020 to June 2021, Carissa worked as the Equalities, Diversity, and Inclusion Intern at the National Library of Scotland. It was during this time that she founded CHTNUK and created the Inclusive Terminology Glossary. Carissa now works freelance as an Inclusive Metadata Consultant, most recently completing projects with Glasgow School of Art Library and The Imperial War Museums.

The Inclusive Terminology Glossary provides guidance on discriminatory and harmful language relating to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, and disability. Please contribute to this collaborative project, designed to help heritage professionals create accurate and inclusive metadata, exhibition text, advisory notices, and other resources.

CHTNUK is the home for inclusive description resources. Working on something new? Send it to us! It is essential that we share good practice and learn from one another, building on the foundational work that has already been taking place across the sector. Whether it is cataloguing guidance, professional training opportunities, or examples of advisory notices and content filters that you are looking for, you will find it all here.

Virtual Workshops
Carissa Chew, the creator of the Inclusive Terminology Glossary and the founder of CHTNUK, offers online talks and workshops on inclusive cataloguing and reparative description.

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Welcome to CHTNUK Founded by Carissa Chew in 2021, the Cultural Heritage Terminology Network promotes cross-institutional collaboration on inclusive description issues. If you are looking for practical guidance on how to identify and address the presence of harmful imagery and discriminatory language across heritage collections, catalogues, websites, and exhibitions, you are in the right place!...

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Shetland Stories & Fiddle Tunes: The Greenland Days and the Haaf Fishing

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Gå til indhold

I USA går hvide i terapi for deres hvidhed. De mener, at alle hvide mennesker er racister. De er del af en bølge af kontroversiel, antiracistisk uddannelse på amerikanske virksomheder, universiteter og offentlige institutioner. Højrefløjen hader det, og ser undervisningen som et angreb på hele den vestlige civilisation. Udløber: 31. jan 2024

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I USA går hvide i terapi for deres hvidhed. De mener, at alle hvide mennesker er racister. De er del af en bølge af kontroversiel, antiracistisk uddannelse på amerikanske virksomheder, universiteter og offentlige institutioner. Højrefløjen hader det, og ser undervisningen som et angreb på hele den vestlige civilisation. Udløber: 31.

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How to read A New Vision of Islamic Pasts and Futures by Shahzad Bashir

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How to read A New Vision of Islamic Pasts and Futures by Shahzad Bashir

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The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization google book

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The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization google book

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https://books.google.gl/books?id=KQN85hrJyT4C&printsec=frontcover&hl=da&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

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Can decolonization ever be a completed process?

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Can decolonization ever be a completed process?

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The Making of the Modern World - Lecture 8

Lecturer: Dr Meera Sabaratnam, SOAS University of London

In the modern world, the main type of formal political organisation has gone from being 'empires' to 'nation-states'. But how did this happen, what was left behind and what does it mean? More importantly, why do people still talk about decolonisation today? This session maps out how and where decolonisation unfolded with a particular emphasis on the twentieth century. It looks at the different ideas of liberation that underpinned it, how people organised themselves, how this was met by imperial powers and what the results were in different contexts. The session also examines why struggles for 'decolonisation' are ongoing and spreading to the former centres of empire. It concludes by thinking about the dynamics of decolonisation as a significant force shaping the modern world.

Reading

Betts, R. F. (2012). Decolonization: A brief history of the word. In E. Bogaerts & R. Raben (Eds.), Beyond Empire and Nation (pp. 23-38). Brill.

Duara, P. (Ed.). (2004). Decolonization: Perspectives from now and then. Routledge.

Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. Penguin.

Jansen, J. C., & Osterhammel, J. (2019). Decolonization: A Short History (Reprint edition). Princeton University Press. Introduction

Sabaratnam, M. (2011). IR in Dialogue ... but Can We Change the Subjects? A Typology of Decolonising Strategies for the Study of World Politics. Millennium - Journal of International Studies, 39(3), 781-803.

Questions for Discussion

1. Why did decolonisation accelerate in the twentieth century?

2. Did decolonisation simply expand the numbers of states in the international system, or did it transform that system itself?

3. Can decolonisation ever be a finished process?

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The Making of the Modern World - Lecture 8 Lecturer: Dr Meera Sabaratnam, SOAS University of London In the modern world, the main type of formal political organisation has gone from being 'empires' to 'nation-states'. But how did this happen, what was left behind and what does it mean?

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The traditional territory of the Algonquin people has always included the Ottawa Valley and adjacent lands, straddling the border between what is now Quebec and Ontario. Unlike most of Ontario and the Prairies, Algonquin territory has never been dealt with by a land-sharing Treaty. Algonquin title continues to exist.

Algonquin Nation Territory circa 1850-1867. This map is provisional. Boundaries are based on results of research to date and may change as discovered (Algonquin Nation Secretariat, 2018.)
The orange line shows portions of the boundary covered by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by King George III following the end of the Seven Years War. The Proclamation contains important provisions regarding First Nations' rights to their traditional territories.

With the arrival of the Europeans, the ancestors of today's Algonquins were already well-established in the Ottawa Valley. Initially, the people who now identify as Algonquins were known by a variety of names. The Jesuit priest Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, in his 1744 Journal of a Voyage to North America, mentions the Algonquins, Nipissings, Timiskamings, Têtes-de-Boules, and Gens des Terres.

By the end of the nineteenth century, "Algonquin" had become regularized to refer to those peoples occupying the Ottawa River watershed whose neighbours were the Mohawks (to the east), the Atikamekw and Cree (to the northeast and the north), and the Anishinaabe (to the west and the south).

At present there are ten recognized Algonquin First Nations with a total population of around eleven thousand. Nine of these communities are in Quebec: Kitigan Zibi, Barriere Lake, Kitcisakik, Lac Simon, Abitibiwinni, Long Point, Timiskaming, Kebaowek, and Wolf Lake. Pikwakanagan is in Ontario.

Three other First Nations in Ontario are at least partly of Algonquin descent, connected by kinship: Temagami, Wahgoshig, and Matachewan.

Before the coming of the railways, water routes were the primary communication and transportation corridors. The Ottawa River was the highway that connected the St. Lawrence to the Upper Great Lakes and the northern interior.

The Jesuit Relations of 1636 notes that the Algonquins and Nipissings controlled this strategic route: "The Hurons and the French now staying in the Huron country, wishing to come down here, pass first through the lands of the Nipisiriens [Nipissings] and they come alongside this [Allumette] Island, the inhabitants of which cause them every year some trouble, by demanding toll from all the canoes of the Hurons, Ottawas and French."

As Gilles Havard documents in The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701: French-Native Diplomacy in the Seventeenth Century, the French benefitted commercially and militarily from the access to the upper country that their alliance with the Algonquins and Nipissings guaranteed.

But, as can be seen from surviving Hudson's Bay Company account books (for instance, the books from Fort Albany in 1695), the Algonquins also traded with the English at James Bay, depending on where they could get the best deals.

Partly in acknowledgement of the balance of power, and partly from expediency, both the English and the French employed First Nation practices and protocols in their political, trade, and military relations with the Algonquins and other nations, including the use of presents, the exchange of wampum, and Treaty making.

For instance, in July 1759, Sir William Johnson, who managed Indigenous relations for the British, held a council with the Chippeway (Anishinaabe) and addressed Tequakareigh, one of their chiefs:

"With a string and two belts of wampum, I bid him welcome and shook him by the hand. By the 2d, which was a black belt, I took the hatchet out of the hands of his, and all the surrounding nations; recommended hunting and trade to them, which would be more for their interest than quarrelling with the English."

At this point in the Seven Years War, when the French- English competition for control of northern North America entered its final phase, the British worked hard to obtain the neutrality, if not the outright alliance, of the First Nations allies of the French. These included the Algonquins, not least because they controlled the water routes that provided access to Montreal and Quebec.

Late in August 1760, Johnson entered into a Treaty with nine First Nations at Swegatchy (Oswegatchie) near what is now Ogdensburg, New York, "whereby they agreed to remain neuter on condition that we for the future treated them as friends, & forgot our former enmity."

According to the First Nations parties, the Treaty of Swegatchy included the guarantee that the British "would secure to us the quiet & peaceable Possession of the Lands we lived upon." For the British, this Treaty opened the road to Montreal.

Article 40 of the Articles of Capitulation of Montreal, drafted by French Governor Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil and accepted by the English on September 8, 1760, provided that France's former First Nations allies would be "maintained in the lands they inhabit; if they chose to remain there; they shall not be molested on any pretence whatsoever."

The British also entered into a Treaty directly with the First Nations at Kahnawake on September 15 to 16, 1760, which confirmed the terms of the peace. In the following months, British officials regularly assured the former allies of the French that their land rights would not be prejudiced.

For instance, on July 11, 1761, General Jeffrey Amherst wrote to Johnson: "The Indians may be Assured I will protect them in their Lands; Whether they dispose of them or not, is entirely at their own option, I shall never force them to dispose of any, but will Secure them in what they have; and no otherwise Interfere with their Lands, than by taking such Posts as I may think necessary, for ensuring the protection of this Country for the King."

Unfortunately, in many cases these promises were not kept, leading to continued friction, including an inter-tribal uprising against the English, led by Pontiac, an Odawa war chief.

King George III's Royal Proclamation of 1763 was partly intended to provide additional assurances to First Nations that "frauds and abuses" and land grabbing by settlers would be stopped. It recognized the pre-existing land rights of the First Nations and established principles for a formal Treaty-making process, whereby First Nations lands could only be taken up by way of consent and fair compensation.

The Algonquins were a part of these events. They were at the Treaties of Swegatchy and Kahnawake and received copies of the Royal Proclamation.

There are also wampum belts held by the Algonquins that come from this period and that record these events and the commitments made therein. These belts were presented to the prime minister and premiers of Canada during the March 1987 first minister's conference in Ottawa.

At that time, Chief Solomon Matchewan, his son Jean-Maurice, and a delegation of Algonquins explained the belts, including the Three Figure Covenant: "The representative of the French-speaking nation on one side and the representative of the English-speaking nation on the other side, and on the centre is the Indian nations. And it was agreed at this time that the Indian nations would always be leaders in their homelands. And anything that was supposed to be negotiated upon, that they would have to negotiate with the Indian people .... This Covenant was confirmed by the Articles of Capitulation of 1760 and the Royal Proclamation of 1763. It is significant that this meeting is taking place on Algonquin land. Our people never surrendered these lands; nevertheless we are being pressured to remain on reserves. This is not what our ancestors intended. This covenant, which was made with the English and French Nations, that is contained in the wampum belt may have faded from your memories, but it has not yet faded from ours."

Between 1766 and 1861 a series of royal instructions, ordinances, and new laws confirmed and reflected the assurances that had been made by the British with respect to the protection of First Nations lands, including protections against trespass.

One example is a proclamation by Guy Carleton, governor of Quebec, dated December 22, 1766: "The Lieutenant Governor and Council of this province do hereby strictly enjoin and command all the Inhabitants ... to avoid every occasion of giving the Indians offence, and to treat them as Friends & Brothers entitled to His Majesty's Royal protection, & if any of the said Inhabitants have made any settlements on the Indians grounds, to abandon them without delay, under pain in case of Failure herein, of being prosecuted as Disturbers of the peace of the province with the utmost rigour of the law."

However, for a variety of reasons, the assurances regarding the protection of First Nations lands and the need to enter into Treaty before settlement - assurances the British provided from 1760 onward - were not applied to the Algonquins or their territory.

Pressure for land increased in the period following the end of the American Revolution in 1783, when British Loyalists came north to Canada and had to be resettled. The Algonquins became alarmed and began to petition government, requesting that their lands be protected and that if settlement was to occur Treaties should be made.

At a council between the Nipissings, the Algonquins, and Colonel John Campbell, held on July 14, 1794, the chiefs complained that pressure from settlers was forcing other tribes onto their hunting grounds, so "we cannot provide for our families, we starve during the winter, and thus we cannot pay our debts."

They also asked that no further lands be taken up by settlers and for one settler in particular to be sent away:

"There is one person among them named Captain Fortune who causes great problems for us. He prevents us from setting nets in the river, saying that the fish belong to him and he even forbids us from shooting partridge, claiming they belong to him alone. He forbids us from taking wood to boil our water and goes so far as to throw down our lodges and stop us from camping. We ask you to be so good as to send him away because it could result in one of our young men having some bad business with him. Moreover, the Master of Life has given us the woods and the shore from which to take as much as is appropriate."

This was followed by a long series of petitions and requests to various imperial and local government officials in the following decades. One of the Algonquin petitions, from the fall of 1824, was given to Sir John Johnson, superintendent general of Indian Affairs and the son of Sir William Johnson.

The chiefs gave John Johnson the original copy of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that had been given to them sixty years earlier by his father. At the bottom of the proclamation, he wrote, "At the earnest request of the Algonkins I put my name to this. John Johnson. God Save the King."

Their alarm only increased as the lumber industry moved up the Ottawa River and its tributaries in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

On June 29, 1835, James Hughes, superintendent of the Indian Department, forwarded a petition from the Algonquins and Nipissings that laid out their case:

"They represent their hunting Grounds, to be entirely ruined by the White Settlers to whom they have been conceded, the squatters that have taken possession of certain portions but more particularly by the lumber men, who generally set fire to the woods which destroys their Beaver and Peltries and drives away the Deer. Necessity obliges them to make known their Grievances."

Today, 258 years after the Treaties of Swegatchy and Kahnawake, and 255 years after the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Algonquin Indigenous title - including to Ottawa, the nation's capital - remains an outstanding issue.

Ironically, the only land Treaty affecting Algonquin territory was made not with the Algonquins but with the Mississaugas, for lands north of what is now Kingston, Ontario, and up to the Ottawa River - a fact that was bitterly noted by the Chiefs:

"That Your Petitioners have recently heard with surprise that the Mississauga Tribe have sold to the Government of Upper Canada a certain portion of our said Hunting Grounds and that they receive an annuity for the same amounting to £642 10s per annum without our knowledge, consent or participation in any shape or manner whatever, wherefore Your Petitioners claim from Your Excellency justice; that the said sale by the Mississaugas be cancelled and annulled and the said annuity paid to your Petitioners."

Despite their protests, no land Treaties were made directly with the Algonquins and they never received any compensation for their lands. The timber was too valuable and the imperial government was not prepared to struggle against powerful settler interests at a time when it was looking to off-load its responsibilities and have the colonies pay their own way.

At the time of Confederation, the government of Quebec simply refused to consider the notion of Treaty, and for its part the government of Ontario was hostile to any recognition of Algonquin interests on the south side of the Ottawa River.

This hostility even extended to the setting aside of reserve lands for the Algonquins. The people at Golden Lake (Pikwakanagan) were forced to purchase their own lands in 1873.

Lands were reluctantly set aside by Quebec at River Desert and Timiskaming in 1851 and at Lac Simon and Rapid Lake in 1961-62. The Algonquins of Abitibiwinni used their own funds to purchase their reserve at Amos in 1956; and Canada purchased a small reserve for Kebaowek in 1974.

Today three Algonquin communities (Wolf Lake, Kitcisakik, and Long Point) still do not have reserve lands of their own. With regard to his community, Chief Harry St. Denis of Wolf Lake says, "The Wolf Lake First Nation is one of the oldest recognized Algonquin First Nations but still remains without a land base, which puts us at a severe disadvantage when providing programs and services to our members. This is an injustice we hope to settle soon either through negotiations, the Specific Claims Tribunal, or the courts."

So today, 258 years after the Treaties of Swegatchy and Kahnawake, and 255 years after the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Algonquin Indigenous title - including to Ottawa, the nation's capital - remains an outstanding issue.

Teachers & Homeschoolers!

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kayak: canada’s history magazine for kids

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The traditional territory of the Algonquin people has always included the Ottawa Valley and adjacent lands, straddling the border between what is now Quebec and Ontario. Unlike most of Ontario and the Prairies, Algonquin territory has never been dealt with by a land-sharing Treaty. Algonquin title continues to exist.

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This piece was written in response to the publication last week of a special report by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which apologises for deliberately not commemorating Africans and Asians after the First World War
As someone of Indo-Guyanese heritage, growing up in Britain, one of the many bizarre justifications for the racial insults hurled at me was that I should be grateful to be a citizen of Britain and to just accept whatever racial abuse came my way. I should be grateful, the argument went, because two world wars had been fought and many white lives lost for the freedoms I enjoyed. Therefore, due to my dark skin, I had no right to criticise any aspect of British society and to just be thankful and accept my lot. I refused to do so.

On many occasions I argued back with the important fact (so I thought) that I was born in England and British (this was rejected because of my darker skin); and with the fact that millions of Africans, Caribbeans and Asians had fought for Britain in two world wars (this was denied). I am sure millions of ethnic minority Britons have had to face similar arguments, fuelled by ignorance and prejudice, which is why the revelations about the actions of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission ( CWGC) in the non-commemoration of Africans and Asians after the First World War is of importance to everybody.

My Guyanese grandfather served in the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) in the First World War, which is something I only discovered later in life. I have always felt that if people knew the histories of African, Caribbean, and Asian war service in both world wars this might lessen the ignorance and racism that pervades large portions of the British population. I have taught History in schools in England, Australia, and Malawi for over twenty-five years and when the subject of the First World War is taught, the textbooks invariably only cover the Western Front and the war poets. When I taught in Malawi (formerly 'Nyasaland'), I took my students to see war graves in the local cemetery in Blantyre. Only white South Africans, Germans, and 'Cape Coloureds' were buried in the First World War section. There were no graves to the Black Malawian servicemen of the King's African Rifles, even though Malawi had been invaded by German Schutztruppen and Askari in the war. Indeed, in the whole of Malawi, not a single Black African soldier had a grave with a headstone; nor were they commemorated on a memorial even though 1,741 Malawian soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Such a large-scale absence of Black African servicemen in the memory of the war and in the memorial landscape can only have been achieved through an industrial-scale cover-up. Here the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), founded in 1917 to find, bury, and commemorate, in equality, the bodies of the fallen in the First World War, sought and found the assistance of the Colonial Office, the War Office, and other official bodies, which constituted the British Empire in the African colonies, in their denial of war graves and memorials to African men. In the aftermath of the war, the aim of British governmental and colonial officials was to ensure that the pre-war imperial status quo - white supremacy - was reverted to as rapidly as possible. The last thing white settlers in Britain's East African colonies wanted was any cultural signifier that victory in the war could not have been achieved without the assistance of Black Africans. The war, like the 'Boer War' earlier in the century, needed to be represented as a 'white man's war' even though millions of Black Africans had been mobilised, served as soldiers or carriers, and paid with their lives.

A study of official documents in the IWGC archives reveal that, in 1918, Commission officials operating in Africa decided that where temporary graves of African 'native' soldiers were located, these graves should be collapsed and 'allowed to revert to nature'. Instead, any names were to be registered on a memorial roll in the cemetery. This policy did not apply to anyone apart from Black colonial soldiers, carriers, porters, and guides from east and west Africa. This deliberate exclusion of Black bodies from the commemorative process was called 'sent missing', meaning that African corpses were to be considered as 'missing' and therefore not given a headstone in a war cemetery.

The absence of African graves in these war cemeteries would lead a visitor to conclude that only whites fought in the war and bolsters the popular narrative of the whiteness of the war. It is estimated that 11,000 British, Dominion, Asian, and African soldiers died in the African theatre, along with an estimated 200,000 African Carriers, porters, and followers. The British and Dominion troops were commemorated because they were white; some Indians were commemorated because that was the policy elsewhere, although unevenly; West Indian and South African 'native' servicemen were commemorated because they were considered Christian and 'civilised', but 'native' Africans, considered 'heathen' and 'uncivilised' were not. Here, commemoration conformed to pseudo-scientific notions of a racial taxonomy with Black Africans at the bottom of a racial and military hierarchy and not considered fully human.

At the time, IWGC officials legitimised the memorial absence by blaming Africans themselves. They explained that Africans did not mourn their dead but instead left bodies for hyenas to eat. Whilst this cultural tradition was true for some East African ethnic groupings such as the Meru, Kikuyu, Maasai or Nandi, it was not the case for the majority. Most West African servicemen who served were from the Yoruba, Igbo, Ogboni, Egun, and Oro ethnicities and had been converted to Christianity or were Muslim Hausas from Nigeria who buried their dead. The IWGC also stated that 'the sentimental and sacred feeling for one's dead relatives does not appear to appeal to the native mind to the same degree as it does to the European.' This Eurocentric ethnography was incorrect: relatives held mourning rituals for deceased African servicemen, whether a body was present or not. In the Luo ethnic group of Kenya, members of the community would join the family in circling a dead soldier's house and shake spears to battle evil spirits in the soldier's memory lest they invite curses from the spirit of the deceased man. In the absence of a body, the fruit of a yago tree was placed in a grave and buried ceremoniously. These rituals were well known to colonial officials as missionaries dutifully recorded African burial traditions.

IWGC officials also invoked the cost of commemorating the thousands of dead African servicemen despite the immense efforts they had gone to in Europe to recover the dead. They suggested that as 'East African natives are mostly illiterate' so the provision of headstones 'would constitute an unnecessary expenditure' and 'not be appreciated'. Lord Arthur Browne of the IWGC justified the policy in Africa in 1923: 'In perhaps two or three hundred years' time, when the native population had reached a higher stage of civilisation, they might then be glad to see that headstones had been erected on the native graves and that the native soldiers had received precisely the same treatment as their white comrades.'

There is also evidence of a variation in Commission policy closer to home. Muslim merchant seamen who died at sea should be commemorated by name with their shipmates on the Tower Hill Memorial in London, but their names were placed on a separate list and, although they were commemorated by name, their memorial is in Mumbai not London. West Indian stokers who perished on HMS Good Hope in the Battle of Coronel in 1914 should be commemorated by name on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial alongside the rest of the stokers, but their names are found on the same memorial in Mumbai. African and Caribbean servicemen are not on the 'Million Dead of Empire' memorial in Westminster Abbey, despite a complaint by a BWIR veteran in 1932. The IWGC was aware of all of these anomalies because they had deliberately constructed a methodology to obscure Black war service.

In April 2021, the CWGC finally publicly apologised for their actions and have pledged to act upon the recommendations of their special report. They only set up a committee after a Channel 4 documentary exposed their policies in 2019. The omission and cover-up are just the latest of many shameful episodes in the history of the British Empire. My hope is for an inclusion of Black African war service in the memorial landscape in west and east Africa, so that it resembles that on the Western Front and, of course, in the history books. Such actions would undo some of the damage caused by the deliberate distortion of the public memory of the war and provide some reparation to Africans and Asians after a century of exclusion.
John Siblon is the Head of History at City & Islington College. He is also a PhD Candidate at Birkbeck College researching the representation of African and Caribbean servicemen in the aftermath of the First World War. He has published a small book, Caribbeans on the Western Front, and many articles, blogs, and chapters on Black servicemen in the First World War. He is also an active anti-racist campaigner and was a co-author of the Royal Historical Society's 2018 report on Race, Ethnicity and Equality in UK History. You can find him on Twitter @john_siblon.

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Black & Asian soldiers and the 'White Man's War'

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This piece was written in response to the publication last week of a special report by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which apologises for deliberately not commemorating Africans and Asians after the First World War As someone of Indo-Guyanese heritage, growing up in Britain, one of the many bizarre justifications for the racial insults hurled at me was that I should be grateful to be a citizen of Britain and to just accept whatever racial abuse came my way.

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Centre For 21st Century Humanities

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Standoff at 1492 Land Back Lane | The Walrus

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I n an empty loft off Highway 6, along a stretch of country road that connects Six Nations of the Grand River with the nearby town of Caledonia, eight people banter around a midafternoon fire. This grassy field in southern Ontario, dotted with a few tents and temporary structures, is called Kanonhstaton. Back in 2006, it was the future site of a 600-home subdivision. Members of Six Nations, which claims ownership of the land, moved in and halted construction, leading to a months-long standoff that began to de-escalate only when the province bought out the land from the developer and abandoned the project. Today, Kanonhstaton serves as the headquarters for a new land fight, this one just across the road. There, Foxgate Developments is planning to turn twenty-five acres of farmland into McKenzie Meadows, a suburb of 218 homes. Haudenosaunee from Six Nations arrived once again in July, stopping construction, occupying the lots, and renaming the barren field 1492 Land Back Lane. It's now a new front in the centuries-long struggle between Canada and Indigenous nations over where one another's sovereignty begins and ends-one that sees the Haudenosaunee at odds with the government, the courts, and many of their neighbours.

Skyler Williams, a thirty-eight-year-old ironworker and spokesperson for the activists, pulls up in a mud-spattered Jeep. He grins and lights a cigarette, and we walk a few hundred metres down the road toward the main blockade, up since October. There, a battered, spray-painted school bus sits atop a ridge of torn-up asphalt, barring one of the main roads into Caledonia. Four Ontario Provincial Police OPP officers, standing outside their vehicles, keep watch from afar. There are arrest warrants out for several of the camp's members, Williams included, on account of an injunction ordering them to allow construction to resume. The protesters have been disparaged by politicians and police as criminals and outlaws, but among their supporters, they have another name: land defenders. They haven't left, and the situation has now settled into a tense stalemate.

Williams tells me that, though he's the group's spokesperson, he isn't its leader. That responsibility lies with a collective of unnamed women, in keeping with the Haudenosaunee's matriarchal society-the anonymity, he explains, is necessary to shield them from harassment and legal ramifications. However, Williams's public-facing role may have put him on the hook for nearly $20 million in legal fees, per an order from an Ontario Superior Court judge. Still, he's undeterred. "Indigenous people are continuing to be forced to make a stand for the health, the safety, the futures of our people," he says.

The conflict playing out at Land Back Lane has roots dating back 250 years. The proposed site of McKenzie Meadows falls on the Haldimand Tract, a parcel of roughly 950,000 acres granted by the Crown to its Haudenosaunee allies in 1784, after many were displaced from their New York territories following the American Revolutionary War. The deal gave the Haudenosaunee ten kilometres on both sides of the Grand River, a ribbon of land that unspools over some 200 kilometres, from the river's headwaters, near Orangeville, in the north, to Lake Erie, in the south. Today, the Haudenosaunee at Six Nations-the most populous reserve in Canada, with more than 27,000 members-control just 5 percent of their original land. The government says that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy sold most of it back in the 1800s; many Haudenosaunee say that much of the land was illegitimately taken.

Since 1980, the Six Nations council has submitted twenty-nine separate land claims through the courts to try to remedy the situation. Only one-the original 1980 filing-has been resolved to date. And, as the cases languish in the legal system, the Haudenosaunee have watched their lands shrink, piece by piece turned over to encroaching construction. Once houses arrive, the best Six Nations can hope for is monetary compensation-the territory itself is lost. The movement at Land Back Lane, then, is a last-ditch attempt to prevent their homelands from shrinking any further.

The unrest in Caledonia is just one of many high-profile land disputes that have unfolded over the past year. From Mi'kma'ki on the Atlantic coast, where lobster fishers are defending their treaty right to the ocean harvest, to British Columbia, where the Secwépemc and Wet'suwet'en are blocking construction projects on contested territories, land defenders say they are merely enforcing the rights they were promised and calling in debts that are owed.

In previous decades, these conflicts often played out in isolation, but today, there's a growing and concerted effort from nations across North America to support one another in their struggles, with thousands rallying in person and online under the banner of the #LandBack movement. At Land Back Lane, this has taken the form of Indigenous folks showing up from across the country to stand guard with the defenders, bring supplies, orchestrate solidarity rallies, and donate to a legal-defence fund. The occupation, now stretching into the winter, has no end in sight. As Williams says, "People across all of Turtle Island right now have been oppressed to such a degree that there isn't much choice in the matter for us. We're going to have nothing left for our grandchildren."

T he legal defence of land reclamation hinges on the question of authority. Many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit see their territories as independent states with their own laws. Meanwhile, the Constitution Act is vague in defining what level of authority it sees these nations possessing, and, as a result, disputes have continuously cropped up over where Indigenous nations' powers end and Canada's begin. "Most Canadians believe that [Canada] encapsulates the entire land mass that we see on a map," says Matthew Green, MP for Hamilton Centre and one of the few local representatives who support Land Back Lane. "This is a legal fiction of Canada, and we have to come to grips with that."

The animosity that these disputes raise, Green says, is easy to understand: as a city councillor, he often saw neighbours in his ward "go to war like they were Hatfield and McCoy over under a foot of a fence variance for a property line." For many First Nations, the land in question is exponentially larger-and essential to their futures. As recent history has shown, taking direct action is often the only way Indigenous communities can get the government to act.

In 1990, Mohawks at Kanehsatà:ke set up a camp on their traditional territory, which borders the nearby Quebec town of Oka. The municipality was planning to build a golf course on the land, which contains Mohawk burial grounds. The standoff saw armed land defenders staring down the army and police, lasting more than two months and leading to widespread media coverage. The government eventually agreed to purchase the land and leave it undeveloped, though tension over ownership remains. Five years later, it was the Chippewas of the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, in Ontario, who fought to regain hundreds of acres that the country had commandeered. Some of it had been sold under government pressure in the 1920s and turned into Ipperwash Provincial Park; during the Second World War, more land was appropriated and turned into military training grounds. When members of Stony Point First Nation set up their camp in 1995, the OPP was deployed and a brief siege ensued. The authorities eventually killed Dudley George, who was unarmed, leading to a three-year-long inquiry. Last September, some of the land at Ipperwash was finally returned to the Chippewas of the Kettle and Stony Point.

Beverly Jacobs, associate dean of the University of Windsor faculty of law and faculty adviser to the 1492 Windsor Law Coalition, which works in support of Land Back Lane, says that the Canadian legal system often takes decades or longer to resolve land disputes-the claim at Kanehsatà:ke, for example, was first raised in 1761 and remains contested to this day. When faced with imminent development that would make future ownership impossible, direct action can be the only option left. "If there was another way, it would be done," Jacobs says. "Our young people, they want something done now because my generation, my parents, my grandparents, have been through the same struggle, and they're just tired of it."

It's a sentiment echoed by Courtney Skye, a Mohawk research fellow and policy analyst who has been a regular presence at Land Back Lane. She says that, in spite of the many legal wins Indigenous people have achieved in recent decades-via the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, amendments to the Indian Act, and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada-when it comes to true self-determination, little has actually changed. "[The previous generation] gained all these tools and all these avenues in a policy and technical sphere, and the next generation has just witnessed how none of those strategies worked," she says. "For a lot of people, they've come to the conclusion that the only thing that actually makes a difference is direct action and radical land reclamation."

But, more often than not, protests prompt force rather than diplomacy. The OPP is a constant presence at Land Back Lane-last October, officers moved in and fired rubber bullets and tasers at those assembled. The previous month, Skye was pulled out of a friend's SUV and arrested-according to those at Land Back Lane, she's one of thirty-six charged to date. Ken Hewitt, mayor of local Haldimand County, has a down payment on a home in McKenzie Meadows. He's publicly applauded the arrest of Skyler Williams's wife, Kahsenniyo, and wrote that he would "look forward to hearing of [Skyler's] arrest shortly." Last September, the Haldimand County Police Services Board called the land defenders "terrorists" in a meeting document and encouraged the OPP to crack down harder on them.

Heavy-handed responses have come to be expected by Indigenous activists. "When people take things into their own hands, then the whole weight of the system comes crushing down on Indigenous people," says Karl Dockstader, an Oneida journalist and host of the radio program One Dish, One Mic. Dockstader is one of many reporters who have travelled to Land Back Lane to document the protest, but unlike most others, he has been targeted for doing so. Last September, he was arrested and charged with mischief and failure to comply with an injunction. It was three months before the charges were dropped.

P olitical organizing between Indigenous nations has always been present, from the Nisga'a's Land Claims Agreement Coalition, in British Columbia, to the allied Coast Salish nations that banded together in the 1800s to protect themselves against nearby powers. During the Mohawk defences in Kanehsatà:ke, solidarity protests, leafleting, and blockades occurred from Toronto to Vancouver. But, with the new #LandBack movement, people say that alliances have been accelerating. Photos of RCMP officers breaching the barricades at Wet'suwet'en, or of settler fishers attacking Mi'kmaw workers, are instantly circulated across nations via social media, leading to rail blockades, solidarity marches, and grassroots fundraising.

Raven-Chanelle Augustine, from Elsipogtog First Nation, an hour north of Moncton, has been on the front lines of the fisheries dispute in Mi'kma'ki. It's a movement, she says, that has united Mi'kmaw nations despite their long-standing differences. "When things go down, when the commercial fishermen are out here setting things on fire, our people really know how to show up for each other," she says.

Shady Hafez, an Anishinaabe community member from Kitigan Zibi, was involved in the Algonquins of Barriere Lake's blockade against Quebec hunters last fall, an action to address declines in local moose populations. "I had to tell people so many times, 'This is not your playground-this is not yours,'" he says. "We have no problem sharing, but if we're saying you need to take a break, then you need to take a break. Our jurisdiction needs to be acknowledged." Hafez says his community faced retaliation for its actions-people shot up signs and barricades and spread butchered moose parts around the blockades-but the blockade was nonetheless a success. "Organizers both young and old in our community are prepared now," he says, "and are organized in a way that we weren't before."

When the RCMP invaded Wet'suwet'en territory in January 2020, the Mohawk of Tyendinaga blocked rail lines in Ontario-one small part of the nationwide #ShutDownCanada movement, which eventually forced a sit-down with the federal minister of Indigenous services, Marc Miller. Last October, people at Land Back Lane orchestrated a rolling car blockade to show support for Mi'kmaw fishers. This kind of inter-nation support from east to west may be the biggest threat to the government's slow-moving response to Indigenous sovereignty.

The original treaties between settlers and Indigenous nations were drawn up not out of benevolence, Skye says, but because of a "cost-benefit analysis." Back then, the government concluded that continued skirmishes were too expensive. It was forced to come to the table and make deals. With the #LandBack movement growing, it may come to the same realization. As Skye explains, "It is always because of Indigenous resistance and Indigenous organizing that Indigenous people still exist."

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Standoff at 1492 Land Back Lane | The Walrus

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I n an empty loft off Highway 6, along a stretch of country road that connects Six Nations of the Grand River with the nearby town of Caledonia, eight people banter around a midafternoon fire. This grassy field in southern Ontario, dotted with a few tents and temporary structures, is called Kanonhstaton.

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The Two Row Wampum and the Covenant Chain of Treaties

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Cherokee Almanac: The Printing Press - YouTube

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This graphic novel tells 150 years of Canadian history from an Indigenous perspective | CBC Books

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This Place is a graphic novel anthology that examines the 150-plus years of Canadian history since Confederation from the perspective of Indigenous Canadians. The book features work by Indigenous authors from across the country, including David. A Robertson.

Robertson is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and the author of novels, graphic novels and children's books. His picture book When We Were Alonewon the Governor General's Literary Award for Young People's Literature - illustrated books and was shortlisted for the 2017 TD Children's Literature Award.

His story, Peggy, is about the life of Francis Pegahmagabow, a highly-decorated First World War soldier from Wasauksing First Nation - from his military achievements to his struggles with PTSD and racism after returning home.

This Place is a finalist for the 2020 Doug Wright Award for best book. The annual Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning honour the best in Canadian comics and graphic novels.

When This Place came out in 2019, Robertson spoke to CBC Radio's In Town and Out host Giacomo Panico about the book.

Important stories

"This project came about when I was sitting down with the publisher. We were talking about Canada 150 and how we can have our own voices heard. That was the seed that started this project. It's a collection of 10 stories by talented Indigenous writers. Katherena Vermette has a story about Annie Bannatyne. Jen Storm has a story about the windigo called Red Clouds. One of my favourites in this anthology is by Kateri Akiwenze-Damm, who has a story called Nimkii and it addresses the Sixties Scoop and the child welfare system. It's a heartbreaking story, but also a really important and powerful one."

Hero's journey

"We each got a timeframe to pick from as writers. I was interested in writing about the era around the First World War. The story, Peggy, is about Francis Pegahmagabow First Nation and it details his time in the war and the things he accomplished. He was one of the most effective snipers in history and one of the most decorated Canadian soldiers in history.

"After the war, he also had barriers and struggles - going through PTSD and also the mistreatment as a veteran by the Canadian government because he was Indigenous. The story tries to encapsulate all of those things about his life."

The power of comics

"Using comics to tell history stories is very powerful because there is a great value in being able to show history rather than just talk about it. If I can show Peggy on the battlefield and him doing what he did best as a soldier and also what he did as a chief in the community, that has a great power of engagement. That's what we want to do with stories - we want to engage and through that, motivate to change.

"Comics have this ability to reach a wide readership. You can have a comic that a five-year-old can read and a 95-year-old can read and everybody in-between. If you want to reach people with stories and change things through those stories, you can reach anybody with comics."

Looking to the future

"We talk about this within the context of reconciliation. I learned a lot from my father, who's an elder from Norway House Cree Nation. He talks about the process of reconciliation, where we sit down with each other and connect on a human level. We see through stereotyping all these preconceptions that we've been fed and we learn from each other, we listen to each other, we share stories with each other and we heal together.

"I think this is a landmark book - this is a culmination of where we've been headed in the past 10 years for Indigenous literature. I hope that this book plays a role in that process. And I think that it will."

David A. Robertson's comments have been edited for length and clarity.

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This graphic novel tells 150 years of Canadian history from an Indigenous perspective | CBC Books

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This Place is a graphic novel anthology that examines the 150-plus years of Canadian history since Confederation from the perspective of Indigenous Canadians. The book features work by Indigenous authors from across the country, including David. A Robertson . Robertson is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and the author of novels, graphic novels and children's books.

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Marie-Louise Christophe: A Haitian Queen in Great Britain

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‘The Forgotten Slavery of Our Ancestors’ offers an introduction to the history of Indigenous enslavement on land that is now the United States. As the featured historians point out, the enslavement of Indigenous peoples stretched from Alaska into South America. It predated and helped shape the system of African enslavement in New England, and it lasted until throughout the 19th century in the West. “This,” explains historian Andrés Reséndez, “is our shared history.”

Directed and edited by Howdice Brown III, ‘The Forgotten Slavery of Our Ancestors’ was produced by Marie Acemah (https://www.seestoriesalaska.org/) and Alice Qannik Glenn (https://www.coffeeandquaq.com/). The runtime for this film is just over 12 minutes.

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Beyond the Colonial Cartographic Frame: The Imperative to Decolonize the Map | UTP Journals Blog

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Print by Katrina Brown Akootchook and photograph of the print by Berdell Paninguna Akootchook. Used with permission.
Written by guest blogger Reuben Rose-Redwood.
Mapping is an art of persuasion that often aims to seduce us into believing that the map merely describes the world as it is, yet historians of cartography have long understood that mapping is a form of world-making. When European colonial explorers mapped the world at the behest of imperial monarchs, the names of places and boundary lines that they inscribed on maps were instrumental in creating the geographical imaginaries of empire. These acts of colonial world-making were also acts of world-taking - placing the imaginative geographies of Indigenous peoples under erasure and ultimately resulting in the dispossession of Indigenous lands to make way for colonial settlement and territorial control.

This Eurocentric legacy of colonial mapping continues to shape geographical imaginaries in the present, and there is no shortage of both conventional and critical historical accounts of the " imperial map." Yet, by continuously highlighting the power of colonial and imperial maps, this has the effect of reinforcing a Eurocentric narrative of cartographic history that further marginalizes Indigenous traditions of mapping. Yet how might we move beyond the colonial cartographic frame in an effort to decolonize the map?

In a recent special issue on " Decolonizing the Map" in the journal, Cartographica, which I co-edited with Natchee Blu Barnd, Annita Hetoevėhotohke'e Lucchesi, Sharon Dias, and Wil Patrick, we contend that recentering Indigenous mappings is a necessary step toward decolonizing both cartographic theory and practice as well as the stories we tell about the history of cartography. Indigenous and decolonial mapping can take many different forms, from the reclamation of Indigenous place names to the mapping of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

As we began reflecting on the contributions to the special issue of Cartographica that we guest edited, it became clear to us that decolonial mapping is not only about Indigenizing the content of maps but also involves decolonizing the protocols and values that inform the map-making process itself. As one of the co-editors of our special issue, Annita Hetoevėhotohke'e Lucchesi, put it in a recent interview, "The form is only one small part of what makes a map Indigenous - the values and practices underpinning and influencing the form are the big stuff."

In contrast to the masculinist legacy of Western cartography, many of the leading scholars and practitioners who have contributed to Indigenous cartography are women, including Indigenous cartographers such as Margaret Pearce, Renee Pualani Louis, and Annita Hetoevėhotohke'e Lucchesi, among others. For non-Indigenous scholars, such as myself, I believe we have a responsibility to not only acknowledge our privileges but to decenter the arrogance of our own "expertise" in order to make space for Indigenous voices in our disciplines and beyond. If mapping is a form of world-making, Indigenous cartographers will surely lead the way in charting a course toward the place-worlds of a decolonial future.

Reuben Rose-Redwood is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on cultural landscape studies, critical toponymies, the politics of mapping, and the history of geographical thought, among other topics. He has edited a number of books, including The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place (2018), and is Managing Editor of Dialogues in Human Geography. He is currently conducting research on controversies over statues, monuments, and place names on university campuses.

Most recently, he has served as lead editor of a special issue of Cartographica on " Decolonizing the Map."

The UTP Journals blog features guest posts from our authors. The opinions expressed in these posts may not necessarily represent those of UTP Journals and their clients.

To continue with the University Press Blog Week Tour, visit the posts at other contributing presses.

Amherst College Press
Bristol University Press
Bucknell University
Duke University Press
Georgetown University Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
Penn State University Press
Temple University Press
UBC Press
University of Illinois Press
University of Manitoba Press
University of Toronto Press
Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Tagged as: Cartographica, colonial, decolonization, Indigenous, map, map history

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Beyond the Colonial Cartographic Frame: The Imperative to Decolonize the Map | UTP Journals Blog

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Written by guest blogger Reuben Rose-Redwood. Mapping is an art of persuasion that often aims to seduce us into believing that the map merely describes the world as it is, yet historians of cartography have long understood that mapping is a form of world-making.

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Indigenous arts and activism in Canada

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Indigenous Art Part 2 - 'Living' Traditions - Expressions in Pop Culture and Art | Coursera

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Video created by University of Alberta for the course "Indigenous Canada". Finally, we will explore how geographical location, trading networks and partnerships have influenced Indigenous art in the past. As well, we will examine contemporary ...

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Native-Land.ca | Our home on native land

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Mapping

We strive to map Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages across the world in a way that goes beyond colonial ways of thinking in order to better represent how Indigenous people want to see themselves.

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Native Land is a resource to learn more about Indigenous territories, languages, lands, and ways of life. We welcome you to our site.

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German Writers and Race: Modern Germany's Cognitive Dissonance on Racism and its Roots in Karl May's Legacy | Section Title | Center for German and European Studies | Brandeis University

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German Writers and Race: Modern Germany's Cognitive Dissonance on Racism and its Roots in Karl May's Legacy
In cooperation with the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University
Monday, November 30, 2020
12-1:30 pm Eastern Time (US) / 6-7:30 pm German time
Zoom Webinar
WATCH RECORDING
You can watch a recording of the complete event by clicking the button above.

About the Event

Most Americans don't know who Karl May is, and Germans no longer read his "American Indian" fiction that once inspired generations. Fewer still connect its legacy to persistent "acceptable" racism in all facets of German society, despite research clearly linking the stereotyping of "Others" to the rise of Eurocentrism, normalized intolerance and white supremacist ideology in Western society.

Current situations regarding racism and cultural appropriation may have sprung from May's seeds, but the sproutlings were grafted onto pre-existing trees.

About the Film

"What does a world that respects Indigenous peoples look like, that's working towards ending racism, colonialism, and other intersecting oppression on a global scale?"

Marcos, 2017

Forget Winnetou! is a documentary film project directed by Red Haircrow, on stereotypes of Native Americans in Germany, and how it is connected to wider issues of stereotyping, racial profiling and inequality towards all people of color throughout Europe and western society. We understand Winnetou, the fictional "Indian" character created by Karl May, who many Germans see as harmless and inspiring, can be a symbolic character/story reinforcing Native American stereotypes, and racism & colonialism in general.

While recognizing many Germans were first introduced to "natives" through May's stories, developing a lifelong love of the characters, in combination with misinformation and Eurocentric or one-dimensional material in German society, a great imbalance has continued. A situation of "Loving in the wrong way". For generations it has reinforced the attitude that Europeans can take whatever and whoever they want, even living peoples, and misinterpret and use them for self-gratification. We live in a world heavily damaged by those such practices and attitudes.

We are asking Germany and the world to understand the very real effects of dismissive attitudes towards stereotyping, especially their effect on the young, and the misuse of Native identity and cultures. We want to help support and expand intercultural connections and correct the imbalances through accurate knowledge, and letting Natives represent and present themselves. We want Natives in North America to know and understand the depth of fetishization and exotification that occurs, although not always intentional, results in further objectification, dehumanization and erasure at the heart of so many issues, from daily discrimination to repatriation denials.

(Source: Germany is a microcosm of serious issues in western society: of increasingly blatant racism, xenophobia, and intolerance strengthened by strategically omitted or white-washed history involving people of color. We'll show this through the lives and stories of Native Americans in their own words and experiences. We feel our documentary can be a learning experience introducing or furthering the process of decolonization and intercultural respect by inspiring viewers to ask themselves and hopefully realize, how beliefs, attitudes and practices they believe harmless are part of systemic racism that continues to oppress and divide. Vtape)
After you RSVP for the event (see link at top of the page), you will receive access information for watching the film prior to the event.
About the Speaker

D.S Red Haircrow is a writer, educator, psychologist and filmmaker of Native American (Chiricahua-Apache / Cherokee) and African American descent. They hold a Bachelor's of Science in Psychology and a Master's in Native American Studies from the University of Montana Bozeman, and their work has been featured in journals, magazines, and exhibitions around the world. Their research interests include intergenerational historical trauma, autistic spectrum disorder, GLBTIIQ needs, and suicide prevention. Current projects include an educational RPG video game focusing on world Indigenous groups, continuation of research on stigma and prejudice related to mental disorders and conditions such as ASD, and the short documentary on these topics: ALMOST.

Various trailers and related excerpts from the film can be found here: https://vimeo.com/redhaircrow

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German Writers and Race: Modern Germany's Cognitive Dissonance on Racism and its Roots in Karl May's Legacy

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In cooperation with the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University Monday, November 30, 202012-1:30 pm Eastern Time (US) / 6-7:30 pm German timeZoom Webinar WATCH RECORDING You can watch a recording of the complete event by clicking the button above.

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Interactive Time-Lapse Map Shows How the U.S. Took More Than 1.5 Billion Acres From Native Americans

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This interactive map, produced by University of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt to accompany his new book West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776, offers a time-lapse vision of the transfer of Indian land between 1776 and 1887. As blue "Indian homelands" disappear, small red areas appear, indicating the establishment of reservations. (Above is a GIF of the map's time-lapse display; visit the map's page to play with its features.)

The project's source data is a set of maps produced in 1899 by the Bureau of American Ethnology. The B.A.E. was a research unit of the Smithsonian that published and collected anthropological, archaeological, and linguistic research on the culture of North American Indians, as the nineteenth century drew to a close.

While the time-lapse function is the most visually impressive aspect of this interactive, the "source map" option (available on the map's site) offers a deep level of detail. By selecting a source map, and then zooming in to the state you've selected, you can see details of the map used to generate that section of the interactive. A pop-up box tells you which Native nation was resident on the land, and the date of the treaty or executive order that transferred the area to the government, as well as offering external links to descriptions of the treaty and of the tract of land.

In the site's "About" section (reachable by clicking on the question mark), Saunt is careful to point out that the westward-moving boundaries could sometimes be vague. Asked for an example, he pointed me to the 1791 treaty with the Cherokee that ceded the land where present-day Knoxville, Tenn. stands. The treaty's language pointed to landmarks like "the mouth of Duck river," a broad approach that left a lot of room for creative implementation. When dealing with semi-nomadic tribes, Saunt added, negotiators sometimes designated a small reservation, "rather than spelling out the boundaries of the cession."

This vagueness benefited the government's purposes in crafting treaties and executive orders. "Greater legality and more precision," Saunt argues, "would have made it impossible to seize so much land in so short a time."

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Interactive Time-Lapse Map Shows How the U.S. Took More Than 1.5 Billion Acres From Native Americans

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This interactive map, produced by University of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt to accompany his new book West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 , offers a time-lapse vision of the transfer of Indian land between 1776 and 1887. As blue "Indian homelands" disappear, small red areas appear, indicating the establishment of reservations.

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Why they Hide the Great African Empire of Nubia from the History Books

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Indigenous lands map

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'First Thanksgiving' Wampanoag Tribe Faces New Epidemic | Time

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Tribe Who Fed the Pilgrims Strives for Survival Amid New Epidemic

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Many Wampanoag hoped that the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing would be a galvanizing event to remind people that they still exist

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Indigenous political structures in Canada

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Indigenous political structures in Canada

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Indigenous Political Structures - Red Power | Coursera

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Video created by University of Alberta for the course "Indigenous Canada". In this lesson students will learn about key characteristics of a few different Indigenous political structures and the impacts of colonialism on these structures (e.g. ...

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Indigenous Concepts of Gender - Indigenous Women | Coursera

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Indigenous Concepts of Gender - Indigenous Women | Coursera

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Video created by University of Alberta for the course "Indigenous Canada". Exploring Indigenous concepts of gender, and the traditional roles and responsibilities, this lesson then moves into an examination of how colonization can be ...

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Indigenous law traditions

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Women in Traditional China | Asia Society

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by Patricia Ebrey

In China from very early times, men have been seen as the core of the family. The ancestors to whom a Shang or Zhou dynasty king made sacrifices were his patrilineal ancestors, that is, his ancestors linked exclusively through men (his father's father, his father's father's father, and so on). When women enter the early historical record, it is often because they caused men problems. Some women schemed to advance their own sons when their husband had sons by several women. Women's loyalties were often in question. In 697 BCE, for instance, the daughter of one of the most powerful ministers in the state of Zheng learned from her husband that the ruler had ordered him to kill her father. After her mother advised her that "All men are potential husbands, but you have only one father," she told her father of the plot, and he promptly killed her husband. The ruler of Zheng placed the blame on the husband for foolishly confiding in his wife. Taken together, accounts of these sorts present a mixed picture of women and the problems they presented for men in the nobility. The women in their lives were capable of loyalty, courage, and devotion, but also of intrigue, manipulation, and selfishness.

Confucius probably took for granted these sorts of attitudes toward women, common in his society. He greatly esteemed ancestral rites and related family virtues such as filial piety. He hoped that through the practice of ritual everyone, male and female, high and low, old and young, would learn to fulfill the duties of their roles. Women's roles were primarily kinship roles: daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and mother-in-law. In all these roles, it was incumbent on women to accord with the wishes and needs of closely-related men: their fathers when young, their husbands when married, their sons when widowed. Confucius's follower Mencius declared that the worst of unfilial acts was a failure to have descendants (Mencius 4A.26). In later centuries this emphasis on the necessity of sons led many to be disappointed at the birth of a daughter.

In the centuries after Confucius, it became common for writers to discuss gender in terms of yin and yang. Women were yin, men were yang. Yin was soft, yielding, receptive, passive, reflective, and tranquil, whereas yang was hard, active, assertive, and dominating. Day and night, winter and summer, birth and death, indeed all natural processes occur though processes of interaction of yin and yang. Conceptualizing the differences between men and women in terms of yin and yang stresses that these differences are part of the natural order of the universe, not part of the social institutions artificially created by human beings. In yin yang theory the two forces complement each other but not in strictly equal ways. The natural relationship between yin and yang is the reason that men lead and women follow. If yin unnaturally gains the upper hand, order at both the cosmic and social level are endangered.

Maintaining a physical separation between the worlds of men and the worlds of women was viewed as an important first step toward assuring that yin would not dominate yang. The Confucian classic the Book of Rites stressed the value of segregation even within the home; houses should be divided into an inner and an outer section, with the women staying in the inner part. One poem in the Book of Poetry concluded: "Women should not take part in public affairs; they should devote themselves to tending silkworms and weaving." A similar sentiment was expressed in the Book of Documents in proverbial form: "When the hen announces the dawn, it signals the demise of the family."

During Han times (202 BCE - 220 CE), both the administrative structure of the centralized state and the success of Confucianism helped shape the Chinese family system and women's place in it. Han laws supported the authority of family heads over the other members of their families. The family head was generally the senior male, but if a man died before his sons were grown, his widow would serve as family head until they were of age. The law codes of the imperial period enforced monogamy and provided a variety of punishments for bigamy and for promoting a concubine to the status of wife. Men could divorce their wives on any of seven grounds, which included barrenness, jealousy, and talkativeness, but could do so only if there was a family for her to return to. There were no grounds on which a woman could divorce her husband, but divorce by mutual agreement was possible.

Much was written in Han times on the virtues women should cultivate. The Biographies of Exemplary Women told the stories of women from China's past who had given their husbands good advice, sacrificed themselves when forced to choose between their fathers and husbands, or performed other heroic deeds. It also contained cautionary tales about scheming, jealous, and manipulative women who brought destruction to all around them. Another very influential book was written by Ban Zhao, a well-educated woman from a prominent family. Her Admonitions for Women urged girls to master the seven virtues appropriate to women: humility, resignation, subservience, self-abasement, obedience, cleanliness, and industry.

By the end of the Han period, the Confucian vocabulary for talking about women, their natures, their weaknesses, and their proper roles and virtues was largely established. The durability of these ways of thinking undoubtedly owes much to continuities in the family system, which from Han times on was patrilineal, patrilocal, and patriarchical, and allowed concubinage. At marriage a woman had to move from the household of her father to that of her husband's parents. Given the importance assigned to continuing the ancestral sacrifices through patrilineal descendants, a wife's standing within her family of marriage depended on the birth of male heirs. Yet, because of the practice of concubinage, even if a wife bore sons, her standing could be undermined if her husband took concubines who also bore sons. Thus, so long as the family system continued without major change, women would continue to resort to strategies that seemed petty or threatening to men, and not until a woman became a grandmother was she likely to see the interests of the family in the same way men in the family did. To most of those who left written record, however, the problem did not lie in the family system, but in moral lapses. Thus, moralists held up models of self-sacrificing women for emulation, women who adhered to principles of loyalty, chastity, and faithfulness, often at great personal cost.

By Song (960-1279) times, historical sources are diverse enough to see that women undertook a wide range of activities never prescribed in Confucian didactic texts. There were widows who ran inns, midwives delivering babies, pious women who spent their days chanting sutras, nuns who called on such women to explain Buddhist doctrine, girls who learned to read with their brothers, farmers' daughters who made money by weaving mats, childless widows who accused their nephews of seizing their property, wives who were jealous of the concubines their husbands brought home, and women who drew from their dowries to help their husband's sisters marry well.

It is often said that the status of women began to decline in the Song period, just when Neo-Confucianism was gaining sway. The two signs of this decline most frequently mentioned are the pressure on widows not to remarry and the practice of binding young girls' feet to prevent them from growing more than a few inches long. Foot binding seems to have steadily spread during Song times, and explanations for it should be sought in Song circumstances, but widow chastity had very little specific connection to the Song, the idea predating the Song and the exaggerated emphasis on it developing much later.

Foot binding was never recommended by Confucian teachers; rather, it was associated with the pleasure quarters and with women's efforts to beautify themselves. Mothers bound the feet of girls aged five to eight, using long strips of cloth. The goal was to keep their feet from growing and to bend the four smaller toes under to make the foot narrow and arched. Foot binding spread gradually during Song times but probably remained largely an elite practice. In later centuries, it became extremely common in north and central China, eventually spreading to all classes. Women with bound feet were less mobile than women with natural feet, but only those who could afford servants bound their feet so tight that walking was difficult.

By contrast, the idea of widow chastity was not new in Song times. Ban Zhao had written, "According to ritual, husbands have a duty to marry again, but there is no text that authorizes a woman to remarry." The increased emphasis on widow chastity has usually been blamed on the Neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Yi, who once told a follower that it would be better for a widow to die of starvation than to lose her virtue by remarrying. In later centuries, this saying was often quoted to justify pressuring widows, even very young ones, to stay with their husband's family and not marry someone else. One reason widows in Yuan (Mongol) (1215-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) times might have wanted to remain with their husbands' families is that they no longer could take their dowries into a new marriage. When the husband's family did not want to provide support for a son's widow, the moral stricture against remarriage would have helped the widow insist that she be allowed to stay and adopt a son.

By the early Qing period (1644-1911), the cult of widow chastity had gained a remarkably strong hold, especially in the educated class. Childless widows might even commit suicide. Young women whose weddings had not yet taken place sometimes refused to enter into another engagement after their fiancé died. Instead, they would move to their fiancé's home and serve his parents as a daughter-in-law. Although most Confucian scholars and government officials disapproved of widow suicide and chaste fiancées, they often expressed great admiration for the determination of particular women they knew, thus helping spread the custom.

At the same time that widow chastity was becoming more prevalent, more and more women were learning to read and write. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a surprising number had their poetry published. Women with poetic talents figure prominently in the great eighteenth-century novel, The Dream of Red Mansions (also called Story of the Stone). Although the male hero, Baoyu, is a young man of great sensitivity, several of his female cousins are even more talented as poets. Some women in this large fictional family have considerable power-especially the grandmother who can force her sons and nephews to do what she wants, and the daughter-in-law who handles the family's finances. The young unmarried women, however, may have been able to acquire literary educations as good as the boys, but they had even less control over their fates than he had.

As in much of the rest of the world, in twentieth century China, intellectuals and social activists leveled many criticisms against the old family system and especially the ways it limited women's chances. Foot binding, widow chastity, parental control of marriage, and concubinage have all been eliminated. It should always be kept in mind, however, that a great many women were able to fashion satisfying lives under the old system.

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by Patricia Ebrey
In China from very early times, men have been seen as the core of the family. The ancestors to whom a Shang or Zhou dynasty king made sacrifices were his patrilineal ancestors, that is, his ancestors linked exclusively through men (his father's father, his father's father's father, and so on). When women enter the early historical record, it is often because they caused men problems. Some women schemed to advance their own sons when their husband had sons by several women. Women's loyalties were often in question. In 697 BCE, for instance, the daughter of one of the most powerful ministers in the state of Zheng learned from her husband that the ruler had ordered him to kill her father. After her mother advised her that "All men are potential husbands, but you have only one father," she told her father of the plot, and he promptly killed her husband. The ruler of Zheng placed the blame on the husband for foolishly confiding in his wife. Taken together, accounts of these sorts present a mixed picture of women and the problems they presented for men in the nobility. The women in their lives were capable of loyalty, courage, and devotion, but also of intrigue, manipulation, and selfishness.

Confucius probably took for granted these sorts of attitudes toward women, common in his society. He greatly esteemed ancestral rites and related family virtues such as filial piety. He hoped that through the practice of ritual everyone, male and female, high and low, old and young, would learn to fulfill the duties of their roles. Women's roles were primarily kinship roles: daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and mother-in-law. In all these roles, it was incumbent on women to accord with the wishes and needs of closely-related men: their fathers when young, their husbands when married, their sons when widowed. Confucius's follower Mencius declared that the worst of unfilial acts was a failure to have descendants (Mencius 4A.26). In later centuries this emphasis on the necessity of sons led many to be disappointed at the birth of a daughter.

In the centuries after Confucius, it became common for writers to discuss gender in terms of yin and yang. Women were yin, men were yang. Yin was soft, yielding, receptive, passive, reflective, and tranquil, whereas yang was hard, active, assertive, and dominating. Day and night, winter and summer, birth and death, indeed all natural processes occur though processes of interaction of yin and yang. Conceptualizing the differences between men and women in terms of yin and yang stresses that these differences are part of the natural order of the universe, not part of the social institutions artificially created by human beings. In yin yang theory the two forces complement each other but not in strictly equal ways. The natural relationship between yin and yang is the reason that men lead and women follow. If yin unnaturally gains the upper hand, order at both the cosmic and social level are endangered.

Maintaining a physical separation between the worlds of men and the worlds of women was viewed as an important first step toward assuring that yin would not dominate yang. The Confucian classic the Book of Rites stressed the value of segregation even within the home; houses should be divided into an inner and an outer section, with the women staying in the inner part. One poem in the Book of Poetry concluded: "Women should not take part in public affairs; they should devote themselves to tending silkworms and weaving." A similar sentiment was expressed in the Book of Documents in proverbial form: "When the hen announces the dawn, it signals the demise of the family."

During Han times (202 BCE - 220 CE), both the administrative structure of the centralized state and the success of Confucianism helped shape the Chinese family system and women's place in it. Han laws supported the authority of family heads over the other members of their families. The family head was generally the senior male, but if a man died before his sons were grown, his widow would serve as family head until they were of age. The law codes of the imperial period enforced monogamy and provided a variety of punishments for bigamy and for promoting a concubine to the status of wife. Men could divorce their wives on any of seven grounds, which included barrenness, jealousy, and talkativeness, but could do so only if there was a family for her to return to. There were no grounds on which a woman could divorce her husband, but divorce by mutual agreement was possible.

Much was written in Han times on the virtues women should cultivate. The Biographies of Exemplary Women told the stories of women from China's past who had given their husbands good advice, sacrificed themselves when forced to choose between their fathers and husbands, or performed other heroic deeds. It also contained cautionary tales about scheming, jealous, and manipulative women who brought destruction to all around them. Another very influential book was written by Ban Zhao, a well-educated woman from a prominent family. Her Admonitions for Women urged girls to master the seven virtues appropriate to women: humility, resignation, subservience, self-abasement, obedience, cleanliness, and industry.

By the end of the Han period, the Confucian vocabulary for talking about women, their natures, their weaknesses, and their proper roles and virtues was largely established. The durability of these ways of thinking undoubtedly owes much to continuities in the family system, which from Han times on was patrilineal, patrilocal, and patriarchical, and allowed concubinage. At marriage a woman had to move from the household of her father to that of her husband's parents. Given the importance assigned to continuing the ancestral sacrifices through patrilineal descendants, a wife's standing within her family of marriage depended on the birth of male heirs. Yet, because of the practice of concubinage, even if a wife bore sons, her standing could be undermined if her husband took concubines who also bore sons. Thus, so long as the family system continued without major change, women would continue to resort to strategies that seemed petty or threatening to men, and not until a woman became a grandmother was she likely to see the interests of the family in the same way men in the family did. To most of those who left written record, however, the problem did not lie in the family system, but in moral lapses. Thus, moralists held up models of self-sacrificing women for emulation, women who adhered to principles of loyalty, chastity, and faithfulness, often at great personal cost.

By Song (960-1279) times, historical sources are diverse enough to see that women undertook a wide range of activities never prescribed in Confucian didactic texts. There were widows who ran inns, midwives delivering babies, pious women who spent their days chanting sutras, nuns who called on such women to explain Buddhist doctrine, girls who learned to read with their brothers, farmers' daughters who made money by weaving mats, childless widows who accused their nephews of seizing their property, wives who were jealous of the concubines their husbands brought home, and women who drew from their dowries to help their husband's sisters marry well.

It is often said that the status of women began to decline in the Song period, just when Neo-Confucianism was gaining sway. The two signs of this decline most frequently mentioned are the pressure on widows not to remarry and the practice of binding young girls' feet to prevent them from growing more than a few inches long. Foot binding seems to have steadily spread during Song times, and explanations for it should be sought in Song circumstances, but widow chastity had very little specific connection to the Song, the idea predating the Song and the exaggerated emphasis on it developing much later.

Foot binding was never recommended by Confucian teachers; rather, it was associated with the pleasure quarters and with women's efforts to beautify themselves. Mothers bound the feet of girls aged five to eight, using long strips of cloth. The goal was to keep their feet from growing and to bend the four smaller toes under to make the foot narrow and arched. Foot binding spread gradually during Song times but probably remained largely an elite practice. In later centuries, it became extremely common in north and central China, eventually spreading to all classes. Women with bound feet were less mobile than women with natural feet, but only those who could afford servants bound their feet so tight that walking was difficult.

By contrast, the idea of widow chastity was not new in Song times. Ban Zhao had written, "According to ritual, husbands have a duty to marry again, but there is no text that authorizes a woman to remarry." The increased emphasis on widow chastity has usually been blamed on the Neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Yi, who once told a follower that it would be better for a widow to die of starvation than to lose her virtue by remarrying. In later centuries, this saying was often quoted to justify pressuring widows, even very young ones, to stay with their husband's family and not marry someone else. One reason widows in Yuan (Mongol) (1215-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) times might have wanted to remain with their husbands' families is that they no longer could take their dowries into a new marriage. When the husband's family did not want to provide support for a son's widow, the moral stricture against remarriage would have helped the widow insist that she be allowed to stay and adopt a son.

By the early Qing period (1644-1911), the cult of widow chastity had gained a remarkably strong hold, especially in the educated class. Childless widows might even commit suicide. Young women whose weddings had not yet taken place sometimes refused to enter into another engagement after their fiancé died. Instead, they would move to their fiancé's home and serve his parents as a daughter-in-law. Although most Confucian scholars and government officials disapproved of widow suicide and chaste fiancées, they often expressed great admiration for the determination of particular women they knew, thus helping spread the custom.

At the same time that widow chastity was becoming more prevalent, more and more women were learning to read and write. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a surprising number had their poetry published. Women with poetic talents figure prominently in the great eighteenth-century novel, The Dream of Red Mansions (also called Story of the Stone). Although the male hero, Baoyu, is a young man of great sensitivity, several of his female cousins are even more talented as poets. Some women in this large fictional family have considerable power-especially the grandmother who can force her sons and nephews to do what she wants, and the daughter-in-law who handles the family's finances. The young unmarried women, however, may have been able to acquire literary educations as good as the boys, but they had even less control over their fates than he had.

As in much of the rest of the world, in twentieth century China, intellectuals and social activists leveled many criticisms against the old family system and especially the ways it limited women's chances. Foot binding, widow chastity, parental control of marriage, and concubinage have all been eliminated. It should always be kept in mind, however, that a great many women were able to fashion satisfying lives under the old system.

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An overview of women's roles in Chinese society over time.

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Rethinking Civilization - Crash Course World History 201

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Isabel Wilkerson - The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

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Isabel Wilkerson - The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

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Isabel Wilkerson - The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

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Black Before Columbus Came: The African Discovery of America | Odd Salon DISCOVERY 5/7

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MEDIA INDIGENA : Indigenous current affairs

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Barbara Fields & Ta-Nehisi Coates in Conversation

Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.

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Racecraft: Barbara Fields & Ta-Nehisi Coates in Conversation

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Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes and Black Women in America

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Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes and Black Women in America

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University of California Television (UCTV)

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Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes and Black Women in America

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Available at Ilisimatusarfik library

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The vast empty spaces of the Poles were the last frontier to be assailed by explorers intent on achieving a geographical goal--the North Pole was finally reached in 1909. But long before that men sailed the seas searching for an easier and shorter path to the riches of the orient, and the mapmakers of the day translated sparse information, turning it into often stunningly beautiful maps. The fact that most of the information required to make such a map was missing or erroneous mattered little; the maps live on as testimony to hopes and dreams.

The idea that the Arctic Ocean was an open sea, unable to freeze due to movement and size, drove early mariners to attempt to sail across the top of the world to reach the spices of the east. In so doing, maps were made showing the routes men thought they could take, and the routes they actually took, which were usually vastly different.

Almost 200 historical maps, many never before reproduced, from collections around the world, illustrate all the significant Arctic explorations from the sixteenth century until well into the twentieth. Readable yet scholarly text informs the maps, as each double-page spread tells a story in itself.

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The vast empty spaces of the Poles were the last frontier to be assailed by explorers intent on achieving a geographical goal--the North Pole was finally reached in 1909. But long before that men sailed the seas searching for an easier and shorter path to the riches of the orient, and the mapmakers of the day translated sparse information, turning it into often stunningly beautiful maps.

# data[].attributes.headline
Discovering Europe I: Olnik & Urio Etawango's visits to Dundee, Scotland

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Discovering Europe I: Olnik & Urio Etawango's visits to Dundee, Scotland

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Baffin Islanders on the move (1876 & 1886)

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Captain John Watson OBE, Archivist, The Fraternity of Masters and Seamen in Dundee
Section One: Introduction
Recent research has added to, and thrown new light upon, our understanding of how the economic base of Dundee was transformed in Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian times from a settlement still displaying something of its Mediaeval origins to a city heavily dependent on the linen and, later, jute industries. The location of Dundee on the Firth of Tay played an integral part in that transformation (Whatley et al,1993);and the whalers the men and the vessels which ventured to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic played a vital part in all of that.

The early history of whaling in Great Britain is well trodden ground and there is no need to go into detail here. (See for instance the website maintained by the British Arctic Whaling research unit based in the Maritime Historical Research Centre, University of Hull). The Dundee Whaling Project, a partnership between the Archive Services at the University of Dundee, the Local History Centre in Dundee Central Library and the Archive and Record Centre for Dundee City Council has succeeded in placing the City of Dundee in its rightful place in the history of whaling in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Sufficient to note here simply that whaling from Dundee began around 1750 following the introduction of the Crown bounty intended as an incentive to maintain a fleet of ships which could, in an emergency, be pressed into service in the Royal Navy. It continued as a part of the economy of the City for more than 160 years before being finally extinguished in 1914.

Moreover, there is now a considerable array of valuable secondary sources on which to draw. To the seminal works of Lythe and Henderson (Lythe 1964, Henderson 1972) have been added works which have provided a general context (notably Watson 1993). Others have delved deeper into particular aspects of the whaling industry and its role in the city.Studies have been published on the whalers themselves (Smith 1993, Archibald 2004), the voyages they undertook (Markham 1874, Lindsay 1911), and the vessels in which they sailed in (Friends of Dundee City Archives, Archibald 2013). Other authoritative works have focussed on the associated ship building industry (Lythe 1962, Lythe 1964, and Grace's Guide), the harbour from which the fleet sailed (Kenefick 2000), and the jute industry whose rise it facilitated (e.g. Lenman et al 1969, Walker 1979).

Less well known, but no less interesting, are the accounts of the life and times of individual Masters (e.g. Fairweather 1928, Rycroft 2005, Clark 1986).These were remarkable men. Ocean currents and polar winds meant they needed navigational expertise, seamanship and leadership qualities of the highest order. To meet year after year the challenges presented by horrific weather conditions in the Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Melville Bay and beyond and on occasion risking all to save the lives of other mariners in distress may, today, seem "heroic" but for the Dundee whaling Masters and their crews it became almost routine.

This paper adds to that last line of research by focussing on Captain William Adams who became known as the most skilled and experienced of the whaling Masters of his time in the Canadian Arctic. Hailed in the local press as "The Most Famous Whaling Captain in the World" he was also as an astute businessman.
Section Two: Captain William Adams Senior: Some Biographical Details
Captain William Adams' gravestone in Barnhill cemetery in Broughty Ferry indicates that he was born on 15th September 1837 and that he died on 6th August 1890. His grandfather was George Adams, a school teacher in Dundee, who had married Margaret Heron. Captain Adams' father, also William Adams, amongst other things, was the Master of a coaster which plied between Perth and Dundee and he also sailed several times with the Dundee whaling fleet. Indeed, the Dundee Courier on 27 March 1882 noted that "the gallant and veteran captain" who the previous year had accompanied his son to the Arctic gave a lecture on "Sea and Whale Fishing" in the Good Templar Hall, Broughty Ferry. He died in 1893 at the age of 81.

Captain Adams, the focus of this research, was twice married and had five children by his two wives. Three sons were associated with the whaling industry.The best known is William Adams Junior; Thomas died at sea aged 18; and Hector, a son by his second marriage, also became a whaler.

Captain Adams and his first family lived at 8 James Place in Broughty Ferry, a terraced property enjoying uninterrupted views across the Tay, situated close to the long established fisher village. Although Broughty Ferry was, by then, readily accessible from Dundee it was still a still a prosperous independent Burgh in its own right. Adams' first wife bore him two sons and one daughter. Around 1877 Adams' financial success as a whaling Master enabled him to move house to 12 (now renumbered 28) Duntrune Terrace in a wealthier area of West Ferry. Successive Dundee Directories showed him in that property until 1888. However, in 1888/99 edition his address was given simply as, Disco, West Ferry. It seems that he had moved to an even larger property nearby on Strathern Road (renamed Struan House around 1895). Captain Adams was the tenant paying an assessed yearly rent of £52.5.0 to John P Kyd, Solicitors.By then Captain Adams had married for a second time, to Elizabeth Beattie. Born on the 14th of September 1852 she was rather younger than William: she bore him two sons and one daughter.

A posthumous portrait in oils of William Adams senior was commissioned by his son, William Adams junior.Painted by William Ferrier in 1891, it was presented to the collection of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums in 1941. Adams is presented in the prime of life, confident and successful both as a whaling Master and businessman. He appears to be seated within his mansion in West Ferry which he named "Disco" after the island in the Davis Strait off the west coast of Greenland and a chart of the vicinity is open on the table to his left. The small Danish administrative settlement of Lievely was located on the south coast of Disko Island also known as on Disco in the harbour of Goodhavn which provided a haven for whalers en route for the whaling grounds in Baffin Bay, Melville Bay, Lancaster Sound, Prince Regent's Sound and beyond.

Adams appearance, solemn and at ease in his home in West Ferry, contrasts with his description by Albert Markham of his appearance as the Master on the whaler Active in 1873: "To enhance the general wintry aspect, snow was falling heavily in the forenoon, the deck and rigging being completely covered; the captain himself with his beard and whiskers so encrusted as to resemble, with his portly person and jovial face, the drawings of Father Christmas." (Markham, 1874, p 65)

Albert Hastings Markham, the cousin of Clements Markham and later an Admiral, joined the Active to gain polar experience.While performing his share of whaling duties, he also kept detailed notes on weather and ice conditions, topography and cartography.During his short stay in Dundee he was "most hospitably entertained by several of the leading citizens of that prosperous town..." (Markham, 1874, p14). His account of the subsequent voyage provides fascinating insights not only into the character of William Adams senior but also his conduct of a whaling voyage in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The introduction to the book by Rear Admiral Sherard Osborn written from his desk in London suggests that the book: "can be read with much interest by all who relish an unadorned tale of adventure.The voyage demonstrates the boldness and skill with which her dashing captain, William Adams, pursued his mighty and valuable prey through ice, storm, and dangers." (Interesting comparisons can be made with the Lindsay's account published in 1911 of his voyage to the Arctic in the whaler Aurora in the following year with James Fairweather as Master).

Markham's diaries provide insights into Captain Adams' character and approach to his duties as Master of a whaling ship. After a characteristic send off from Dundee the Active had stopped off at Broughty Ferry "at which place the captain allowed himself a brief leave taking of his wife" who was then living in the family home at 8 James Place.(An interlude at Broughty Ferry was not uncommon for out-going vessels to disembark adventurous young stowaways, and to allow those of the crew who had over imbibed during their leave-taking to come to their senses.)

Closely observed by Markham, Captain Adams displayed many of the traits characteristic of his fellow whaling Masters who, along with their crews, were notoriously superstitious.Thus, for instance, although all set to leave on 2nd May the sailing of the Active was put off until the next day, Saturday, because of the pervading view that to set sail on a Friday was unlucky. Then again: "Our captain always carries about with him what he calls a "lucky penny", one of those huge coins in circulation in the reign of George111. With this, from the first thing in the morning until the last thing at night, whether on deck or below, he is always anxious to toss with the doctor for the best of five successive guesses. It is most amusing to watch the cunning manner in which our worthy skipper puts his coin down, and the delight beaming on his jolly countenance when he succeeds in winning." (Markham, 1874, p 72)

There is no doubt that Adams was consistently "lucky" in finding and killing whales. However, the evidence is that his "good fortune" had nothing to do with rituals and irrational belief and all to do with good character, sensible behaviour and outstanding skills as a whaling Master.

For whaling Masters of vessels their voyages to the Arctic fishing grounds were first and foremost commercial ventures with all else coming a poor second save when the rescue of fellow voyagers was required.Exploration was a useful by-product since central to Adams' role as Master was the task of seeking out the regions where whales could be found. For this purpose he would spend long hours in a purpose built "crows' nest" scanning the waters. Markham noted that the captain: "is possessed of remarkably quick eyesight, rendered doubly acute by constant observation and frequent use of the telescope" (Markham,1874, p151). On the voyage, " the worthy skipper" appears to have been consistently good humoured except when "unlucky" in finding whales for slaughter.On those occasions he was "...constantly picturing to himself the other ships in the midst of whales, whilst we are lying idle; and he is, therefore, rather morose and taciturn, so different from his usual jovial and boisterous humour." (Markham, 1874, p 129).

A whaling voyage to the Arctic might last for anything up to six months from May to November.The stress placed on the Master must have been very considerable and it is interesting that Adams seems to have recognised the need to eat well. Markham noted that Adams was fond of "whelks" and he "having by the skipper's advice smothered the well with vinegar, mushroom ketchup, and pepper, found them by no means unpalatable." (Markham, 1874, p 19) Markham noted also: "Another favourite edible of our worthy captain is a sea weed called "dulse, which is picked up in large quantities on the beach at Broughty Ferry.This is kept in a bucket of salt water on the after-part of the quarterdeck, so as to enable those so disposed to refresh themselves at their pleasure." (Markham, 1874, p 19) Today, dulse continues to be sold as a snack food, recognised as having a high protein content and being a good source of minerals and vitamins with all the trace elements needed by humans.

As well as taking some care with his diet Adams seems to have recognised the need for adequate rest in periods when the handling of the ship could be safely entrusted to others: "The captain has certainly a most wonderful constitution for sleep; during the last forty hours he has been over thirty in his bed" (Markham, 1874, p 165)
Section Three: Early Years and Career as Master for Alexander Stephens & Sons The Early Years
The Dundee Year Book of 1847 records the young William Adams as being an Apprentice at the Dundee, Perth and London Shipping Company. (This tends to support the view that, contrary to the date on his gravestone, William was born in 1835 and may have been 13 years old at best when he was first apprenticed).

During the years 1847 to 1850 he sailed to India and to Baltic countries. In 1850 he embarked on his first trip to the Arctic regions on board the sailing whaler "Princess Charlotte" as an Able Seaman. Built in South Shields in 1814 she was ship rigged (meaning: rigged with three or more masts and square sails), with a standing bowsprit.The well-respected Dundonian, Captain Alexander Deuchars, was her Master between 1850 and 1856 and she was owned by The Tay Whale Fishing Company.

In the late 1850s there were significant changes in the whaling industry as a consequence of the introduction of steam power in the vessels built by Alexander Stephens & Son, in Dundee.They modified Baillie William Clark's ship the "Tay".by fitting an auxiliary screw propeller along with a 75 horsepower steam engine. Such was the success of this initiative that Alexander Stephens went on to build a fleet of custom built steam whalers. Stephen was a part owner of the first of these, the "Narwhal", which was launched in 1859. She was 151.4 feet long and 31.1 feet in beam, ship rigged with three masts and powered by two engines provided by Gourlay Brothers, Dundee.She was an immediate success and on her maiden voyage the crew slaughtered 3,000 seals in Labrador in only two days.

William Adams moved from the Princess Charlotte to be boatswain on the "Narwhal" where he remained to advance through the various maritime examinations and promotions gaining his Masters Certificate No. C27185 in 1866.By this time William Stephen, the son and heir of Alexander Stephen, had recognised Adams' exceptional abilities, and appointed him First Mate of the company's new flagship "Arctic" (known later as "Arctic 1"). Launched in February 1867 and owned equally by the Stephens, father and son. Under Captain Wells brief command it was the first whaler to explore Prince Regent Inlet.
Master for Alexander Stephens and Sons
In 1868, William Adams took over the "Arctic" as his first command; and he went on to become the most successful of the outstanding string of Masters working for Alexander Stephens and Sons. The company became firmly established as builders of custom-built whaling vessels and, later, were owner operators of a considerable whaling fleet based in Dundee. As far as Adams was concerned, the catch record between 1868 and 1873 provided him with a substantial income and the basis of his fortune.

The voyages in Arctic 1 were not only fruitful, they were eventful, and each is the basis of exciting stories. Thus, for instance, in 1871 Captain Adams assisted in their distress the first Leigh-Smith Arctic Expedition to Svalbard and Franz Josef Land and was warmly applauded for his efforts, being invited to a dinner given by the Lord Mayor of London to honour members of that scientific expedition.

In 1872, The Dundee Advertiser noted that the "Arctic" returned to Dundee with a catch of 8000 seals yielding 80 tons of oil: " The crew commenced to kill them at will and in the course of two or three days what proved to be the cargo of the Arctic was taken on board." (Watson, 2003 p 55).Later in that season, Adams went on to command the Arctic on the British whaling and exploration expedition from Dundee.

Captain Adams returned to the Davis Strait region in 1873 as captain of the "Arctic".This was the voyage on which he was joined was joined by Albert Markham of the Royal Navy whose purpose was to gain Arctic experience with a view to further polar exploration.That voyage was a notable success and included the provision of some of the life-saving assistance required by the American exploration party voyaging south in the Polaris following its ill-fated and controversial failure to be the first expedition to reach the North Pole.Troubled by poor leadership, incompetence, and consequential insubordination, the Polaris was wrecked near Etah, Greenland, in October 1872. Some of the crew were abandoned on an ice floe; the remaining men were rescued in July of the following summer by the whaler "Ravenscraig" out of Dundee with assistance from Adams and the "Arctic".

However, the following year brought disaster. In its edition of 11th December, 1874 The Advertiser reported the loss of the vessel: "Arctic lost in ice Cresswell Bay, Prince Regent Inlet, 07 July 1874 (it happened a month later in August according to Captain Adams formal statement), Captain W Adams senior in command; crew of 54 - had taken out Danish mail to Disco - had 185 tons whale oil on board - tightly beset off Cape Fury 05 July during South East gale - master had her warped into natural harbour in the ice to protect her as much as possible from the nip. Survived first squeeze but second threw her on beam ends. Crew saved provisions and personal effects and took to ice in terrible weather - fire broke out in the evening - flames fed by oil rose hundreds of feet; ship sank stern first in hissing cloud of steam - crew joined men from 'Intrepid' and 'Victor', which had been abandoned nearby - tents made from sails - storm moderated next day".

Captain Adams' formal statement elaborates on these notes and is worth quoting since it serves as a graphic illustration of the perils faced by Arctic whalers:

"On the morning of the 7th of August a very strong gale, blowing from the SSE, was experienced. The ice ran very fast and squeezed the vessel heavily. At 8:30 am the ice brought up on Cape Garry, causing it to crush more strongly around the Arctic. Her timbers created in an alarming manner but she made no water. At 9 am the ice took a fearful sally, heaving the vessel completely on her beam ends. It was then discovered that she was making water rapidly. The mate and carpenter informed Captain Adams that the port bow had been stove in, and that there was a fearful rush of water aft. He sent all hands to the pumps and the donkey and bilge injection pumps were set to work. The water, however, gained so fast that in fifteen minutes the fires were drowned out. The water very shortly afterwards gained its own level. Captain Adams sent all hands to save provisions and effects. The ice was at that time taking tremendous sallies, so much so that as fast as the provisions were landed on it they were covered up by the broken masses. Many of the men, in trying to save the provisions, lost all their clothes.

Captain William Adams returned to Dundee in the late summer/early autumn of 1874 with no loss of reputation as Master. In the meantime, William Stephen, amongst others, had leased ground to the south of the harbour in St John's, Newfoundland where he had a yard built for rendering blubber complete with storage tanks, a blubber crushing machine, boiling coppers and a coal depot. This facility underpinned the trend for whalers to make two trips to the fisheries during the season: the first to the discharge the outcome of the seal slaughter at the depot in Newfoundland; and the second, back to the grounds to catch another cargo, which would then be taken back to Dundee.

With all this in mind, Alexander Stephen and Son designed and built the "Arctic II" which was launched in 1875.It had a slightly different design from its predecessor with a funnel and engines situated amidships, instead of aft of the mainmast.Her figurehead was an Inuit with a lance and cut out in gold letters around her stern was her motto: 'Do or Die'. At over 200 feet long, nearly 32 feet in beam and powered by a 98 horsepower engine she was the pride of the Dundee fleet. Captain Adams was appointed her first Master and thus confirming his continuing close and successful relationship with the company that was to last until he retired from its services in 1883 having served for 18 years.

The Fraternity of Masters and Seamen in Dundee maintained detailed records of the comings and goings of all of the Dundee fleet of whalers.The part of the record of 26th August 1880 which refers to Adams and the Arctic is illustrative of contemporary conditions and Adams' success in meeting them. In that year the fleet consisted of 11 vessels and only the Aurora with Captain A Fairweather as Master exceed the catch achieved by Captain Adams in the Arctic. Once again it is worth quoting in full as illustrating the conditions to be met and the results achieved:

STRAITS WHALE FISHING: SUCCESS OF DUNDEE SHIPS
The steamer Arctic, Captain Adams, belonging to Messrs Alexander Stephen & Sons, arrived at Dundee yesterday from the Davis Straits whale fishing. The Arctic has made a most successful voyage this year, the total catch at the seal and whale fishing amounting to nearly 600 tuns of oil. She was employed at the Newfoundland seal fishing in the spring and landed nearly 400 tons of seal oil at St John's. After refitting she left St John's on the 22nd May for Davis Straits. Lievely was reached on 31st May and Upernavik on the 5th of June. Three days later while proceeding to the northward the vessel got beset amongst heavy ice and remained fast until 15th June, when a strong swell set in and broke up the floes. The Arctic then got clear and a course was steered for what is known as the 'middle ice', where a number of very large whales were caught last year. On the 21st June the first whale was caught and three others were afterwards secured. These were all of large size, the biggest yielding about 20 tuns of oil. The Pond's Bay fishing was next tried and eight small whales were got there, making a total of 12 whales, equal to about 90 tuns of oil. At the close of the Pond's Bay fishing, Lancaster Sound and Prince Regent Inlet were explored, but no trace of whales could be seen. Capt. Adams then gave orders to steer for Eldwin Bay, in the hope of adding to his cargo by the capture of some of the white whales which frequent that quarter. He was fortunate in discovering a large 'school' of these white whales, which were surrounded by the boats and driven ashore to shallow water where they were killed when the tide receded. In this was about 600 white whales, producing about 90 tuns of oil, were secured within the course of four days, increasing the cargo from 90 to 180 tuns. After this substantial addition to her cargo the Arctic returned and proceeded down the west side of Davis Straits but the fishing there proved a failure. Only three whales were seen near Cape Hooper but the boats could not get near them. On the 15th of August Captain Adams bore up for home, as there seemed little hope of further success, and the vessel arrived here yesterday after a fine run of ten days. Captain Adams reports that the weather at Davis Straits this season was the finest he has ever experienced in those northern latitudes. The whales were generally very shy, going together in 'schools', and the vessels which have the largest cargoes were those which were fortunate in falling in with these 'runs' of fish. The most of the Dundee ships were in the vicinity of Cape Kater at the 15th of August when the Arctic left for Dundee.
Moving on to the 1881 season there is extensive coverage from a number of sources which enable a picture to be built up of the "whaling year". First of all, the private papers of Robert Kinnes provide further insights into the place of Captain Adams and Arctic in the Dundee whaling fleet.The entry for 13th January 1881 states: 'The Dundee fleet to be engaged at Newfoundland this year will consist of six steamers the Arctic, Aurora, Thetis, Resolute, Narwhal and Esquimaux. Captain Adams has been advised to stay in this country during the spring for the benefit of his health, and the Arctic will be commanded at the seal fishing by a Newfoundland captain. Captain Adams has to go out to St Johns, however, and take his ship to the whale fishing." ( The reference to Adams' health is interesting and will be taken up later.)

On February 7th ,the Arctic, with Captain Welsh as Master, sailed for St Johns arriving later that month having suffered " slight damage". On 13th March it was noted that: "The Arctic arrived St Johns with 600 seals. The small catch of the Arctic is accounted for by the vessel being beset amongst the ice in Queen Bay during the best part of the fishing season." The papers go on: " 5th May 1881 Arctic arrived St Johns 1350 old seals. Captain Adams left Dundee about a fortnight ago to take command of the Arctic for the whaling voyage. Arctic 1st trip 600 seals, 2nd trip 1350 total 1950".

On this occasion the Arctic moved directly to the whaling grounds for a successful voyage. On 14th October 1881 it was reported that "Arctic arrived Dundee with 13 whales calculated to yield 130 tuns oil. Best fished of Dundee fleet. Captain Adams left Dundee early in May and joined his ship in St Johns sailing from there on the 18th May for the Davis Straits, On the northward passage upwards of 100 old seals were picked up on the Labrador coast, and 20 sea-horses were captures off Lievely on the east side of the Davis Straits. No obstruction was met on the passage north, or in crossing Melville Bay. A few whales were seen at the 'middle ice' but the boats could not get near them and the Arctic proceeded to Lancaster Sound, where the first whale was got on the 11th July. The vessel then cruised about the fishing ground at one time going up the Gulf of Boothia as far as Bellot Straits and eleven other whales were killed. On the 29th August Captain Adams proceeded back through Lancaster Sound and a few fish were seen in Ponds Bay and on the passage southward, but only one was captured at Dexterity Harbour, near Coutt's Inlet on the 23rd of September. The Arctic thereafter proceeded southward and was off Cape Kater on the 30th September, but owing to the quantity of ice packed against the land she was unable to force a passing through and was obliged to run north as far as |Clyde River, when a course was steered toward the middle of the Davis Straits. Two days steaming brought the vessel through the ice, and on the 2nd October Captain Adams bore up for home, experiencing heavy weather during the greater part of the passage.
Captain Adams reports of seeing Olnik during the autumn. Olnik has a lively recollection of his visit to Scotland several years ago and wished to be remembered to his friends. The three wives whom he had when he was in this country are dead, and he has espoused two others in their place, one of them belonging to a tribe in Ponds Bay, the other being native to Admiralty Inlet."
This was account followed up by a further report which is worth quoting in full for its historical detail:
16th October -

ARCTIC DISCOVERIES BY CAPTAIN ADAMS

Captain Adams, of the Dundee whaler Arctic, furnishes some interesting information in regard to his voyage in the Polar Seas. He states that in the course of his search for whales he went up Wellington Channel as far as that water has ever been penetrated by any expedition, and his further progress was only checked by encountering heavy ice, or the Polar barrier. This occurred in the month of August last. No whales were seen in that quarter and the Arctic steamed up Barrow Straits till the Polar barrier was encountered a second time. A course was then taken down Peel Sound to within a few miles of where the Erebus and Terror were lost. Beachy Island was visited, and there Captain Adams saw the monument erected to Sir John Franklin and five of his crew. He found the house erected in the vicinity in a wretched condition, and the provisions left by the former explorers not at all serviceable. Accompanied by a few of his men he made some search of the locality, and just as the party were coming away they were confronted by a polar bear, which Captain Adams shot within a few yards of the graves.

The Dundee Whaling Project has further details of the catches of the "Arctic II" during the time she was under Captain Adams command. In 1882 for example, the year before he retired from Stephens, his voyage to Newfoundland yielded 24,662 seals and 250 tons of oil.
Captain Adams and the Inuit

In common with many of the whaling Masters Captain Adams developed an intimate knowledge, and empathetic understanding, of the Inuit people with whom he came in regular contact in the Canadian Arctic. Based on his exhaustive researches in the local press Watson has provided the following: "Captain William Adams of the Arctic bought (an Eskimo chief called Olnick) to Dundee from Hudson Bay, in 1876, after he had made repeated requests to visit Scotland. Olnick was reputed to be a dead shot who had killed 11 polar bears in the year of his departure to Scotland. He was feted wherever he went in the city. He gave spear demonstrations to crowds of devoted youngsters and had an interview with the Prince of Wales, later King Edward V11, during a visit to London. He took back many presents, including a small armoury of guns and ammunition which he apparently used to "boss" the settlement..While at Pond's Bay in 1888, Captain Adams, by then master of his own whaler Maud, received a visit from Olnick's tribe, comprising nearly 100 Eskimos. The tribe boarded the Maud and asked to be conveyed to the other side of the bay some 40-50- miles distant to reach a new fishing ground. Captain Adams acceded to their request and the whole encampment was squeezed on board for what must have been a memorable voyage.

Urio Etawango was a "fine young fellow" brought by Captain Adams in 1886 from Davis Strait. Etawango spent five months in the city, appropriately over winter, and on his return on the Maud the following year he received an ovation at Lerwick "where he appeared in his native dress in his kayack" ... He gave a canoe and seal-hunting demonstration at Claypotts, which was attended by 2000people. He also addressed a meeting in the Kinnaird Hall, Bank Street, in which he provided harrowing details of the harshness of Eskimo life.Many men had been lost hunting, he said, and in some parts of his homeland women outnumbered men five to one.On his return to Davis Strait in 1887, Urio Etawango's young wife exploded with joy at the sight of numerous presents which the people of Dundee had sent her, among them 200 yards of flannel from Mrs Adams.Another of the gifts was a mandolin.To the astonishment of the ship's company, she lifted the instrument and played "There's nae luck about the House).The popular song could have been written for her poor husband. Returning from Pond's Bay the following year,Captain Adams called in at the settlement of Durban to discover Urio in a state of dejection.His wife had deserted him and had taken the gifts from Dundee" (Watson 2003, pp105-107).

Adams' obituary had a section headed "His Love for the Esquimaux" which contained the following observations: Captain Adams was a man of large sympathies, and his heart went out to the poor Esquimaux whom he met in the far North. Everyone knows that at considerable expense he brought at different times representatives of the race to Dundee, and by lecturing and otherwise he excited an interest in them. The captain, while admitting their barbarous condition, was of the opinion that they could be very much raised in the scale of humanity. He was loud in his praise of what had been done for them by the Danish Government, and in a tone of bitterness somewhat akin to reproach contrasted the efforts of that Government with those of the British Government. In his own way the captain did a great deal for the Esquimaux, and he never failed when opportunity offered to arouse interest in them and sympathy for them. Writing in 1887 on this subject he said; "When I returned from Davis Strait in the fall of last year I brought with me an Esquimaux, a fine young fellow, who during his short stay in this country has acquired a considerable knowledge of our language, and has adapted himself in a remarkable manner to the usages of civilised society. I have spent the greater portion of the last thirty years in the Arctic regions and the question has often occurred to me - Can nothing be done for the Esquimaux? On the coast of Greenland, between Lat. 60 degrees and 73 degrees North, there are about 13,000 natives, all civilised, and under the influence of Christianity. This gratifying state of matters is due to the action of Denmark. Many years ago the Danes sent missionaries to those out-of-the-world people and they have had their reward. Denmark and the Royal Danish Company carry on an important and valuable trade there. Numerous small villages are to be found along the sea coast, the inhabitants of which enjoy many privileges.
The Danes sent out ships every year with clothing, tea, coffee and other provisions. Each village has a church and school and the Governor is generally a Dane. The Governor collects the oil, skins, ivory etc., and gives money in exchange - there is no truck system. The natives can read and write, are attentive to their religious duties and, considering their surroundings, may be described as a contented and happy people. Therefore I say great honour to the Danes for what they have done for the poor Greenlander. To the North and West of the Danish settlements are the British possessions - from latitude 73 to about 78 North. Here there are about 300 natives, familiarly known as 'Arctic Highlanders'. They are nomadic and miserable, and though I have known them well for many years I could not venture a description of them. The Great Melville Bay glacier bars their way South; but could not means be taken to convey them to the Danish settlements or to the West side of the Davis Strait, where their life, though by no means luxurious, would at any rate be tolerable? A great many Esquimaux are to be met with in the vicinity of Admiralty Inlet, Navy Board Inlet, Pond's Bay, Eglinton, Cape Kater, Durban, Cumberland Inlet, Hudson's Straits and Labrador, not one of whom has ever heard the Saviour's name, and whose existence is that of semi-barbarism. To these places a ship could easily penetrate any year. Should such a state of things continue? Surely some help could be extended to these poor, God-forsaken people. I know the men can be got for such work and the cost would not be much. It has occurred to me that one celebration of the Queen's Jubilee year might take the form of starting one settlement as an experiment at Durban or Cumberland Inlet, where many natives are to be met with. Such an act would remove a blot from the flag of Christian England, which was unfurled in Possession Bay by Ross and Parry in 1818".
It is not out of the question that, like other whalers before, and after him, Adams had an Inuit family in the Canadian Arctic unacknowledged in Scotland.
Section 4 The Most Famous Whaling Captain in the World: His Own Master The Most Famous Whaling Captain in the World
In 1883, after his last voyage on the New Arctic (Arctic 11) Adams left Alexander Stephens & Sons and bought the wooden barque the "Maud". By this time Adams was recognised as " the most famous whaling captain in the world ". A few examples are sufficient to substantiate the high regard in which he was held not only at home but also further afield in Newfoundland and post Confederation Canada.

Given his reputation amongst his fellow Masters, it was not surprising that it was Adams, home during the winter months at his residence in Broughty Ferry, who led out a group in their forlorn search for survivors following the fall of the high girders of Tay rail bridge on the night of Sunday, 28 December, 1879.In 1880 he was called as an expert witness for the prosecution in the trial of 4 officers charged with being criminally responsible for the loss of the Peterhead whaler Xanthus in Melville Bay.

A report which appeared in the local press late in 1881 concerning 'the American arctic exploring expedition" provides further evidence that Adams was regularly consulted for his views: The American Arctic exploring party in the Jeannette are supposed to be near the Copper Mine or the Mackenzie River in the North West Passage. Captain Adams has never been there but he believes, from the nature of the ground in that neighbourhood, they would manage to exist even though the provisions they had with them were to run out, as the soil not being of limestone, reindeer would largely abound and could easily be shot in sufficient numbers to succour the beleaguered explorers. So far as Mr Leigh Smith is concerned, Captain Adams thinks there is no cause for anxiety yet. He states he has a good ship and should be able to reach a harbour for wintering'. Then again, following the wreck of the Chieftain out of Dundee in Greenland waters in 1884 and the heroics of her gallant Master, Captain Gellatly, it was Adams who called a meeting in Lamb's Hotel, at the top of Reform Street, to launch a relief fund for the surviving crew.

During the winter months, when he was at home in Broughty Ferry, Captain Adams was much in demand as a lecturer and raconteur. In the final year of his life the Dundee Evening Telegraph advertised that he would lecture on 21 January 1890 on The Arctic World illustrated by 100 lime light views of Arctic Life and Scenery under the auspices of Newport Bowling Club in the Blyth Hall. Some idea of the content of his lecture can be gained from a previous version. His obituary notes that: In the course of a lecture delivered in Newport in 1883, Captain Adams gave the following graphic account of " a fearful night in the ice".The transcript read as follows: "Leaving St John's at midnight, we found the ice closely packed on the land and thickly studded with icebergs. Our progress was slow, but we fought on manfully and well. In a short time the Arctic had the lead and kept it. On one occasion the Arctic had to butt at one stiff knot of ice for 27 hours - that is, letting the ship go as far astern as possible and then running at the ice full speed, with 300 men on the ice hauling on a strong rope to assist the ship with all available power, and so backwards and forwards until we accomplished our object. This terribly hard work both for men and ship was continued for twenty days, the ship then showing some signs of distress through her constant crushing blows at the heavy ice that everywhere surrounded her. In the night the wind suddenly changed to the North-East, with fearful drift of snow and such a storm as I can scarcely describe.The ice, very heavy and thick, commenced to tighten around the ship. All hands were sent out with powder and dynamite, hatchets, pokers and prizes to relieve the ship, or at least to make a bed for her. As the storm increased the ship commenced to crack and strain, and the men were got on board to secure the boats and provisions and what effects they could manage to save, when a fearful rally of the ice took place.
The ship heeled over, first on one side and then on the other, to an alarming degree. The men, amidst blinding drift, rushed to the ice, which was toppling over, and breaking in great rifts and tracks, and immediately closing again. After seeing this I can well imagine the effects of one of the great earthquakes in the East. With great difficulty some 100 bags of bread were got out, along with a few more necessaries, when the crew became wild, the ship at this time lying on her broadside, with her lower yards touching the ice. The scene was fearful in the extreme. One could with difficulty hold on to the staggering and reeling ship. I stood to my post on the bridge, when the engineer a fine specimen of a man came to me and told me that the bunkers were stove in and coals and water were filling the engine-room, the beams of iron were broken, and all hands had left him. We had the boilers blown down that is the steam was let off in case of their bursting. The mate and another officer at this moment fought their way through the drift along the ship and told me she was filling with water. My faithful steward, with a few more of my noble crew, both Scotchmen and Newfoundlanders, stood by me on this most trying occasion of my life, and rendered me every assistance. I knew that no ship could stand this much longer, but something told me after all the others had given up in despair that we were not to be lost. All of a sudden the ice that held us in an almost fatal grasp slackened, and the ship righted. My fine fellows immediately rushed to the pumps and my heroic engineer to his duty. We freed the ship of water, repaired her as much as possible, and kept our fine ship and home above water, although in a terribly battered condition. After this we had a hard job to get our crew on board; the night was pitch dark, and the drift and snow so dense that it was impossible at times to see twenty feet before us. This was accomplished without the loss of one man, although some were frost-bitten, and three went mad - one hopelessly.
An indication of just how widely Adams was respected in post-Confederation Canada is provided by the fact that, in 1885, he was invited there to advise on the prospects for a new railway to run from Winnipeg to Port Nelson, on the Hudson Bay from whence grain would be exported by steamer to the United Kingdom.The principal obstacle to be overcome in that venture was the ice belt at the mouth of the Hudson Strait, and Adams was to report the best course to be followed and the class of vessels to be employed. Unfortunately, the proposal came to nothing and the railway, when finally built, terminated at Churchill on Hudson Bay well to the north of Port Nelson.

By this time Adams had built up a fortune as a successful business man. He, like his fellow Masters, had always seen voyaging to the Arctic as part of the commercial ventures of sealing and whaling with exploration of uncharted waters as merely a by-product. His substantial annual incomes generated from the sale of whale and seal blubber and whale bone were the basis of his fortune. However, it seems that Adams added some worthwhile diversifications to the main business. Thus, for instance, as Master of the Arctic he had given the authorities a problem when he took coal to St Johns on a sealing trip as "ballast" rather than a commercial cargo with a view to using the coal as fuel on the usual trip later in the season to the whaling grounds.Then again, in September 1887 he returned from his voyage to moor at the Earl grey Dock with a live walrus which he offered Barnum Circus for £500 (around £30,000 today).

As further evidence of his business acumen, the inventory of Adams' estate following his death in 1890 suggests that his time in Canada was well spent in other ways. When his will was read, it was found that around 27% of his assets was invested in the emerging rail networks of North and Central America.
Captain William Adams: His Own Master
Undoubtedly, Captain Adams' grandest business initiative was the purchase of what was to become his own, wholly owned, whaler. Early in 1884, at the age of 48 and by now a very wealthy man, he bought the "Maud' from William McCulloch of Inverkeithing and brought her to Dundee where he converted her to an auxiliary steam whaler by installing a small, 35 horsepower engine built by White & Cooper, Dundee. Originally built by T. Turnbull and Sons of Whitby the "Maud" was a 117 feet long, 25 feet beam, three masted, barque rigged sailing ship. Immediately after her conversion Adams sent her north under Captain John Watson formerly of Peterhead. She returned with a catch of 56 bottle nosed whales yielding 70 tons of oil.

In 1886 with Captain Adams himself as Master, her catch was more varied: 100 seals, 35 tons oil, six white whales, 220 walrus, 23 bears, 27 narwhal. In 1887, the record was 60 tons of oil and 1,5 tons of baleen (Archibald 2013, p 166).Three further successful voyages are recorded in the Dundee Yearbooks for 1889, 1890 and 1891.

Of some interest, in 1889 the wealthy Walter Livingstone-Learmonth, then an Australian of Scottish parents, sailed with Captain Adams aboard the Maud to Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. In the previous season, in 1888, he had travelled on the whaler "Elipse", commanded by Captain Grey, to satisfy his craving of killing for sport. Grey is reported to have said that he: 'knows everything and has been everywhere. He knows how to shoot seals and bears before he has seen any of them'. One can only assume that Adams tolerated the man because his money added to the profitability of the voyage. Livingstone-Learmouth was hoping to follow Albert Markham and others in writing a book on his travels but he was unable to find a publisher.His lasting legacy is a series of photographs taken on the Eclipse showing her companion that year, the Maud; others depict some of the more gruesome aspects of whaling; while others show him proudly standing over some of his own kills: 26 walruses and seals and four polar bears. (Scott Polar Research web site)
Section Five: Captain Adam's Final Voyage and his Resting Place
In 1890 Captain Adams as Master of the "Maud" set out again from Dundee bound for the Arctic fisheries where Adams had spent, more or less, the last 40 years of his life. Voyaging with him was his 21 year old son, William, who had joined "Maud" when he was a boy of 15, and who on this voyage acted as Mate. The season yielded a useful catch of seven whales, 100 tons of oil and 110 cwt of bone.However, the return trip was to prove William Adams' last. The weather conditions were horrendous, and the "Maud" suffered a severe battering from hurricane force winds and mountainous seas. In the midst of all this Adams took ill, so seriously that William junior took the "Maud" into Scrabster Roads in Caithness on the 4th of August and landed his father, taking him to a hotel in Thurso.

Mrs Elizabeth Adams was telegraphed and arrived in Thurso from Broughty Ferry on the night of the 5th. Arrangements were made to catch the 12:30 am train early the next morning but at 8:25 am on August 6th, 1890, at Dingwall railway station, William Adams died, the cause of death given as 'obstruction of the bowels', and the duration of the illness recorded as 'uncertain'.

It is worth noting that a bowel obstruction happens when either the small or large intestine is partly or completely blocked. That prevents solids, fluids, and gas from moving through the intestines in the normal way and the blockage causes severe pain that comes and goes.That fits well with what is known of Captain Adams' health in the preceding years, and in his last few hours.His obituary noted: "Some time ago Captain Adams contracted an internal disease, but it never assumed a character which caused any apprehension to his family and friends. On returning from fishing last year he was attacked with an illness, but it passed off, and almost up to the time of sailing this season he was in remarkably good health.A week or two before he left this country in March last he was complaining of illness, but it did not assume so acute a form as to prevent him returning with his ship to the seal and whale fishing". With assistance Captain Adams walked from his bedroom to the hotel 'bus outside and was driven to the station where a special saloon was in waiting for him. He was comfortably provided for in the saloon, and, though weak was in pretty good spirits. After the train started the jolting seemed to affect him very much. His breathing became laboured, and he appeared to suffer great pain, which he bore with great fortitude. He partook of some stimulants and the difficulty of breathing was relieved, but the pain otherwise did not subside and he gradually became weaker. There is no evidence from what is known of his father and sons that the Adams family was predisposed to colon cancer which is a common cause of 'obstruction of the bowels'.However, that form of cancer may be associated with a diet low in fibre and high in fat and calories. Furthermore, people who smoke may have an increased risk; and heavy use of alcohol may further increase the risk. It is clear that Captain Adams' diet and life style, despite Markham's observations on his diet noted above, rendered him vulnerable to the disease.

Adams' son, William junior, signed the death certificate as the 'informant', and gave his address as 'Disko, Broughty Ferry. The Captain's body was carried to Dundee by the Caledonian Railway, and thence to Broughty Ferry by the Joint Railway Company. It was interred in Barnhill cemetery, Broughty Ferry, on the 9th of August 1890.

Such was the reputation of Captain Adams that his death was noted not only in Dundee by way of the Dundee Courier, the Dundee Advertiser and the People's Friendbut also further afield. For example, his passing was noted in the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, the South Wales Daily News, the Gloucester Journal and the Gloucester Citizen.

Captain Adams will is provided as Appendix Two. He left an estate of £16,319.11.03 (which translates to between £1.5 and £1.7 million in 2016 prices).He first registered his will on 5th of November 1879 with a codicil added on 15th of March 1889. In the codicil, he chose to release his original Trustees, messrs Smith, Hume and Congleton and replace them with a Bank Agent, David Scott, and a new Solicitor, Robert Steven, while retaining his original accountant, Charles Peter. It may be that he felt that this group were in a position to provide the legal and financial advice appropriate for his new station in life.

It is worth noting that, although a millionaire in today's terms, Captain Adams did not own any of his homes.The furnishings and related items at Disco were valued conservatively at around £35k at current prices; and, on the same basis, his precautionary balances held in local banks amounted to around £64k. More than 25% of Captain Adams assets were tied up in various stocks and shares in the evolving network of railway lines in North and Central America.His enthusiasm for these ventures can reasonably be traced back to his time in Canada advising on the proposed line from Winnipeg to Nelson on Hudson Bay.

However, the inventory of his estate reveals that greatest part of Captain Adams' fortune was invested in the "Maud". His ownership, and the monies accruing from his last voyage, amounted to around £1 million at our current prices.It seems that shortly after purchasing the vessel Adams had sold off eleven shares. He held the other fifty-three shares until his death at which point Robert Steven handled them as executor. These were sold to Captain Andrew Scott. Sadly, in 1892, the Maud was wrecked at Coutts' Inlet in the Davis Strait, between Greenland and Baffin Island with Andrew Scott as Master.

A Promissory Note dated 23rd April 1888 to George Boathe and Thomas Beattie for £500 does not fit well with the rest of his portfolio of assets. Dykes Farm, Jedburgh provides a clue. Adams second wife Eliza's maiden name was Beattie and her birth certificate reveals that she was born in Roxburghshire. It is likely that Thomas Beattie was Eliza's brother and William Adams had made the loan of £500 (almost £60k) to his brother-in law at terms better than those offered by the banks of the day.

A few final matters provide closure for Captain Adams life and distinguished career. A public notice appeared in the Dundee Courier of 15 August 1890 inviting all persons having claims against the late Captain Adams, of Disko, to lodge the same with Rollo and Steven at 41 Reform Street, Dundee. Later, The Arbroath Herald of 6 August 1891 carried a lengthy piece telling that a monument to Captain Adams had been erected in Barnhill Cemetery: "The monument is thoroughly emblematic of the deceased's calling". As far as those family members were present at his death are concerned, it was reported in the local press that Mrs Adams died having suffered "an apoplectic fit" (probably a stroke) on 16th August 1893. William Adams junior went on to be whaling Captain achieving well-earned distinction as an explorer and expert Master in his own right.
A NOTE ON SOURCES
Primary Sources
In respect of the life and times of William Adams senior we have relied heavily on successive editions of the Dundee Year Book and the Dundee Directory. Captain Watson has unrivalled access to the archives of the Fraternity of Masters and Seamen Dundee; and we have made good use of the British Newspaper Archive including the extensive obituary contained in the Dundee Advertiser of 7th August, 1890.

We have benefited from a plundering of the authoritative work already undertaken by Norman Watson who, when archivist at the D C Thomson Press published "The Dundee Whalers" in 2003. We have also benefitted from the journal of Albert Hastings Markham who sailed with Adams on the "Arctic" in 1873 which was published as "A Whaling Cruise to Baffin's Bay and the Gulf of Boothia and an Account of the Rescue of the Crew of the Polaris."

We have welcomed comments and assistance from Helen Kerfoot and Dr Peter Usher. Helen has recently retired as Chair of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names and is Emeritus Scientist at Natural Resources, Canada.Peter has lived and worked in the Canadian Arctic as a consultant and was, amongst many other appointments, Director of Research at Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, in Ottawa and Chair of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project.

Finally, we note with gratitude the note from Matthew Ylitalo of St Andrews University setting out the Dundee Shipping Register for the Maud in the period 1883-1892 which enabled us to trace the details of its ownership.
Selected Secondary Sources
Archibald M (2004) Whalehunters: Dundee and the Arctic Waters, Mercat Press, Edinburgh

Archibald M (2013) The Dundee Whaling Fleet Dundee University Press Ltd

Archibald M (2013) Ancestors in the Arctic: A Photographic History of Dundee Whaling Black and White Publishing

BurnMurdoch W G (1894) From Edinburgh to the Antarctic: An Artist's Notes and Sketches During the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of 1892-93, London

Clark G.V. (1986) The Last of the Whaling Captains (Life and Adventures of Captain John Murray). Glasgow Brown Son & Ferguson Ltd

Elder M (1986) Whalers: a One Man Play about Two Men (Theatre Notes for a production in the Assembly Rooms during the Edinburgh Festival)

Fairweather J (1928/9) Memoirs, Scots Magazine (issued in 5 articles monthly September1928 to January 1929)

Friends of Dundee City Archives (undated) The Dundee Whaling Industry 1756 to 1920.

Grace's Guide to British Industrial History, (undated) A Shipbuilding History. 1750-1932 (Alexander Stephen and Sons)

Henderson D S (1972) Fishing for the Whale: a Guide Catalogue to the Collection of Whaling Relics in Dundee Museum, Dundee Museum

Kenefick W (2000) The Growth and Development of the Port of Dundee in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Chapter 2 in Miskell L, Whatley C A, Harris B (2000) Victorian Dundee: Image and Realities Tuckwell Press, Edinburgh

Lenman B., Lythe C, and Gauldie E (1969) Dundee and its Textile Industry 1850-1914 Abertay Historical Publication No 14

Little Gleaner (1888), a monthly magazine for the youth, vol. x., new series-

Lindsay D M (1911) A Voyage to the Arctic in the Whaler Aurora (in 1884) A Voyage to the Arctic in the Whaler Aurora, Boston, Dana Estes &Co

Lythe S G E (1964) Shipbuilding at Dundee down to 1914, The Dundee Whale Fishery, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Vol 1X, pages 219-232.

Lythe S G E (1964) The Dundee Whale Fishery, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, VolX1, pages 158-169

Lythe S G E (1964) Gourlay's of Dundee: The Rise and Fall of a Shipbuilding Firm, Abertay Historical Publication No 10

Markham A H (1874) A Whaling Cruise to Baffin's Bay and the Gulf of Boothia and an Account of the Rescue of the Crew of the Polaris, London

Miskell L, Whatley C A, Harris B (2000) Victorian Dundee: Image and Realities Tuckwell Press, Edinburgh

Miskell L (2002) From Conflict to Co-operation: Urban Improvement and the Case of Dundee, 1790-1850, Urban History, Vol29(s) pp350-371

Miskell L and Whatley C A (1999) Juteopolis in the Making: Linen and the Industrial Transformation of Dundee, c 1820-1850, Textile History, Vol 39 (2) pages 176-198

Scott Polar Institute Picture Library Voyages of the Eclipse and the Maud

Rycroft N (2005) Captain James Fairweather: Whaler and Shipmaster-His Life and Career 1853-1933, Pennine Printing, 7

Smith R (1993) The Whale Hunters, John Donald Publishers Edinburgh

Watson N (2003) The Dundee Whalers: 1750-1914, Tuckwell Press Edinburgh

Whatley C A, Swinfen D B and Smith A M (1993) The Life and Times of Dundee, Chapter 8, Dundee and the Sea, John Donald, Edinburgh

Wordie J M (1944) Polar Record, Vol4 (27) pp 119-122).
APPENDIX ONE
Captain Adams' obituary as it appeared in the Dundee Advertiser of 7th August, 1890 and reproduced in the Dundee Year Book of 1890.

BRINGING HOME THE BODY
The body was allowed to remain in the saloon. At Inverness the saloon was attached to the mail leaving the Highland capital on Wednesday fore-noon. The body was brought on to Dundee by the Caledonian Railway, and thence to Broughty Ferry by the Joint Railway Company. At Broughty Ferry the corpse was enclosed in a shell and conveyed to the deceased gentleman's residence in West Ferry. Captain Adams was twice married and by his first wife he had a large family, most of whom are still alive. His eldest son by the first marriage made his first voyage as mate to the Arctic regions this year. Deceased left a widow and a young family. His father is still alive and resides in Dundee, and the captain is survived by a brother and two half- brothers, one of whom is a shipbroker in Hartlepool, and the other is captain of a large steamer belonging to London. Captain Adams was one of the best known and probably the most successful of Scotch whaling captains. He was born in Dundee in 1832, and when a very young man he went to sea. Before actually binding himself as a seaman, he assisted his father on board a boat which plied on the river. The late captain then began his career with the Dundee and London Shipping Company, but he did not serve his full term of apprenticeship, and completed it in the employment of another company. He gradually rose from the position of ordinary seaman to A.B., and ultimately he passed through the various stages of third, second and first mate. He sailed some years in general traders and made a number of voyages to the Baltic and India. While in an Indian port on one occasion he was requested by the Consul to bring home a ship, of which the master had died. Subsequently he became master of the three-masted schooner John William belonging to Kirkcaldy, and after remaining in her for about eighteen months he left to take command of another vessel which was then being built. Unfortunately, however, just as this ship was ready for launching, she took fire, and the captain lost his employment for some time. He, however, was not long in finding other work, and then he took to the seal and whale fishing business, and since 1851 he had been engaged in that trade. He went out in the Narwhal, the first steam whaler to go to the Arctic regions, and since that time he had commanded two vessels named the Arctic, both belonging to Messrs Alexander Stephen and Sons. The captain was altogether eighteen years in Messrs Stephens' employment, and during the whole of that time he served the firm most loyally. Some years ago he purchased the barque Maud, which he converted into a steam whaler, and this vessel, as well as the others which had been under the charge of the captain, has always come home well fished. As a whaling captain there can be little doubt that Captain Adams stood conspicuous by reason of the reputation that attaches to his name as a successful whaler and daring seaman. In the course of a lecture delivered in Newport in 1883, Captain Adams gave the following graphic account of
A FEARFUL NIGHT IN THE ICE
"Leaving St John's at midnight, we found the ice closely [packed on the land and thickly studded with icebergs. Our progress was slow, but we fought on manfully and well. In a short time the Arctic had the lead and kept it. On one occasion the Arctic had to butt at one stiff knot of ice for 27 hours that is, letting the ship go as far astern as possible and then running at the ice full speed, with 300 men on the ice hauling on a strong rope to assist the ship with all available power, and so backwards and forwards until we accomplished our object. This terribly hard work both for men and ship was continued for twenty days, the ship then showing some signs of distress through her constant crushing blows at the heavy ice that everywhere surrounded her. In the night the wind suddenly changed to the North-East, with fearful drift of snow and such a storm as I can scarcely describe. The ice, very heavy and thick, commenced to tighten around the ship. All hands were sent out with powder and dynamite, hatchets, pokers and prizes to relieve the ship, or at least to make a bed for her. As the storm increased the ship commenced to crack and strain, and the men were got on board to secure the boats and provisions and what effects they could manage to save, when a fearful rally of the ice took place. The ship heeled over, first on one side and then on the other, to an alarming degree. The men, amidst blinding drift, rushed to the ice, which was toppling over, and breaking in great rifts and tracks, and immediately closing again. After seeing this I can well imagine the effects of one of the great earthquakes in the East. With great difficulty some 100 bags of bread were got out, along with a few more necessaries, when the crew became wild, the ship at this time lying on her broadside, with her lower yards touching the ice. The scene was fearful in the extreme. One could with difficulty hold on to the staggering and reeling ship. I stood to my post on the bridge, when the engineer - a fine specimen of a man - came to me and told me that the bunkers were stove in and coals and water were filling the engine-room, the beams of iron were broken, and all hands had left him. We had the boilers blown down - that is the steam was let off in case of their bursting. The mate and another officer at this moment fought their way through the drift along the ship and told me she was filling with water. My faithful steward, with a few more of my noble crew, both Scotchmen and Newfoundlanders, stood by me on this most trying occasion of my life, and rendered me every assistance. I knew that no ship could stand this much longer, but something told me - after all the others had given up in despair - that we were not to be lost. All of a sudden the ice that held us in an almost fatal grasp slackened, and the ship righted. My fine fellows immediately rushed to the pumps and my heroic engineer to his duty. We freed the ship of water, repaired her as much as possible, and kept our fine ship and home above water, although in a terribly battered condition. After this we had a hard job to get our crew on board; the night was pitch dark, and the drift and snow so dense that it was impossible at times to see twenty feet before us. This was accomplished without the loss of one man, although some were frost-bitten, and three went mad - one hopelessly. HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS While fully alive to business interests he found time for the work of exploration, and he was instrumental in adding considerably to our geographical knowledge of the Arctic regions. Captain Adams came to be recognised as an authority upon Arctic exploration. He was invited to the dinner given some years ago by the Lord Mayor of London to the members of the Leigh-Smith expedition, and was present at the great meeting in ST James's Hall, at which the Prince of Wales presided, and where he was openly spoken of as the fittest man to lead the American exploration in search of the last Greeley explorers. In 1885 he went to Canada for the purpose of negotiating as to the opening up of a new trade route between Western Canada and this country. The intention was to construct a railway from the city of Winnipeg to Port Nelson, Hudson Bay, where the grain would be put on board a line of steamers and conveyed to this country. This railway would be from 500 to 600 miles in length, and it was proposed to construct it in the first place from the North end of Lake Winnipeg to Port Nelson a distance of about 280 miles so that while the remainder of the line was being formed the grain might be carried by steamers from the South to the North end of the lake. The principal object to be overcome in the new route was the ice belt, commonly known as the 'Polar Stream', at the mouth of Hudson Strait, and the mission of Captain Adams was to report the best course to be followed and the class of vessels to be employed. It was believed that steamers semi-fortified would be the most suitable, and as the route was generally navigable for fully four months in the year it was expected that two voyages could be made each season. The discovery ship Alert was placed at the service of the expedition, which was fixed to sail from Halifax on the 19th inst., and proceed by way of Davis Strait, Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay to Port Nelson, but it fell through. The captain's opinion on the much discussed question of an open Polar Sea had often been asked, and on this subject he on one occasion said, "As to the existence of an open Polar Sea, I may as well here mention that in my opinion no such sea exists. It is plain to any observer that the outlets from the unknown Polar Sea are so limited in extent that the ice cannot get away to the South to enable such a sea to form. The sun, too, is not powerful enough in these high latitudes to melt the ice. The outlets are the following:- Between Spitzbergen and Greenland, 500 miles - Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, with Franz Joseph Land between is but a poor outlet - Behring Straits some 30 miles, and Smith Sound at the narrowest part about 20 miles. Therefore I hold that the unknown Polar area is covered in No. 1 ice - that is, ice which has accumulated or grown for ages - and that no open water does or can exist. The passage called the N.E. of Nordenskjold is kept open by the great rivers Obi, Yennisie and Lena, pouring their hot streams into the Siberian Ocean, and for a few months each year keeping a stream of open water along the land, but this passage will never be available for commerce. In the same way the North-West Passage may be accomplished along the shores of North America, which is no doubt kept open by Back's Great Fish and Coppermine Rivers and other small streams pouring their hot water from the South into the Arctic Sea; but in my opinion this passage, although made, will not be of any commercial value to the world, only it will, like the finding of the North Pole, solve a great problem. I don't think, however, that the result will be worth the risk and expenses involved; not worth powder and shot, as the saying is".
HIS LOVE FOR THE ESQUIMAUX
Captain Adams was a man of large sympathies, and his heart went out to the poor Esquimaux whom he met in the far North. Everyone knows that at considerable expense he brought at different times representatives of the race to Dundee, and by lecturing and otherwise he excited an interest in them. The captain, while admitting their barbarous condition, was of the opinion that they could be very much raised in the scale of humanity. He was loud in his praise of what had been done for them by the Danish Government, and in a tone of bitterness somewhat akin to reproach contrasted the efforts of that Government with those of the British Government. In his own way the captain did a great deal for the Esquimaux, and he never failed when opportunity offered to arouse interest in them and sympathy for them. Writing in 1887 on this subject he said; "When I returned from Davis Strait in the fall of last year I brought with me an Esquimaux, a fine young fellow, who during his short stay in this country has acquired a considerable knowledge of our language, and has adapted himself in a remarkable manner to the usages of civilised society. I have spent the greater portion of the last thirty years in the Arctic regions and the question has often occurred to me - Can nothing be done for the Esquimaux? On the coast of Greenland, between Lat. 60 degrees and 73 degrees North, there are about 13,000 natives, all civilised, and under the influence of Christianity. This gratifying state of matters is due to the action of Denmark. Many years ago the Danes sent missionaries to those out-of-the-world people and they have had their reward. Denmark and the Royal Danish Company carry on an important and valuable trade there. Numerous small villages are to be found along the sea coast, the inhabitants of which enjoy many privileges. The Danes sent out ships every year with clothing, tea, coffee and other provisions. Each village has a church and school and the Governor is generally a Dane. The Governor collects the oil, skins, ivory etc., and gives money in exchange - there is no truck system. The natives can read and write, are attentive to their religious duties and, considering their surroundings, may be described as a contented and happy people. Therefore I say great honour to the Danes for what they have done for the poor Greenlander. To the North and West of the Danish settlements are the British possessions - from latitude 73 to about 78 North. Here there are about 300 natives, familiarly known as 'Arctic Highlanders'. They are nomadic and miserable, and though I have known them well for many years I could not venture a description of them. The Great Melville Bay glacier bars their way South; but could not means be taken to convey them to the Danish settlements or to the West side of the Davis Strait, where their life, though by no means luxurious, would at any rate be tolerable? A great many Esquimaux are to be met with in the vicinity of Admiralty Inlet, Navy Board Inlet, Pond's Bay, Eglinton, Cape Kater, Durban, Cumberland Inlet, Hudson's Straits and Labrador, not one of whom has ever heard the Saviour's name, and whose existence is that of semi-barbarism. To these places a ship could easily penetrate any year. Should such a state of things continue? Surely some help could be extended to these poor, God-forsaken people. I know the men can be got for such work and the cost would not be much. It has occurred to me that one celebration of the Queen's Jubilee year might take the form of starting one settlement as an experiment at Durban or Cumberland Inlet, where many natives are to be met with. Such an act would remove a blot from the flag of Christian England, which was unfurled in Possession Bay by Ross and Parry in 1818". THE CAPTAIN'S DARING As a whaling captain, even his enemies, if he had any, would admit that his success had been great beyond comparison with others. This might easily be attributed by some to a remarkable run of good luck on his part, but no one who had watched his career and was familiar with the man could fail to be struck by his wonderful dash and daring, his tenacity of purpose, and at times, one might almost say the rash spirit of adventure that led him on. He had been known to boldly push his ship between crumbling icebergs and through dense fields of ice that threatened every moment to close upon him and crush her timbers like an eggshell. Nor had he always escaped with impunity from the perilous positions into which he had adventured in the pursuit of his calling. While in command of the first Arctic, which he had sailed as captain for seven years, he pushed his way into Cusswell Bay, to within a few miles of the Magnetic Pole. At the time the ship was almost full with its oily cargo, but the ice closed in upon him. The Arctic was caught in the iron embrace of the relentless ice that gathered round, nipped in the grinding floes her timbers cracked and gave way, and the ship went down, giving the captain and crew barely time to save their lives ere the ship disappeared from view. CAPTAIN ADAMS AS AN ADVISOR For a long time Captain Adams had been recognised as an authority on all that pertained to the Arctic regions, and he was frequently consulted by the Admiralty, the Royal Geographical and other societies on questions of Arctic exploration. His advice had also been sought by the American Government, particularly in connection with the relief of the Greely Expedition. APPENDIX TWO
Captain Adams' will was read at Dundee Sheriff Court on 5th September 1890, just over three weeks after his burial in Barnhill Cemetery, Broughty Ferry. Dundee.

'At Dundee the fifth day of September eighteen hundred and ninety. The following inventory of the Personal Estate of the late William Adams, with relative . was presented in this Register conform to Law by James Alexander Rollo, solicitor, Dundee: Inventory of the Personal Estate, whomsoever stated of William Adams sometime of Duntrune Terrace, Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, and master of the steam whaling ship "Arctic" of Dundee, afterwards of 'Disko', West Ferry near Dundee, and master of the steam whaling ship "Maud" of Dundee, who died at Dingwall on the 6th day of August 1890.

2

Household furniture, silver plate and other effects
in the deceased's house, conform to appraisement
by David Richie, licenced appraiser, Dundee.

3

Balance due to the deceased on an account current
with the British Linen Company Bank,

Interest thereon at 5% from 1st April 1890 to date of oath
To inventory

Two Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company four per cent Mortgage Gold Bonds Nos. 6719 & 6720 for 1,000 dollars each @ £84 each

One ST Paul Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad Coy. 50 years
1st Mortgage Bond for £500 at £86

Amount of Personal Estate

Total amount of Personal Estate as per foregoing inventory

(Signed) Robt. Steven John Adamson JP At Dundee the twenty nineth day of August eighteen hundred and ninety in presence of John Adamson one of Her Majesty's Justice of the Peace for the County of Forfar, appeared Robert Steven, Solicitor, in Dundee Executor of the deceased William Adams, sometime of Duntrune Terrace, Broughty Ferry, near Dundee and master of the steam ship "Arctic" of Dundee afterwards of Disko, West Ferry, near Dundee and master of the steam whaling ship "Maud" of Dundee, who, being solemnly sworn and examined, depones, that the said William Adams died at Dingwall domiciled in Scotland upon the sixth day of August eighteen hundred and ninety and left a widow and issue surviving. That the Deponent has entered upon the possession and management of the deceased's Estate as Executor nominated by him, along with Charles Peter, Accountant, Princes Street, Dundee, who declines to accept and David P Scott, Agent of the National Bank of Scotland Limited. Hilltoun, Dundee, in a General Trust Dispositai and Settlement, askt by him, upon the sixth day of November eighteen hundred and seventy nine and codicil thereto annexed by him dated the fifteenth day of March eighteen hundred and eighty nine, both registered in the Sheriff Court Books of Forfarshire upon the twelfth day of August eighteen hundred and ninth, an extract whereof is produced and signed by the Deponent and the said Justice of Peace as relative hereto. That the Deponent does not know of any Testamentary Settlement or writing relative to the disposal of the deceased's Personal Estate and Effects or any part thereof, other than the said General Trust Disposition and Deed of Settlement and codicil. That the foregoing inventory, signed by the Deponent and the said Justice of the Peace as relative hereto, is a full and complete inventory of the personal Estate and Effects of the said deceased William Adams wheresoever situated and belonging or due to him beneficially at the time of his death in so fat as the same has come to the Deponent's knowledge. That the Deponent does not know of any money or property belonging to the deceased secured by Scottish Bonds or the Instruments excluding executors. That the said deceased had heritable estate in this Country. That the funeral expenses of the said deceased amount to twenty nine pounds and thirteen shillings. That the net value of the said Personal Estate and Effects situated in Scotland, including the proceeds accounted thereon down to this day and after deducting the amount of said funeral expenses is sixteen thousand three hundred and nineteen pounds eleven shillings and three pence Stg. And that there is herewith delivered a statement duly stamped of the said Personal Estate subject to Estate Duty as required by the Customs and Inland Revenue Act 1889. That confirmation of the said Personal Estate is required in favour of the Deponent and the said Davis S. Scott. All which is truth as the Deponent shall answer to God. (signed) Robt. Steven, John Adamson J.P.
Ext: Regd Trust Disposition and Settlement and Codicil at Forfar the twelfth day of August one thousand eight hundred and ninety years the Deed hereinafter engrossed was presented for registration in the Sheriff Court Books of the County of Forfar for preservation and is registered in the said Books as follows: I William Adams of Duntrune Terrace, Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, master of the steam whaling ship "Arctic" of Dundee, being desirous to settle my affairs so as to prevent all disputes in regard thereto after my death and to provive for the administration thereof. Do hereby assyn, dispone and convey to and in favour of Charles Peter, Accountant, Princes Street, Dundee. Allan Soutar Smith, Taybrae Cottage, West Newport. George Thomas Hume, Ship-stores Dealer, Dundee, and Thomas Craigpaton, Solicitor, Dundee and the acceptors or acceptor and survivors or survivor of them and such other person or persons as they or he may assent to act along with or in succession to them or him in the premises, the major part alive and asking at the hour being a always as a quorum as Trustees or Trustee for the purposes after mentioned and to the assignees of the said Trustees or Trustee all and sundry lands and hostages, and the whole goods, gear and estate both heritable and moveable now belonging to me or which shall belong to me at the time of my death together with the whole vouchers and instructions thereof and all that has followed or is competent to follow thereon. But declaring always that these presents are granted by me in Trust only and for the uses and purposes aftermentioned validated.

. For payment for all my just and lawful debts, deathbed and funeral charges, and the expenses of working of the Trust hereby constituted.

. My said Trustees or Trustee shall as soon as convenient after my death and out of the first and readiest of my means and estate pay to my spouse Eliza Beattie or Adams in the event of her surviving me such a sum as in the opinion my said Trustees or Trustee is fair and reasonable for mournings and for her maintenance up to the time when she shall receive the revenue of my estate as hereinafter provided for.

My said Trustees or Trustee shall in the event of my said spouse surviving me give to her but so long only as she remains my widow and does not enter into another marriage, the use of the whole household furniture plushing and effects including silver plate and plated articles, books, prints of pictures belonging to me at the time of my decease and shall deliver to her absolutely my wearing apparel and personal articles, trinkets and jewellery and my watches and chains and appendages. In the event of my said spouse predeceasing or surviving me and entering into another marriage, or be soon after my decease as may be convenient in the event of her not entering into another marriage my Trustees shall deal with said furniture pliushing and effects, including silver plate and plates articles, books prints and pictures belonging to me at the hour of my demise and wearing apparel and personal articles trinkets and jewellery and my watches and chains and appendages, if these are not delivered to my said spouse absolutely in such manner as they think best with interest of my children then surviving and that either by dividing same or part thereof among such children in equal proportions according to the appraised values thereof at the hour, or by selling and disposing of the same or part thereof in such way or manner as may be deemed proper and holding the precedes arising therefrom as part of the Trust Estate.

. My said Trustees or Trustee as soon as convenient after my death shall make up title to my whole other property and estate herein above conveyed and realise such portion thereof as they may consider necessary and get the remainder transferred to their names as Trustees and pay the free income arising from said whole estates to the said Eliza Beattie or Adams, and out of such revenue my widow shall be bound to pay and provide for the education clothing and maintenance of such of my children as may for the time be in minority in so far as they may not be in a position to maintain themselves it being optional to my said Trustees or Trustee to give to my said spouse possession rent free of any house belonging to me in which she may be residing at the time of my demise she however paying all feu-duties and the taxes charged against the proprietor and occupier and making all disbursements necessary for keeping such house in repair while she so occupies same, but declaring that in the event of my said spouse entering into another marriage she shall after that event have no right or interest in my estates above conveyed, and shall then quit possession of any house she may occupy under my trustees as before mentioned and my Trustees after the death or second marriage of my said spouse shall pay to or apply for behalf of my children until the youngest attain the age of twenty one years complete the free income from my said estates and that at such times in such proportions and in such way and manner as my Trustees to whom I permit the fullest discretionary powers may think proper, with special power also to my Trustees to make such payments from the Capital of my estate to or for behoof of my said spouse or therein as my Trustees in the exercise of discretionary power hereby conferred on them may hold to be necessary in any special circumstances which may emerge, they keeping in view however that it is my wish that as much of the Capital as possible shall be preserved for division amongst my children.

So soon as convenient after my youngest child attains the age of twenty one complete, and after the interest of my said spouse has ceased by her decease or having entered into another marriage my said Trustees shall either convey or pay over the whole of the free residue of my estates to my children equally, the issue of any child who may have predeceased, leaving issue coming in place of and taking the share which would have been taken by the predemising parent if in life. Declaring expressly however that the shares of all female beneficiaries shall be conveyed or paid to them and shall be held by them exclusive of the 'pis marik' (?) and right of administration of any husband they may have married or may thereafter marry. And I do hereby give full power to my said Trustees or Trustee to sell and dispose of all of my said Estates above conveyed and that either by public roup or private bargain and after such advertisement or without advertisement as to my said Trustees or Trustee may seem best and power to grant all necessary conveyances in favour of purchasers containing all usual and necessary clauses and binding my Estate in absolute warranties. And I specially empower my Trustees or Trustee to hold and retain during the subsistence of this Trust for which period as they deem expedient any shares of ships, or in joint adventures which I may hold or be concerned in at the time of my demise declaring expressly hereby that by so doing my said Trustees or Trustee shall not incur any pecuniary responsibility to the beneficiaries under these presents. And further I grant special power to my Trustees or Trustee to invest the monies realised by them in such Stocks in Joint Stock or Investment Trust Companies, or on shares in ships or in Railway Debentures or on such Securities heritable or personal as they may deem reasonably safe and sufficient investments and I hereby free them of all responsibility as aforesaid, And further my said Trustees or Trustee are hereby empowered to appoint any one of their own number to be their Factor, Law Agent or Cashier in the administration of the Trust hereby created and to allow him a reasonable remuneration for his trouble, any law or franchise to the contrary notwithstanding and for the more effectual carrying out of these presents. I do hereby nominate constitute and appoint the said Charles Peter, Allan Soutar Smith, George Thomas Hume and Thomas Craigpaton and the acceptors or acceptor and survivors or survivor of them to be my sole and only Executors or Executor with power to them or him to interact with my personal estate to give up inventories thereof, and to confirm the same and generally every other thing to do in the premises competent to an Executor, and for the encouragement of the persons herein before nominated and appointed as Trustees and Executors to accept of office. I do sincerely declare that neither they or any of them shall be liable for neglect or diligence of any kind nor one for the other, but that each shall be liable to his own actual intromissions only as the same shall be established by his Writing or Oath. And I reserve my own life rent of the whole premises hereby conveyed with full power to me at any hour of my life and even on deathbed to alter innovate or revoke these presents in whole or in part at pleasure but declaring that the same in so far as not altered or revoked by me shall be effectual though lying in my own hands or in the hands of any person to whom I may intrust the same in delivered at the time of my death being hereby forever disposed with, And I consent the Registration hereof for preservation. In witness whereof these presents written on this and the three preceding pages by Thomas Dow Clerk to Heron & Congleton, solicitors in Dundee. are subscribed by me at Dundee on the fifth day of November in the year eighteen hundred & seventy nine before those witnesses the said Thomas Dow and George Millar Steele also Clerk to the said Heron & Congleton.

I, William Adams, dauguid with the foregoing Trust Disposition and Settlement of Duntrune Terrace, Broughty Ferry near Dundee master of the steam whaling ship "Arctic" of Dundee and master of the steam whaling ship "Maud" of Dundee do hereby make the following alterations and additions to the foregoing Trust Disposition and Settlement viz: I do hereby revoke and recall the appointment of Allan Soutar Smith, George Thomas Hume and Thomas Congleton charged with the foregoing Trust Disposition and Settlement as my Trustees and Executors and in room and place thereof I hereby appoint David P Scott, Agent of the National Bank of Scotland Limited, Hilltown Dundee, and Robert Steven, solicitor, Dundee, to be my Trustees and Executors to act as such along with Charles Peter designed in the said foregoing Trust Disposition and Settlement, and I hereby confer upon the said Charles Peter, David P Scott and Robert Steven as my Trustees and Executors all the powers and privileges which are conferred upon my Trustees and Executors, in virtue of the foregoing Trust Disposition and Settlement and in addition to the powers already conferred upon my said Trustees and Executors by the foregoing Trust Disposition and Settlement I further hereby empower them so long as they may deem it desirable to allow my Trust Estate or part or parts thereof to remain in the State of investment in which the same may be at the date of my death. And I also empower them to lend out and invest the Trust funds under their charge or any part or parts thereof in or upon the Debentures mortgages funded debt perpetual annuities or preferential guaranteed or debenture stock of any board, corporation, authority, company or body municipal, commercial or otherwise in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and whether carrying as business in this country alone or both in this and another country, and I confirm the foregoing Trust Disposition and Settlement in all other respects and appoint this codicil to be read and considered along therewith, and I consent to Registration thereof for preservation. In witness thereof :this codicil written by Alfred Alexander Slidders, Apprentice to Rollo and Steven, Solicitors, Dundee, is subscribed by me at Dundee on the fifteenth day of March eighteen hundred and eighty nine before these witnesses: James Alexander Rollo, solicitor, Dundee, and the said Alfred Alexander. Slidders. Signed: Wm Adams. James Rollo, witness, Alfred A Slidders, witness.
Dundee 29th August 1890. This is the Extract of the General Trust Disposition and Settlement referred to in the Oath to Inventory sworn to by me of this date.
(signed) Robt Steven.
John Adamson J.P.
Some Explanatory Notes
Captain William Adams' Estate of 16,319.11.03 in 1890 translates to between £1.5 and £1.7 million in 2016 prices.

He first registered his will on 5th of November 1879 with a codicil added on 15th of March 1889. In the codicil, he chose to release his original Trustees, messrs Smith, Hume and Congleton and replace them with a Bank Agent, David Scott, and a new Solicitor, Robert Steven, while retaining his original accountant, Charles Peter. It may be that this group were in a position to provide legal and financial advice appropriate for his new station in life.

A millionaire in today's terms Captain Adams did not own any of his homes. By 1879 he had moved from 8 James Place and taken the tenancy of 12 Duntrune Terrace. From there he moved to his nearby mansion Disco.The furnishings and related items were valued conservatively at around £35k in today's terms; and, on the same basis, his precautionary balances held in local banks amounted to around £64k

The Promissory Note dated 23rd April 1888 to George Boathe and Thomas Beattie for £500 does not fit well with the rest of his portfolio. Dykes Farm, Jedburgh provides a clue. Adams second wife Eliza's maiden name was Beattie and her birth certificate reveals that she was born in Roxburghshire. It is likely that Thomas Beattie was Eliza's brother and William Adams had made the loan of £500 (almost £60k) to his brother-in law in terms better than bank rates of the day.

More than 25% of Captain Adams assets were tied up in various stocks and shares in the evolving network of railway lines in North America.His enthusiasm for these ventures can reasonably be traced back to his time in Canada advising on the proposed line from Winnipeg to Nelson on Hudson Bay.

However, the greatest part of Captain Adams' fortune was invested in the Maud. He had left Alexander Stevens employ in 1883 to become a ship owner in his own right, taking command of the "Maud" in 1886. His ownership and monies accruing from his last voyage amounted to around £1 million at our current prices. Sadly, in 1892, she was wrecked at Coutts' Inlet, Davis Strait, between Greenland and Baffin Island: Captain Andrew Scott was Master.
APPENDIX 3: PLACE NAMES
While the primary objective for Captain Adams Senior and his son in their voyages to Newfoundland and the post confederation Canadian arctic was fishing for whales and the slaughter of seals, a by-product of their endeavours was exploration of previously uncharted waters. Consequently, there are number of locations which bear their names. At this distance it is difficult to separate those which celebrate father from those which do the same for his son.The following is part of a personal communication from Helen Kerfoot the Ottawa-based geographer with an unparalleled expertise in geographical names. She helped form Canadian Geographic's policy regarding Canadian place names, was until recently the Chair of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, and she is an Emeritus Scientist at Natural Resources, Canada.

On Captain Adams Senior:
"Cooke and Holland Adams Island (on NTS map 48D) "after Capt. Adams of the whaler "Arctic" who made surveys of Navy Board and Admiralty inlets" (73 44N - 81 27W, Navy Board Inlet, N. Baffin Island).This origin was published in Place-Names Northern Canada, Part IV of the Ninth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, 1910. in "The Exploration of Northern Canada" (1978) have an entry for William Adams in the Arctic in 1872: "According to Captain J.E. Bernier, Captain Adams surveyed Admiralty Inlet during a whaling voyage in 1872, named Richards and Yeoman islands, and entered Adams Sound. "The records of the current Geographical Names Board of Canada show Yeoman Island as an official name (on 48B, 72 16N - 85 06W ... to be verified), just with the comment ... "between pages 24 and 25 in Cruise of the Arctic, 1906-07".This would be Bernier's voyage in the Canadian Government steamer "Arctic".Adams Sound is on 48B (72 52N 84 45W), but I have not yet found an origin stated. Richards Island as mentioned in Cooke and Holland may be Ricards Island. Adams Island (on NTS map 37H) was submitted by J.M. Wordie in 1938 for William Adams, who in 1903 apparently passed here in the "Diana".(71 27N - 73 05W, NE Baffin Island) Cape Adams (on NTS map 67C) "named by Amundsen, 1905, after Capt. Adams, a Scotch whaler, who had deposited stores for him on Dalrymple rock" (68 48N - 100 08W, E. Side of Boothia Peninsula). This is also from the Ninth Report of the GBC, 1910.
On Captain Adams Junior

With Grateful thanks to Professor Hugh M. Begg (Honorary Patrick Geddes Fellow, University of Dundee) and Captain John Watson OBE, Archivist, The Fraternity of Masters and Seamen in Dundeewho have allowed us to put this on our Website.

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Captain John Watson OBE, Archivist, The Fraternity of Masters and Seamen in Dundee Section One: Introduction Recent research has added to, and thrown new light upon, our understanding of how the economic base of Dundee was transformed in Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian times from a settlement still displaying something of its Mediaeval origins to a city heavily dependent on the linen and, later, jute industries.

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The Qargizine aims to instill the knowledge and pride of the rural and Alaska Native cultures in today's generation.

The Qargizine aims to instill the knowledge and pride of the rural and Alaska Native cultures in today's generation.

Connecting content to people.

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The Qargizine aims to instill the knowledge and pride of the rural and Alaska Native cultures in today's generation.

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Taqilituq, Ipirviq and Inuliapik

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Absolutive pronoun: and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'Relative pronoun: Pronoun in locative: one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'Pronoun in terminalis: dual pl. 'to that one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'Pronoun in modalis: dual pl. 'with/of that one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'Pronoun in vialis: Pronoun in similaris: Adverb: Adverb in locative: Adverb in ablative: 'from over there, visible and restricted in area'Adverb in terminalis: 'to over there, visible and restricted in area'Adverb in vialis:
iktuma, dual ikkuak, pl. iktumani, dual pl.

iktumuuna, dual pl. iktumatun, dual ikka 'over there, visible and restricted in area' ikani 'located over there, visible and restricted area'

ikuuna 'via over there, visible and restricted in area'

ikkufnaktun, pl. ikkunatitun 'like that one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'
ikkunuuna 'via that one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'
ikkunani 'located with/in/at that one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'
ikkua 'of that one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'

Language as a Reflection
of Perceptions and Intellectual History

An attribute of Ieupiaq culture evident in the language and literature is the fact that the roles of women and men were not stratified. The type of role undertaken depended on a person's ability and capability. One of the legends told by an outstanding historian, Uqumailaq, runs as follows:

Once there lived a large number of people and their chief along a river in the interior. Their chief had a daughter. She did not mature slowly. She had a bow and arrow as she grew up. She hunted like a man using the bow and arrow. When she saw a wolf she would stalk it and would eventually kill it with her how and arrow. She did likewise with wolverine. Although she was a woman she was a skillful hunter. (Uqumailaq, circa 1961, from Suvlu Tape collection of I e upiaq stories currently being transcribed and translated by the author.)

Woman as hunter is not a common theme in the oral literature, but the presence of such themes indicate that the society of the ancestors was an egalitarian one. In fact, one cheerful little Ieupiaq elder-woman told the author of the present paper that she had belonged to a whaling crew, and that the only reason she had never struck a whale was because she was so tiny. She laughed and said that she did not have the strength to strike the whale with sufficient force. From the legends and more recent accounts, we learn that men and women had equal status and that a person was limited only by his or her abilities.

The equality of roles for men and women is reflected in the Ieupiaq and Yupik languages. The words for woman agnaq and for man cannot be used to designate humanity. The Ieupiaq and Yupik languages have a word inuk or yuk, respectively, which refers to a human being without specifying gender, and the same word refers to humanity.

The concept of focusing on the whole situation with one or many participants is reflected in the Ieupiaq language. Take for instance the English sentence, 'there are squirrels', and the Ieupiaq sentence siksriqaqtuq. One is a translation of the other. In English the focus is on the individual squirrels, whereas in Ieupiaq the focus is on the one situation. This focus is clearly shown by the number of the verb. 'Are' in English is plural while tuq in Ieupiaq is singular. The interdependence of actors regardless of number in a given situation is emphasized. An individual does not stand alone.

In Christianity, resurrection occurred in three days, whereas in the Ieupiaq religion resurrection had to occur within four or five days of death, depending on the sex of the person involved.

Although some concepts such as resurrection and the focus on an individual figure who performs miracles are common to both religions, there are some differences with respect to the creation of man.

According to the Ieupiat, 'Long before day and night had been created, or the first man made his appearance, there lived an old woman, indeed very old, for the tradition of her having had a beginning, if there ever was such a one, had been lost. We must bear in mind that during the first stage of the world everything remained young and fresh; nothing grew old. The old woman was like a young girl in her appearance and feelings, and being the only inhabitant of the earth, naturally felt very lonesome and wished for a companion. She was one time chewing 'pooya' (burnt seal oil residue) when the thought arose in her mind that it would be pleasant to have an image to play with, so, taking her 'pooya' , she fashioned a man, then by way of ornamentation placed a raven's beak on his forehead. She was delighted with her success in making such a lovely image and on lying down to sleep placed it near her side. On awakening her joy was great, for the image had come to life and there before her was the first man' (Driggs, 1905).

Ieupiaq legend tells of the tulufiksraq, the Raven-Spirit who is also a man. He is credited with having secured land and light for humanity. According to Ieupiaq legend there was a period of darkness before there was light. This was the time when humans did not age. The Raven-Spirit tulufiksraq secured the land and the source of light from an old man and his wife and daughter. Light appeared only after the Raven-Spirit stole the source of light from them. As he was fleeing, the Raven-Spirit dropped the source of light which then exploded and dispersed units of light throughout existence.

This concept is reinforced by the analysis of the Ieupiaq word for sun siqiniq. The stem of siqiniq is siqi which means 'to splatter, to splash outwards', and the ending of the word niq indicates the result or end-product of an activity. So, the Ieupiaq word for sun siqiniq and the legend of the Raven-Spirit accidently dropping the source of light which then exploded supports the concept of the big-bang theory of the origin of the universe in which the sun is only one of many.

The Ieupiaq word for 'star' uvlugiaq indicates that light travels from the 'star', that there is a path that the light from the star takes to arrive on earth. The stem of the Ieupiaq word uvlugiaq is uvluq which means 'daylight'. The suffix iaq indicates 'a pathway or trajectory' that permits movement from one point to another.

The language and culture of a people are a source of pride and identity, and the oral literature of the ancestors sends messages based on their experiences and their interpretations of these.

Contact with Other Cultures

The first white men that the Inuit encountered were explorers and whalers who did not always seek to change the lifestyles of the indigenous peoples that they met in their travels. Those explorers who spent lengthy periods of time with the Ieupiat or Yupiks learned their language in order to communicate with them.

Many early missionaries learned the Ieupiaq or Yupik languages in order to translate Christian hymns, scriptures and the catechism into them. Ieupiaq and Yupik could be spoken in churches but not in schools. The language policy for the schools at the turn of the century under the direction of a Presbyterian missionary, Sheldon Jackson, the first Commissioner of Education for Alaska from 1885 to 1908 (Krauss, 1980), is summed up in this quotation from the North Star, Sitka 1888:

The Board of Home Missions has informed us that government contracts for educating Indian pupils provide for the ordinary branches of an English education to be taught, and that no books in any Indian language shall be used, or instruction given in that language to Indian pupils. The letter states that this rule will be strictly enforced in all government Indian schools. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs urges, and very forcibly too, that instruction in their vernacular is not only of no use to them but is detrimental to their speedy education and civilization. It is now two years and more since the use of the Indian dialects was first prohibited in the training school here. All instruction is given in English. Pupils are required to speak and write English exclusively; and the results are tenfold more satisfactory than when they were permitted to converse in unknown tongues.

Then in 1890, the following was issued by the Department of the Interior:

The children shall be taught in the English language, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, oral history, physiology, and temperance hygiene. No text-books printed in a foreign language shall be allowed. Special efforts shall be put forth to train the pupils in the use of the English language.

Thus began the destruction of the indigenous languages of Alaska. The Native peoples of Alaska were taught that their languages were not important, their religion was bad and that they should become like the white man as quickly as possible.

The missionaries had a relatively easy task of assembling followers for their churches in northern Alaska. The diseases brought by the explorers and Yankee whalers wrought havoc in many families. The Ieupiat had no immunity to such diseases. Consequently many died, including many heads of households. The father and usually the eldest son, although stricken, had to go out and procure food for the family. Even if they fell ill they could not rest and recuperate. Their state would grow worse and they would die. Consequently, the widows and their children had no one to turn to except the white traders who had established themselves along the Arctic coast. That was the origin of the paternalistic relationship between Alaska' s First People and the white man.

The late Eben Hopson, the first mayor of the North Slope Borough in northern Alaska, described Alaska's indigenous peoples' experience of the western educational system.

Eighty-seven years ago, when we were persuaded to send our children to western educational institutions, we began to lose control over the education of our youth. Many of our people believed that formal educational systems would help us acquire the scientific knowledge of the western world. However, it was more than technological knowledge that the educators wished to impart. The educational policy was to attempt to assimilate us into the American mainstream at the expense of our culture. The schools were committed to teaching us to forget our language and Ieupiaq heritage. This outrageous treatment and the exiling of our youth to school in foreign environments were to remain as common practices of the educational system.

The Inupiaq and Yupik Situation Today

The pace of development in the Alaskan north is fast. The changes that have occurred in the lifetimes of our elders almost defy belief. Most of the time there is no time to react, no time for comprehensive planning. Because change has occurred so suddenly, there are many things which should have changed that have remained the same under a different name. And there are changes that have been so radical and destructive that we have not begun to emerge from their consequences. Western societal systems and norms, however well-intentioned, have undermined and displaced the traditional societal systems that supported our people for thousands of years. The disruptive effects of rapid social and cultural change have wrought havoc on Alaskan Native families and communities. This is reflected in a depressing array of social problems including a high suicide rate among young Alaskan Natives, a high incidence of alcohol and drug abuse, the fetal alcohol syndrome, the breakdown of the extended family and clan system, loss of children to the welfare system, loss of language, lack of transmission of cultural knowledge and values, apathy, depression, low academic achievement and high drop-out rate, transitional problems between village and cities and the dilemma of integrating traditional and non-traditional economic systems (subsistence versus cash-based lifestyle).

When Alaska became a State in 1959, it was allowed to select federal lands within Alaska to aid it in its economic development. Alaska Native leaders, seeing that their traditional lands were being claimed by the State of Alaska, began insisting on a settlement of land claims of the Alaska Natives from the United States Government. In 1966, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior froze further State land selections, pending resolution of Alaska Native land claims.

The United States Government had long known that the North Slope of Alaska has large reserves of oil. The Government laid claim to much of northern Alaska as a petroleum reserve, in the name of national defense; however, the shortage of oil in the world market led the U.S. to encourage the oil companies to explore for oil in Alaska. An enormous oilfield was found at Prudhoe Bay in 1968.

The discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oilfield made the North Slope very attractive to the State and Federal Governments and private industry. Development of the oilfield would interfere directly with traditional uses of the land, so resolution of the Native land claims was necessary. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act became law on 18 December 1971, clearing the way for construction of facilities to extract the oil from the ground and market it. This Act affected all the Native people of Alaska, not just those in the oil-rich lands of the north.

Alaskan Native Languages and Education

For 100 years, Alaska' s indigenous languages and cultures have faced a steady onslaught of institutional discrimination which called for their eradication and replacement by the English language and cultural norms. The very core of a young child's identity, the language and culture of the parents, was undermined in the schools. Needless to say, this policy has been extremely detrimental to the indigenous groups in Alaska. Attitudes of rejection or ambivalence about the worth of one's language and culture have developed and are, in varying degrees, still prevalent among the adult population. These attitudes have played an important role in the success of retention or maintenance programmes for Alaska Native languages.

The linguistic and cultural heritage of Alaska Native societies is threatened with extinction. This looming loss is distressing to many members of the Alaska Native community. The situation affects the education of the children who need to feel secure and comfortable in a schooling process in order to reach their potential of academic achievement.

Bilingual and bicultural education in Alaska began with the adoption of a Bill in 1972 by the Alaska State Legislature declaring that '... a school which is attended by at least 15 pupils whose primary language is other than English shall have at least one teacher who is fluent in the native language of the area where the school is located. Written and other educational materials, when language is a factor, shall be presented in the language native to the area' (State of Alaska, Seventh Legislature, Second Session, 1972).

At the same session another piece of legislation was passed directing the University of Alaska to establish an Alaska Native Language Center in order to: (i) study native languages of Alaska; (ii) develop literacy materials; (iii) assist in the translation of important documents; (iv) provide for the development and dissemination of Alaska Native literature, and (v) train Alaska Native language speakers to work as teachers and aides in bilingual classrooms.

In 1975, an Alaska State statute was enacted directing all school boards to'... provide a bilingual-bicultural education programme for each school . . .which is attended by at least 8 pupils of limited English-speaking ability and whose primary language is other than English.' The new language in the statute addressed all languages other than English, and thus expanded bilingualism equally to immigrant languages.

The ultimate aim of all bilingual/bicultural programmes in Alaska is to promote English language proficiency. Ieupiaq and Yupik language and culture programmes are seen as contributing to the enhancement of academic achievement which is measured in the English language. Depending on the assessment of the schoolchildren's language proficiency, each district designs a language development educational programme which best meets its needs. In regions where children still speak their Native language, the language of instruction from Kindergarten to Fourth Grade is usually in that language. After Fourth Grade, instruction in the Native language is usually reduced, for various reasons including shortage of bilingual teachers, lack of curricular materials and, most importantly, lack of commitment by the community and school to promote the growth and enrichment of the Alaska Native language per se.

In the 1987-8 school year, the Alaska Department of Education, through the Office of the Commissioner, and in collaboration with members of the Alaska Native community, initiated a process to establish an Alaska Native Language Policy for schools in Alaska. The proposed policy acknowledges that Alaska's indigenous languages are unique and essential elements of Alaska's heritage, and thus distinct from immigrant languages. It recognizes that although some children learn their Native language in the home and community, many Alaska Native children do not have the opportunity to learn their heritage languages in this way. The proposed policy further states that schools have a responsibility to teach and use as the medium of instruction the Alaska Native language of the local community to the extent desired by the parents of that community.

This is the first attempt by the educational system to establish a process whereby Alaskan Natives can make decisions concerning their heritage languages. The revitalization of Alaska Native languages will occur when Alaska Natives celebrate themselves and their heritage, and insist on being active participants in the education of their children in the home, community and schools .

Bibliography

Barnhardt, R. (ed.). 1977. Cross-Cultural Issues in Alaskan Education. Center for Northern Educational Research, University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Coon, E. D. 1985. Bilingual-Bicultura1 Education in Alaska; Guidelines for Conducting Programs in Elementary and Secondary Schools. Alaska State Department of Education, September.

Darnell, F. (ed.). 1972. Education in the North: The First International Conference on Cross-Cultural Education in the Circumpolar Nations. University of Alaska, Arctic Institute of North America.

Driggs, J.B. 1905. Short Sketches from Oldest America. George W. Jacobs & CO., Philadelphia.

Kisautaq-Leona, O. 1981. Puiguitkaat. The 1978 Elders' Conference. North Slope Borough Commission on History and Culture, Barrow, Alaska.

Kleinfeld, J.S. 1979. Eskimo School on the Andreafsky. Praeger Studies in Ethnographic Perspectives on American Education.

Krauss, M.E. 1980. Alaska Native Languages: Past, Present and Future. Alaska Native Language Center Research Papers, No. 4.

Spencer, R.F. 1959. The North Alaskan Eskimo: A Study in Ecology and Society. Smithsonian Institution Press, City of Washington.

Spolsky, B. 1986. Language and Education in Multilingual Settings. College-Hill Press, San Diego, California.

St. Clair, R.; Leap, W. 1982. Language Renewal among American Indian Tribes: Issues, Problems and Prospectus. National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

Stein, G. (ed.). 1983. Education in Alaska's Past. Alaska Historical Society, Anchorage, Alaska.

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Absolutive pronoun: and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'Relative pronoun: Pronoun in locative: one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'Pronoun in terminalis: dual pl. 'to that one over there, visible, and not moving, lengthy nor expansive'Pronoun in modalis: dual pl.

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Bennett, J., Eenoolooapik (2020). In The Canadian Encyclopedia.

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Bennett, J., Eenoolooapik (2020). In The Canadian Encyclopedia.

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Critical Inuit Studies: An Anthology of Contemporary Arctic Ethnography

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Critical Inuit Studies: An Anthology of Contemporary Arctic Ethnography

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Available at Ilisimatusarfik library

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Critical Inuit Studies offers an overview of the current state of Inuit studies by bringing together the insights and fieldwork of more than a dozen scholars from six countries currently working with Native communities in the far north.

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Alkebu-lan 1260 AH Presentation by Nikolaj Cyon

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Maps shape the world they depict At the 'Kongokonferenz' in Berlin in 1884 , the major imperialist powers decided “which regions of Africa each European power had the right to 'pursue' the legal ownership of land” The map come first, and by the power of its ink it shaped reality

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The Inuit as geographers: The case of Eenoolooapik

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The Inuit as geographers: The case of Eenoolooapik

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Abstracts

Abstract
Abstract
Recent studies reveal an increasing number of instances in which Qallunaat benefited from Inuit knowledge of the lands and waters upon which they had lived for centuries. One of the best recorded examples of Inuit geographical knowledge is found in the story of Eenoolooapik, who led to the European rediscovery of Cumberland Sound 250 years after it was first explored and named by John Davis. Taken as a young man from Baffin Island to Scotland in 1839, Eenoolooapik excited whaling captain William Penny with stories of a large, whale-rich body of water then unknown to European and American whalers. "Eenoo," as he was popularly called, drew a map of the coastline of eastern Baffin showing a deep bay known by the Inuit as "Tenudiackbeek," and upon their return the next summer, Penny skeptically followed Eenoolooapik's directions into a large bay in which the Inuk had spent his childhood. Thus the youngster's geographical knowledge of his homeland resulted in the opening to whalers of a long-lost body of water in which, in the next decade, shore stations were established that offered seasonal employment to the Inuit and dramatically changed their lives. The story of Eenoolooapik is told in a small book by Alexander M'Donald, A Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik [...] published in Edinburgh in 1841. This is probably the only nineteenth-century full-length biography of an Inuk published during the subject's lifetime; and because copies of the book are exceedingly rare, the following article provides a synopsis as a means of portraying more fully the geographical contributions of Eenoolooapik.

Résumé
Résumé
Des études récentes révèlent de plus en plus de cas où les Qallunaat ont tiré profit de la connaissance que les Inuit avaient des terres et des eaux sur lesquelles ils avaient vécu pendant des siècles. L'un des exemples du savoir géographique inuit les mieux documentés se trouve dans l'histoire d'Eenoolooapik, un jeune Inuk qui amena les Européens à redécouvrir la Baie de Cumberland 250 ans après que John Davis l'eut explorée et baptisée. Enlevé de la Terre de Baffin et emmené en Écosse en 1839 alors qu'il était tout jeune homme, Eenoolooapik enthousiasma le capitaine, pêcheur de baleine, William Penny par ses histoires qui évoquaient une vaste étendue d'eau riche en baleines, alors inconnue des pêcheurs de baleine européens et américains. "Eenoo", tel qu'on l'appelait généralement, dessina une carte de la côte est de la Terre de Baffin montrant une baie profonde connue des Inuit sous le nom de "Tenudiackbeek." À leur retour l'été suivant, Penny suivit, non sans scepticisme, les directions d'Eenoolooapik qui l'amenèrent dans une grande baie où l'Inuk avait passé son enfance. En conséquence, le savoir géographique que ce jeune avait de son pays natal eut pour résultat d'ouvrir aux pêcheurs de baleine une étendue d'eau depuis longtemps oubliée. Durant les décennies suivantes, des postes côtiers furent établis qui offrirent aux Inuit des emplois saisonniers et changèrent dramatiquement leurs modes de vie. L'histoire d'Eenoolooapik est racontée dans un petit livre d'Alexander M'Donald, A Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik [...] (Récit de quelques passages de l'histoire d'Eenoolooapik [...]), publié à Edimbourg en 1841. Il s'agit probablement de la seule biographie complète d'un Inuk datant du dix-neuvième siècle qui a été écrite du vivant de son sujet; et parce que les copies de ce livre sont extrêmement rares, l'article qui suit en fournit un synopsis de façon à décrire plus à fond les contributions géographiques d'Eenoolooapik.

Article body

Introduction

European and American explorers sometimes ignored traditional aboriginal knowledge of their physical world and were slow to recognize that the absence of a written language did not deprive isolated Inuit of intimate acquaintance with the lands and waters upon which they lived and from which they drew their sustenance. Recent research by scholars like Robin McGrath (McGrath 1988: 6-10) and Derek Hayes, however, reveals greater reliance upon local geographic knowledge than generally has been recognized. In his Historical Atlas of the Arctic, for example, Hayes reproduces an impressive number of sketches drawn by Inuit for the benefit of explorers, along with a painting that memorializes the cartographic contributions of Apelaglu and Ikmalick to John Ross's expedition in 1830 (Hayes 2003: 70, 77, 108).

One of the best recorded examples of Inuit geographical knowledge is found in the story of Eenoolooapik (Inuluapik), a young Inuk from Baffin Island, who was taken to Britain by a Scot whaling captain in 1839. From a historical standpoint, almost as remarkable as the knowledge that Eenoonooapik revealed was the perceptiveness of a ship's scientist who recorded the Inuk's story and expounded on the subject of Inuit geographical intuitiveness.

In Edinburgh in 1841 there appeared a 149-page book with the formidable title of A Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik, a Young Esquimaux, Who Was Brought to Britain in 1839, in the Ship "Neptune" of Aberdeen: An Account of the Discovery of Hogarth's Sound: Remarks on the Northern Whale Fishery, and Suggestions for Its Improvement, &c, &c. The author was Alexander M'Donald, L.R.C.S.E., a member of the Cuverian Natural History Society of Edinburgh and a scientist aboard Captain William Penny's ship Bon Accord, on which Eenoolooapik was returned to Baffin Island in the summer of 1840. Eenoo, as his name was often shortened, may have been the only nineteenth-century Inuk for whom an extensive biography was published during his lifetime. Because few copies of M'Donald's book can be found in North America, this article provides a synopsis with a larger view of Eenoolooapik's contributions than can be given in brief biographical sketches.

Eenoolooapik meets the Scots

Since Martin Frobisher's three voyages in the 1570s, generations of Inuit oral history had passed on stories of contact with strange men on huge boats along the shores of Davis Strait. It is not surprising that, out of curiosity or hope of gain, some Inuit were drawn to a place like Durban, near Cape Searle, where whalers sought refuge from their strenuous pursuit of the leviathans of the icy waters of Melville and Baffin Bays to the north. With increasing contact, trade inevitably developed, and some Inuit were persuaded to assist the visitors with menial tasks aboard or around the ships. Some seasonal settlements became semi-permanent, and the word spread to more remote areas. It reached as far as the little settlement of Keimooksook (hereinafter spelled Qimisu except in quotations from M'Donald), and it was heard by a ten-year-old boy and his family.

Eenoolooapik was born about 1820 at Qimisu deep in present-day Cumberland Sound, waters then unknown to the Qallunaat (Harper 1990: 47; Rowley 1986: 183, 1988: 270, 1996: 213). The boy's family, hearing that some Inuit were benefiting from camping in the proximity of these seasonal callers, made a perilous umiaq (Inuit boat) journey through the mouth of the sound and thence up the island-scattered and wave-tossed shores of Davis Strait. At Durban, the newcomers made their mark, and soon Eenoo's father, having gained stature among the other natives, took on a younger wife, leaving Nootaapik to be supported by her children, particularly her teen-aged son Eenoo. The youngster became a favorite with crewmen, and, in time, he was so impressed by and at ease with the Scots-and particularly their material culture-that he expressed a desire to accompany them across the sea. That wistfulness coincided with the Scots' growing interest in persistent Inuit claims of the existence of a great whale-filled "inland sea" just across the glacier-pocked mountains of Saumia (as the natives called the peninsula south of Durban). M'Donald describes the circumstances:

While Captain Penny [captain of the Neptune] was, in 1839, engaged in making inquiries among the Esquimaux at Durban, regarding the situation of the inland sea already referred to, and its eligibility for the purposes of the whale-fishery, he had occasion to examine Eenoolooapik on the subject; and finding him familiar with the features of the country, he [Penny] requested him to trace an outline of the coast. This, after he was made to comprehend the method and object of it, he performed with remarkable facility. He delineated a chart in which he represented the shore as abruptly leaving the general coast-line of Davis's Strait, and stretching to the westward for about sixty miles; then trending to the northward until it arrived at a point which he described as being immediately opposite to Durban. From this point a deep inlet, named by the Esquimaux Kingaite, penetrated so far into the land, in the direction of Durban, as almost to insulate the portion to the southward. From the entrance to this inlet, the shore again took a westerly direction for about forty miles, when another deep inlet, named Kingoua, formed the termination of the sea to the northward. The shore was then laid down as returning to the southward, in a direction almost parallel to that already delineated. The eastern coast was represented as being bold and precipitous, intersected by numerous bays and creeks, and a few clusters of islands scattered along it. The western shore was stated to be low and almost concealed in its whole extent by a dense mass of islands. He described the coast as being inhabited by numerous tribes of Esquimaux, and stated that they were in the practice of killing considerable numbers of whales for the sake of their flesh, which there forms a staple article of food. The general name which he gave to the sea thus laid down, was Tenudiackbeek,-a name supposed to have some reference to the number of whales frequenting it. This supposition is rendered the more probable from the circumstances of the names assigned by him to various other localities, being generally expressive of something for which they were remarkable.
M'Donald 1841: 5-7

M'Donald, in a footnote, added: "By comparing Eenoolooapik's delineation with the Chart of Captain Penny's discoveries [...] it will be seen that, upon the whole, with the exception just noticed, the difference is but trifling; and that it exhibits in a striking degree the aptitude of Eenoolooapik's mind for geographical knowledge and observation" (M'Donald 1841: 8n). Impressed by the Inuk's knowledge of the country and his skill at drawing-but still skeptical of what he was being told and shown-Penny concluded that a live Inuk might help him convince the government to sponsor an expedition to prove or disprove reports of rich waters unknown to Europeans. Finally acknowledging Eenoo's determination to accept the captain's invitation, the nineteen-year-old's mother reluctantly consented, and for nearly twelve months thereafter Eenoo lived among strangers in surroundings that previously he could not have imagined (Harper 1990: 50; M'Donald 1841: 8-9).

Eenoolooapik's experiences aboard the Neptune and in Scotland

Aboard ship, the young man's docility and the mildness of his disposition charmed even the old sea dogs, and, under Captain Penny's oversight, the crew of the Neptune sought to acquaint Eenoo with European habits, such as clothing and bathing. To their surprise, Eenoo-called "Robbie" or "Bobbie" by most of the sailors-readily adjusted to manufactured clothing and, in personal cleanliness, became "rather fastidious than negligent." He learned English words and expressions so readily that plans were made to provide him a rudimentary education during the coming months. When language failed him, Eenoo often resorted to a "rude drawing," thus conveying a more accurate idea than could have been possible by "his imperfect verbal expression" (M'Donald 1841: 9-11).

In early November, as the Neptune arrived off Scotland and worked its way along the coast toward its home port of Aberdeen, the Inuk contemplated his surroundings with great interest. However, Eenoolooapik's biographer probably revealed more about himself than he did of Eenoo when he mused: "The towering cliffs of the stormy north may display much of grandeur and magnificence, but the cheerless snow-hut and the icy ocean can call forth few associations of repose, and could have done little to prepare Eenoolooapik's mind for the refinement into which he had been ushered" (M'Donald 1841: 24). What puzzled Eenoo more than Scottish refinements were questions like how trees could grow so large and why the Scots built their houses so far from the water. In fact, he showed little awe over the contrasts between his homeland and Scotland, contrasts that may have been larger in the minds of his hosts than in his own. Furthermore, "The same perfect composure and gravity marked his intercourse with the various individuals whom he met; and, as yet, he was equally at home with every person, knowing none of the ordinary distinctions of society" (M'Donald 1841: 23-24) What troubled him most was a persistent cough that he had contracted at sea ( ibid.).

Conspicuousness was not one of Eenoo's vanities, and he had become so comfortable in European clothing (Figure 1) that he objected strongly when he was asked to don his skins for a display of his dexterity in the handling of his qajaq on the River Dee. That insistence and Eenoo's compliance almost killed him, for as M'Donald wrote about the performance on a warm day, Eenoo, "ambitious of shewing his expertness, exerted himself to the utmost of his power. He became considerably overheated in consequence of the severe exercise and the warm nature of his dress, and the pulmonary affection from which [...] he was suffering, was thereby aggravated." Confined to his room as his fever soared, the young Inuk resisted most medication but eventually was forced to yield to the common Scot practice of bleeding. When his condition seemed to ameliorate after a couple of weeks, again he was put on public display, this time to demonstrate the Eskimoan art of seal-hunting. His consequential relapse was even more severe, and for "three long and weary months he was confined to his bed,-his frame shattered, his strength wasted, and his mental energies impaired. He was, in short, brought to the very brink of the grave" (M'Donald 1841: 25-28).

A deficiency in reading contrasted with Eenoo's talent for drawing. "He had from the first shewn an aptitude in that art which, if he had remained in this country and received instruction, might soon have rendered him an adept in the use of the pencil" (M'Donald 1841: 34). The theatre attracted his attention too, for it reminded him of a favorite pastime among Inuit-dramatic storytelling, shamanistic rituals, and the pantomiming of animals. In another way Eenoo surprised his hosts by readily adjusting to-and in fact preferring-cooked foods, sometimes complaining of "oko too little" (too little heat). With a typical European two-edged comparison, M'Donald wrote: "[...] he shewed none of those fierce and ungovernable passions which characterise man in his savage condition, but, on the contrary, he was mild and gentle in his nature, and modest, and even delicate, in his intercourse with female society" (M'Donald 1841: 34, 37).

Figure 1
Portrait of Enoolooapik, dressed in clothing given to him in Aberdeen in the winter of 1839-1840, from frontispiece in M'Donald (1841).

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Eenoolooapik's return aboard the Bon Accord

As winter passed into spring and government officials showed no inclination to explore the rumor of an "inland sea" teaming with whales, Captain Penny determined that he must undertake the task himself. He chose the Bon Accord, and, happily for history, he signed aboard Alexander M'Donald, whose personal observations of Eenoolooapik would thereafter inform his biographical account. Already, Eenoolooapik was becoming increasingly anxious to leave a country where there was "too much cough." No doubt he looked forward to his homecoming, for the usually thrifty Scots had been generous with gifts that would amaze his family and associates in Tenudiackbeek. In addition, the Lords of the Treasury allocated twenty pounds to the disposal of his friends for procuring "whatever might be considered necessary to establish him in his native country in more comfortable circumstances than he had formerly enjoyed." Fowling-pieces, powder, shot, edge-tools, culinary utensils, and clothing formed part of his miscellany (M'Donald 1841: 39).

In April 1840 the Bon Accord set sail. By the time the ship reached western Greenland, Eenoo's health had improved and he was fast regaining his "olive complexion, which had faded considerably when he was in Britain." His spirit soared as he saw ice-covered promontories reminiscent of his native country. With Eenoo's spirit buoyed, M'Donald, his teacher, observed: "Drawing now became one of his favourite amusements, and he soon attained a proficiency in this branch, exceeding our most sanguine expectations. His progress in writing too, which we had commenced to teach him, was highly respectable, but in reading he advanced very slowly; his imperfect knowledge of the English language being a constant obstacle in his way" (M'Donald 1841: 48).

The first objective of Captain Penny was a full cargo of whales far to the north in Melville Bay and, only secondarily, to land at Durban and with Eenoo to explore the narrow isthmus that the Inuk insisted would lead them to the northeastern shore of Tenudiackbeek. The ship, then, followed the west Greenland coast northward. That pleased Eenoo, who was anxious to meet the occupants on the opposite side of Davis Strait. That opportunity came on May 18 when several natives rowed out to the Bon Accord. As they came aboard, Eenoo greeted them in his dialect, which was at least partially understood, and he carefully examined their boats and fishing gear. He listened as they read passages from the Bible that had been translated into Greenlandic, and when they showed him examples of their handwriting, "to prove that in that respect he was not behind them, he took a pen and wrote his own name with great correctness, considering that a few weeks before he could not form a letter. He shewed them his drawings, which excited great astonishment and admiration" (M'Donald 1841: 50-55). Later, at Disko Island, Eenoo carried on animated conversations with the Greenlanders and took delight in driving a dog team that reminded him of the kinship of the two cultures. Other Greenlanders visited the ship as it made its way up the coast, and on June 2 at Upernavik, Eenoo reported that the dialect at that northern settlement more nearly corresponded to his own ( ibid.).

For several weeks the Bon Accord fished unsuccessfully in Melville Bay, but the ice was so formidable that a sister ship, the Hecla, was crushed. Fearing a similar fate, Captain Penny turned his empty ship southward. Eenoolooapik was disappointed that ice prevented contact with the Aggumiut of northern Baffin, where he particularly wanted to become "better acquainted with those parts of his own country which he had not visited" (M'Donald 1841: 60, 72). Surprised at Eenoo's knowledge of the people of northern Baffin and noting the geographical bent of Eenoo's mind, M'Donald wrote:

Indeed, he seemed to possess in a high degree those faculties of mind which phrenologists have adduced as finding their legitimate exercise in the observation of the relative situation, extent, and peculiar appearances, of places. He also took particular delight in copying maps and charts, and in pointing out upon them such places as were familiar to him; and, although he was ignorant of mathematical principles of geography, he could delineate with remarkable precision the actual direction of any coast, and the true position of its different parts. He could trace the course which we had taken across the Atlantic and would, at any time when asked, point out the proper bearing of any place which we had visited.
M'Donald 1841: 72

Rediscovery of Cumberland Sound

Eenoo was again disappointed when ice blocked the Bon Accord 's approach to Durban, where he had expected to be reunited with his mother. Now, with no chance of undertaking an over-isthmus expedition to test Inuit claims of an "inland sea," Penny subjected Eenoo to "repeated and severe examinations regarding Tenudiackbeek," but the young man reaffirmed his previous statements. The test was not far off, however, for on July 27, at what today is called Cape Mercy (Figure 2), M'Donald reported:

We found the land to terminate abruptly here, and, although it was again seen to the southward, it appeared to be no less than seventy or eighty miles distant. This was a state of things which we were by no means prepared to expect, for in the ordinary charts the shore is laid down as being continuous to the southward until it reaches Cape Enderby, which forms the northern extremity of Cumberland Strait, in latitude 63 o 15'. Finding an inlet of such magnitude, the idea instantly occurred to us that this might be the entrance to Tenudiackbeek, and Eenoo was immediately called upon for his opinion. He accordingly went aloft, and after a careful examination declared it to be as we had supposed. Correct observations being made, the ship's latitude was determined to be 65 o 1'; thus proving that this spacious inlet was not the entrance to Cumberland Strait, but a place hitherto undiscovered. To this Captain Penny gave the name of Hogarth's Sound, in compliment to William Hogarth, Esquire, of Aberdeen, whose kindness and attention to Eenoolooapik, when there, rendered him so well worthy of the honour.
M'Donald 1841: 74-75

Thus, the Scots persisted in their belief that John Davis's Cumberland Strait lay south of Cape Enderby when, in fact, "Tenudiackbeek" was the Inuit name for that same body of water. The error was not corrected for more than a year.

Figure 2

"Davis Strait. Cumberland Isle. From the Observations of Captain Penny of the Greenland Ship Neptune of Aberdeen, and from the Information of Enoolooapeek [ sic] an Intelligent Esquimaux 1839." British Admiralty Chart no. 1255. Published according to Act of Parliament at the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty [London] Feby. 12th. 1840 (Library and Archives Canada, NMC 59335). The portion of this chart contributed mainly by Enoolooaapik is at the left.

-> See the list of figures

Contact with the Inuit of Cumberland Sound

It was not until August 2, 1840, that the ice-choked entrance cleared sufficiently for the Bon Accord (now accompanied by two whaling ships from Newcastle, the Lady Jane and the Lord Gambier, and later by the Truelove), to proceed up the sound. The northeastern shore was as Eenoo had described it, "high and ironbound, excavated by a few bays, and having some small islands interspersed along it [...] exceedingly naked and barren" (M'Donald 1841: 77-78). The Bon Accord made its first contact with other natives of the sound when near Nuvuk it came upon two men, one of whom had never seen a white man. According to M'Donald: "He began to evince his surprise by shouting and leaping, but Eenoo not relishing this behaviour on the part of his countryman, recommended him to desist. This he did until presented with a large knife, when his joy was beyond restraint. He put the point of it to his tongue, their invariable method of examining such objects, then uttered a yell of savage exultation, leaped, and waved his arms wildly in the air" (M'Donald 1841: 79-80). It was not lost upon the Scots that the umiaq was loaded with baleen and tusks, a sure sign of the presence of whales and walruses. Penny asked the pair to notify neighbouring Inuit of Eenoo's return ( ibid.).

The ships moved over to the southwestern shore but bypassed Eenoo's birthplace, Qimisu; the Inuit guide was still far too valuable for the Scots to let him go. Nearby, however, four natives, two of them relatives of Eenoo, were found on an ice floe. Invited aboard the Bon Accord, they reported that Eenoo's mother was well and that they understood that she was returning by umiaq to Qimisu. They listened to Eenoo's stories of his venture, which, surprisingly to the Scots, indicated more interest in his encounter with the Greenlanders than in his experiences in Scotland. The men were shown firearms, and one was allowed his first experience in firing a gun. Each was given a present and sent away with greetings for Eenoo's friends and relatives (M'Donald 1841: 81-82).

Returning to the northeast shore, the ships passed what we today recognize as Kekerton Island near the mouth of Kingnait Fiord. Eenoo again insisted that Durban could be reached on foot through an isthmus beginning at the head of Kingnait. Typical of Qallunaat, Penny gave this impressive fiord a new name: "Beaufort's Inlet" (M'Donald 1841: 83).

The ships appear to have passed without entering Pangnirtung Fiord, my adopted settlement for the past 32 years. Nearby, however, the surgeon on the Lady Jane died from an accidental gunshot wound, and he was buried on the shore beneath a towering peak (M'Donald 1841: 86). On a map published in M'Donald's book, "Jamieson's Monument" appears very near where Pangnirtung Fiord now empties into Cumberland Sound (M'Donald 1841: between pp. 1-2).

Soon, in the area called Kingoua, where Tenudiackbeek narrowed to several fingered inlets and numerous islands, the Bon Accord dropped anchor near the Inuit village of Noodlook. Men, women, and children scrambled aboard-for most of them, their first glimpse of so large a ship, and for some their first sight of white men. They knew that Eenoo had been taken away by foreigners, and they were anxious to hear his stories. Eenoo, however, seemed more interested in flirting with Coonook, the adopted daughter of a shaman, Aaniapik, whom M'Donald had met a couple of years earlier at Durban. The smitten Eenoo made a fool of himself, for within a short time he had proposed a deal under which he would give Aaniapik his green painted canoe in return for the beautiful Coonook. The shaman, citing his own age and infirmity, explained that the canoe would go to his youngest son. It is not clear whether in fact the canoe changed hands, but it is definite that Coonook did not accompany Eenoo. Perhaps he planned to return for her. The fact that later at Qimisu "a small skiff" was presented to Eenoo for the transportation of his gifts ashore suggests that his "canoe," on which he lavished attention while aboard ship, might have been left with Aaniapik (M'Donald 1841: 79, 88, 105).

From Noodlook, in the vicinity of which the name "Bon Accord Harbour" was applied, Penny bartered for baleen from a beached whale, while M'Donald visited nearby summer camps, where he took notes on Inuit life. Later, in his book, M'Donald included graphic descriptions of the local culture, ranging from tents and their furnishings to women's facial tattoos. Thus A Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik [...] extends far beyond the subject of geography, to which this article is devoted.

In exploring a deep channel now called Clearwater Fiord but that Penny named Davidson's Inlet after another of Eenoo's benefactors in Aberdeen, the Scots found carcasses and bones but no live whales. But, M'Donald wrote, "although mortified at our want of success, it was some consolation to think that Eenoolooapik had practised no deception towards us. We had everywhere met with abundant testimony of the truth of what he had stated, and it was evident that his information might have been turned to good account had the examination of the Sound been gone about in an earlier part of the season" (M'Donald 1841: 98).

Eenoolooapik's homecoming

Having concluded that on this trip the Bon Accord would not return to Durban, Eenoo prepared for his homecoming at Qimisu by collecting his gifts and repeatedly examining the contents of his " eeclameek," as he called a wooden chest. The Bon Accord sailed back to Qimisu on August 20 and was met by sixty natives, the chief of whom was Eenoo's cousin. Anxious to accompany them ashore, Eenoolooapik's wish, after having proven his enormous value to the Scots for nearly a year, was finally granted. A copy of the Scriptures "translated into the Esquimaux language" was given to him, and M'Donald described the parting scene:

About 5 P.M., all being in readiness for his departure, a small skiff was presented to him, and in it his effects were stowed, at least so many of them as it would hold, for he had collected an immense quantity of indescribable articles. He then left the ship amidst the cheers of the crew, with all of whom he was a great favourite-his Esquimaux brethren, in their canoes, Captain Penny, Mr. Allen the chief mate, and myself, accompanying him. When we landed we selected a sheltered spot and erected a hut for him to spend the night in, as he was not to proceed to the settlement until the following morning [...]. Every thing being arranged to his entire satisfaction, we shook hands with him and bade him farewell! He shewed not the least emotion at parting with us, but after returning our farewell cheer, with the utmost sang froid turned about after his own business, 'nor cast one longing lingering look behind'.
M'Donald 1841: 105-106

The letter, in English, read:

Mr. Hogarth, Eenoolooapik has arrived in Tenudiackbeek, and intends to remain in Keimooksook. The Innuit say that for many suns the whales were very numerous, but before the ship came they had all disappeared. They also say that the whales will return when the sun becomes low. Captain Penny has been very kind to me and to many Innuit, who all thank him. Next to him you were kindest to me when I was with you. Eenoolooapik.
M'Donald 1841: 102

Eenoolooapik's geographical knowledge confirmed

After dropping off Eenoolooapik, the Bon Accord and the accompanying ships continued searching for whales in the sound, this time successfully. These further operations again confirmed most of the information given by Eenoolooapik. M'Donald concluded:

Almost the only error worthy of notice was the situation of the entrance; and this, as before mentioned, can scarcely be called a mistake of Eenoo's, as it was merely supposed, from the reason already mentioned, that it communicated with the sea by means of Cumberland Strait. His utter unacquaintance with the mathematical principles of geography, and his ignorance of the coast farther south, rendered it impossible for him to give certain information on that point. The description which he had given on the direction and appearance of the coast was fully verified, and abundance of proof everywhere presented itself of the correctness of his statements regarding the fitness of the Sound as a whale-fishing station.
M'Donald 1841: 111

Figure 3
Enoolooapik's letter as reproduced in a fold-out between pages 102 and 103 in M'Donald (1841).

-> See the list of figures

It was, of course, the deficiencies in the knowledge of the Qallunaat that for more than a year failed to recognize that Eenoo's Tenudiackbeek (temporarily renamed by William Penny as Hogarth's Sound) was simply John Davis's Cumberland Sound and other mapmakers' Northumberland Inlet. Eenoolooapik alone was right and the learned Europeans were all wrong.

The Bon Accord returned to the waters around Qimisu before leaving for Aberdeen on September 22, but the crew was disappointed not to find Eenoolooapik. He had taken a wife, Amitak, and headed inland on a hunting trip. But Captain Penny had not seen the last of this remarkable Inuk. When in October 1844 Penny sailed the St. Andrew into Cumberland Sound, Eenoo joined him for a short time in whale-fishing. Again for three months in 1846 the Inuk and the Scot joined in a successful fishing season. Meanwhile, Eenoo had fathered a son, Angalook. But tuberculosis, a legacy of Eenoo's illness while in Scotland, weakened him, and when Penny reached Cumberland Sound in September 1847, he learned of the death of his guide and friend (Harper 1990: 57). In the ensuing years, Scot and American whalers scoured Cumberland Sound, most of them unaware of the role of Eenoolooapik in the rediscovery of the rich fishing grounds. In 1851 Sidney Budington, an American, led the first intentional over-wintering of a whaling ship, and shortly afterward, shore stations, advocated by Alexander M'Donald in his biography of Eenoolooapik, were established on two of the islands to which Eenoolooapik had led the Bon Accord more than a decade earlier (Ross 1997: xxi; Rowley 1996: 214; Stevenson 1997: 75).

Death did not end Eenoolooapik's contributions to the Qallunaat, for, after hearing of Eenoo's experiences in Scotland, one of his sisters, Tookoolito, and her husband, Ebierbing, together with a neighbouring boy, spent 1853-1855 in London, where they were received and written about by Queen Victoria. Fifteen years later, the couple joined the American explorer, Charles Francis Hall, as teachers and guides and remained with him until Hall's mysterious death in 1871 (Jones 2002a: 4-20, 2002b: 73-81; Nickerson 2002: 48).

Conclusion

The rough chart that Eenoolooapik drew for William Penny in 1839 (Stevenson 1997: 41) was more accurate than John Arrowsmith's 1847 depiction of "Tenudiakbeek Gulf" (Hayes 2003: 83). It compared favorably with the map titled "Hogarth's Sound" prepared by professional cartographers for Eenoonooapik's biography (M'Donald 1841: between 1-2). It also presaged progressively better charts such as Franz Boas's splendid map of 1885 (Boas 1984: 123), all of which validated the general outline of an unlettered nineteen-year-old's drawing from memory.

Appendices

Acknowledgements

Different versions of this paper were read at the 13th Inuit Studies Conference at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, in 2002; The Society for the History of Discoveries in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2003; and the Fifth International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS V) at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in 2004.

References

1. JONES, H. G., 2002a Teaching the Explorers: Some Inuit Contributions to Arctic Discoveries, Polar Geography, 26(1): 4-20.

2. JONES, H. G., 2002b Teaching the Explorers: Contributions of One Baffin Family to History and Geography, Terrae Incognitae, 34: 73-81.

3. NICKERSON, Sheila, 2002 Midnight to the North: The Untold Story of the Inuit Woman Who Saved the Polaris Expedition, New York, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

List of figures

Figure 1
Portrait of Enoolooapik, dressed in clothing given to him in Aberdeen in the winter of 1839-1840, from frontispiece in M'Donald (1841).

Figure 2

"Davis Strait. Cumberland Isle. From the Observations of Captain Penny of the Greenland Ship Neptune of Aberdeen, and from the Information of Enoolooapeek [ sic] an Intelligent Esquimaux 1839." British Admiralty Chart no. 1255. Published according to Act of Parliament at the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty [London] Feby. 12th. 1840 (Library and Archives Canada, NMC 59335). The portion of this chart contributed mainly by Enoolooaapik is at the left.

Figure 3
Enoolooapik's letter as reproduced in a fold-out between pages 102 and 103 in M'Donald (1841).

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The Inuit as geographers: The case of Eenoolooapik - Études/Inuit/Studies

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Abstract Recent studies reveal an increasing number of instances in which Qallunaat benefited from Inuit knowledge of the lands and waters upon which they had lived for centuries. One of the best recorded examples of Inuit geographical knowledge is found in the story of Eenoolooapik, who led to the European rediscovery of Cumberland Sound 250 years after it was first explored and named by John Davis.

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Teaching the Explorers: Some Inuit Contributions to Arctic Discoveries

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Teaching the Explorers: Some Inuit Contributions to Arctic Discoveries

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Jones 2011

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In 1860, Charles Francis Hall sailed north in an attempt to reach King William Island in a bold attempt to solve the mystery of the Franklin expedition. During this expedition, and for most of his remaining life, Hall was accompanied by Tookoolito ("Hannah") and her husband Ebierbing ("Joe"). After spending two years on Baffin Island, Hall and his Inuit companions returned to the United States, where Hall set out to raise funds for a second expedition in search of the Franklin expedition. After five long years searching for survivors from, or information about the Franklin expedition, a frustrated Hall returned to the States in August 1869, again accompanied by Tookoolito and Ebierbing. And as before, the Inuit couple served as goodwill ambassadors and entertained thousands, including the President and Vice-President of the United States and several members of Congress. This publicity campaign was so successful that in July 1871, the Polaris sailed in an effort to reach the North Pole by sea. On November 8 of that year,Hall died under mysterious circumstances. This did not end the contributions of Tookoolito and Ebierbing to Arctic exploration, as they helped a party of 19 who had become separated from the Polaris survive for six wintry months.

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Teaching the Explorers: Some Inuit Contributions to Arctic Discoveries

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In 1860, Charles Francis Hall sailed north in an attempt to reach King William Island in a bold attempt to solve the mystery of the Franklin expedition. During this expedition, and for most of his remaining life, Hall was accompanied by Tookoolito ("Hannah") and her husband Ebierbing ("Joe").

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The Road Ahead - Māori: Tūhoe's Kirsty Luke on surviving colonisation - NZ Herald

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The author tells a story drawn from oral memories, a story which will soon disappear with the last Inuit generation to have seen the whalers.

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In the summer of 1963, anthropologist Jean Briggs journeyed to the Canadian Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) to begin a seventeen-month field study of the Utku, a small group of Inuit First Nations people who live at the mouth of the Back River, northwest of Hudson Bay. Living with a family as their "adopted" daughter-sharing their iglu during the winter and pitching her tent next to theirs in the summer-Briggs observed the emotional patterns of the Utku in the context of their daily life.

In this perceptive and highly enjoyable volume the author presents a behavioral description of the Utku through a series of vignettes of individuals interacting with members of their family and with their neighbors. Finding herself at times the object of instruction, she describes the training of the child toward achievement of the proper adult personality and the handling of deviations from this desired behavior.

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never in anger: portrait of an eskimo family

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social science: anthropology & archaeology

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social science: anthropology & archaeology

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social science: anthropology: cultural & social

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Anthropologist Jean L. Briggs spent seventeen months living on a remote Arctic shore as the 'adopted daughter' of an Eskimo family. Through vignettes of daily life she unfolds a warm and perceptive tale of the behavioral patterns of the Utku, their way of training children, and their handling of deviations from desired behavior.

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ECHO: Ethnographic, Cultural and Historical Overview of Yukon's First Peoples – Open Textbook

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Book Description

Recently, Yukon, Canada has experienced huge growth in First Nations cultural revival as well as an influx of newcomers brought on by the growth of the education, industrial and tourism sectors, who are also interested in learning about Yukon First Nations peoples and their cultures. The need for academic teaching materials that can educate adult learners about Indigenous peoples of the Yukon has resulted in the publication of this handbook. ECHO is meant as a teaching tool that provides the most current research pertaining to Yukon First Nations peoples on topics such as archaeology, ethnology and traditional lifeways, and relationships with newcomers (in the past and currently), as well as the arts. With a focus on topics that are relevant to students learning about Yukon Indigenous peoples history and culture, such as collaborative research with anthropologists, the history of the Yukon, and, most importantly, an overview of the modern-day land claims movement. Although generalized material on Yukon First Nations is provided within other publications, these are primarily out-of-date and out-of-print books. Castillo, Schreyer, and Southwick's solidly researched ECHO: Ethnographic, Cultural, and Historical Overview of Yukon's First Peoples will serve as an important tool, both for teachers and students, seeking accurate information pertaining to Indigenous cultures of the Yukon.

Authors

Victoria Elena Castillo, Christine Schreyer, and Tosh Southwick

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ECHO: Ethnographic, Cultural and Historical Overview of Yukon's First Peoples - Open Textbook

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Recently, Yukon, Canada has experienced huge growth in First Nations cultural revival as well as an influx of newcomers brought on by the growth of the education, industrial and tourism sectors, who are also interested in learning about Yukon First Nations peoples and their cultures.

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Secondary Sources and Document Packages | Haiti and the Atlantic World

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Secondary Source:
Ada Ferrer, " Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic," The American Historical Review, 117, no. 1 (2012): 40-66
Primary Sources: "Free Soil" Document Package The National Archives of the United Kingdom, ADM 1/268 1816 Constitution Secondary Source:
Rebecca Scott and Jean Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation, (Harvard University Press, 2012).
Primary Source:
Edouard Tinchant to Maximo Gomez, 21 September 1899
(Many thanks to Rebecca Scott for generously sharing this source!)
Secondary Source:
Jane Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions, (Harvard University Press, 2010).
Primary Sources: National Register, 3 January 1818 Ricketts to the Earl of Balcarres, 28 May 1799 Alexander Semple to Mcfernan, 16 December 1786 Frederika Bremer, The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America Toussaint Louverture to Biassou, 15 October 1791
(Many thanks to Jane Landers for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Sasha Turner, Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

Top Hill Penn, " List of Slaves "

(Many thanks to Sasha Turner for generously sharing this source!)
Secondary Source:
Julia Gaffield, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution, (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
Primary Source: [ORIGINAL IMAGES] "Narrative of the proceedings of Captain Walker and Mr. Hugh Cathcart, on their mission to the Brigand Chiefs from the Government of Jamaica," 27 August 1803. [TRANSCRIPTION] "Narrative of the proceedings of Captain Walker and Mr. Hugh Cathcart, on their mission to the Brigand Chiefs from the Government of Jamaica," 27 August 1803. Secondary Source:
Jennifer Palmer, Intimate Bonds: Family and Slavery in the French Atlantic, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
Primary Source: The Code Noir, 1685 Secondary Source:
Christian Ayne Crouch, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the end of New France, (Cornell University Press, 2014).
Primary Sources: Governor Duquesne to French Minister, 25 October 1752
(Many thanks to Christian Crouch for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution, (Harvard University Press, 2015).
Primary Sources: Seamen Protection Act, Wolcott to Collectors of Customs, 19 July 1796, Treasury Circulars, Records Department of the Treasury, vol. 1, LOC. Shepherd Bourn, Miscellaneous Correspondence Regarding Impressed Seamen, NARA RG 59. John and Charles Lewis, Miscellaneous Correspondence Regarding Impressed Seamen, NARA RG 59.
(Many thanks to Nathan Perl-Rosenthal for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
Primary Sources: Abraham Bishop, The Rights of Black Men, 22 November 1791, The Argus, Boston, MA Abraham Bishop, The Rights of Black Men, 25 November 1791, The Argus, Boston, MA Abraham Bishop, The Rights of Black Men, 2 December 1791, The Argus, Boston, MA
(Many thanks to Ashli White for suggesting these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Cristina Soriano, Tides of Revolution: Information, Insurgencies, and the Crisis of Colonial Rule in Venezuela, (University of New Mexico Press, 2018).
Primary Sources: Pasquinade found in the Main Square Plaza of Caracas, May 8th 1790, Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, Section: Caracas, 167. Archive: AGI, Sevilla. Sección: Caracas, año: 1790, Legajo: 115. The Trinidad Weekly Courant, 1802
(Many thanks to Cristina Soriano for generously sharing these documents!)
Secondary Source:
Randy M. Brown and John Wood Sweet, "Florence Hall's 'Memoirs': Finding African Women in the Transatlantic Slave Trade," Slavery & Abolition 37, no. 1: 206-221.
Primary Source:
Florence Hall, " Memoire " (for a transcription see page 216 of the above article).
Secondary Source:
Randy M. Browne, Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
Trial of a Slave in Berbice for the Crime of Obeah and Murder (1823)
(Many thanks to Randy Browne for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
James Alexander Dun, Dangerous Neighbors: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
Primary Sources: Aurora 1799-04-29 Aurora 1799-04-30 Aurora 1799-05-01 Aurora 1799-05-02 Aurora 1799-05-03 Aurora 1799-05-04 Philadelphia Gazette 1799-04-29 Porcupine's Gazette 1799-04-29
(Many thanks to Alec Dun for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Timo H. Schaefer, Liberalism as Utopia: The Rise and Fall of Legal Rule in Post-Colonial Mexico, 1820-1900, (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Primary Sources:
Political and eminently social plan: Proclaimed in Río Verde by the Army of Regeneration of the Sierra Gorda, 14 March 1849

José María Aguilar et. al. to Governor of San Luis Potosí, 6 October 1857, in Historical Archive of the State of San Luis Potosí, collection Secretaría General de Gobierno, box 1857.21, unnumbered file.

(Many thanks to Timo Schaefer for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Anne Eller, We Dream Together: Dominican Independence, Haiti, and the Fight for Caribbean Freedom, (Duke University Press, 2016).
Primary Sources: Translations and Intro Geffrard - 1861 Madiou - 1844
(Many thanks to Anne Eller for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Jessica Marie Johnson, Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
Primary Sources:
Negresse esclave, 2. Signare de L'Isle St. Louis, 3. Marabou ou Prelre du Pays, 4. Negre arme en Guerre. Dominique Harcourt Lamiral, L'affrique et le peuple affriquain, considérés sous tous leurs rapports avec notre commerce & nos colonies. (Paris: chez Dessene, 1789). [ link]

Desseins de Sauvages de Plusieurs Nations. de Batz, Alexandre, Peabody Museum [ link

Governor Esteban Miró, Bando de Buen Gobierno (Edict of Good Government), June 1, 1786, Records and Deliberations of the Cabildo, 1769-1803, NOPL, Book 3 in Spanish.

(Many thanks to Jessica Johnson for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Casey Marina Lurtz, From the Grounds Up: Building an Export Economy in Southern Mexico, (Stanford University Press, 2019).
Primary Sources:
Libro de Conocimiento, 1893, Archivo Histórico Municipal de Tapachula, Caja 6, Exp. 3 (Ch. 6)

" El Señor Juan Magee acusa criminalmente a su consocio Guillermo José Forsyth," Dec.15, 1892, Archivo del Poder Judicial del Soconusco 1o Civil Soconusco 1892, 01-50 (Ch 5)

Matías Romero. Refutación de las inculpaciones hechas al c. Matías Romero por el gobierno de Guatemala. Imp. poliglota de C. Ramiro y Ponce de Léon, 1876 (Ch. 2)

(Many thanks to Casey Lurtz for generously sharing these sources!)
Secondary Source:
Zachary Dorner, Merchants of Medicines: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain's Long Eighteenth Century (The University of Chicago Press, 2020).
Primary Sources:
[Dr. Collins], Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies (London, 1803). [ link]

Inventory of supplies for the Golden Grove estate (Jamaica), 1793.

(Many thanks to Zachary Domer for generously sharing these sources!)

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Secondary Source: Ada Ferrer, "Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic," The American Historical Review, 117, no. 1 (2012): 40-66 Primary Sources: "Free Soil" Document Package The National Archives of the United Kingdom, ADM 1/268 1816 Constitution Secondary Source: Rebecca Scott and Jean Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation,...

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Slave Mutiny in C18th Guyana | Marjoleine Kars, "Blood on the River: A Chronicle…

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Marjoleine Kars

Dec 29, 2020

A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

2020

In Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (New Press, 2020),historian Marjoleine Kars tells the story of a massive eighteenth-century slave rebellion in the Dutch colony of Berbice (in present-day Guyana). Drawing on some nine hundred pages of interrogation transcripts and letters that provide rare first person accounts from enslaved African-born rebels, Kars chronicles how nearly 5,000 of the total enslaved population held onto Berbice for over a year holding onto 135 plantations. Sorting through the competing political visions of the various African-born slave rebels, Kars provides an intimate look into a people demanding freedom and trying to figure out what that can mean to them.

Sharika Crawford is an associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and the author of The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

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Sharika Crawford

Sharika Crawford is an associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and the author of The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

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Marjoleine Kars, "Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and...

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Marjoleine Kars Dec 29, 2020 In Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (New Press, 2020),historian Marjoleine Kars tells the story of a massive eighteenth-century slave rebellion in the Dutch colony of Berbice (in present-day Guyana).

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Royal Geographical Society - Indigenous Geography 

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Joy Slappnig

September 2016 start. Royal Holloway, University of London: PI Professor Felix Driver.

The Indigenous map: native information, ethnographic object, artefact of encounter

This project considers the extent, variety and significance of "Indigenous maps" within the RGS-IBG collections. During the long nineteenth century, so-called "native maps" were typically acquired, commissioned or co-produced in the process of European geographical exploration and territorial expansion, preceding or accompanying the imposition of colonial rule. Far from being simply embodiments of Indigenous knowledge, the form and content of such maps often reflected aspects of the process of colonial encounter and exchange. When these maps were accessioned into Western collections, their use and meaning changed as they became sources of "native information", ethnographic artefacts or exotic curiosities.

This project considers a variety of maps from the RGS-IBG collection in order to examine the ways in which Europeans depended on Indigenous geographical knowledge. By re-conceptualising these maps as artefacts of encounter, this research examines the potential of Indigenous maps to highlight the exchanges of knowledge that were taking place between Europeans and Indigenous peoples. Some of the maps this project examines are: paper maps of trans-Saharan caravan routes drawn by slaves and Arab traders in the 1820s; engraved copies of Inuit maps included in a narrative of an Arctic exploration from 1835; a Gujarati chart of the Red Sea, produced in the 17th century and collected by an East India Company officer in 1835; a collection of copied and traced 'native' maps from colonial Burma produced in the 1870s; and a Tibetan map of Sikkim used by the Tibetan military and seized by the British authorities in 1888.

Starting references

Bassett, T. J. (1998) "Indigenous mapmaking in intertropical Africa," in Woodward, D. and Malcolm Lewis, G. (eds) The History of Cartography, Volume 2 Book 3, Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 24-48.

Belyea, B. (1992) Amerindian Maps: The Explorer as Translator. Journal of Historical Geography, 18: 267-77.

Craciun, A. (2013) Oceanic Voyages, Maritime Books and Eccentric Inscriptions. Atlantic Studies, 10: 170-96.

Di Piazza, A. and Pearthree, E. (2007) "A new reading of Tupaia's chart," Journal of the Polynesian Society, 116(3), pp. 321-340.

Driver F. and Jones, L. (2009) Hidden Histories of Exploration: Researching the RGS-IBG Collections. London: Royal Holloway/RGS-IBG.

Edney, M. (1997) Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Harley, J. B. (2001) The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lyons, H. (1928) "The Sailing Charts of the Marshall Islanders", The Geographical Journal, 72(4), pp. 325-327.

Konishi, S., Nugent, M. and Shellam, T. (2015) Indigenous Intermediaries. Canberra: ANU Press.

Raj, K. (2006) Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Scientific Knowledge in South Asia and Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Key sources

Map collection-The RGS-IBG's map collection contains over a million maps (manuscript and printed), atlases and globes representing most parts of the globe. It is fully catalogued at item level and can be searched in the Society's online catalogue. While most of the maps date from 1830 onwards (1830 was the founding year of the RGS), the oldest printed cartographic item dates back to 1485.

Map accessions register -In many cases, the online catalogue does not provide much information about why and how a map came into the Society's collection. Sometimes, the accessions register provides information, for example about the donor of a specific map. The accessions register is comprised of a series of books, listing the maps chronologically as they came into the RGS.

The Geographical Journal-This is the RGS's Journal, published since 1830. It is a great source for understanding the development of Geography as an academic discipline and the RGS's involvement in it. It frequently contains fold-out maps. The Journal is available online through JSTOR or on the shelves of the Foyle Reading Room at the RGS-IBG.

Photography collection -This large collection (over half a million images) dates from 1830 onwards and depicts a great variety of places and people, providing context to many of the maps in the RGS's collection.

Find out more

You can find Joy's university page here. An article about Joy's research and her archival trip to Delhi was published in the March 2019 edition of the Geographical Magazine, available here.

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Royal Geographical Society - Our Collections

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September 2016 start. Royal Holloway, University of London: PI Professor Felix Driver. This project considers the extent, variety and significance of "Indigenous maps" within the RGS-IBG collections. During the long nineteenth century, so-called "native maps" were typically acquired, commissioned or co-produced in the process of European geographical exploration and territorial expansion, preceding or accompanying the imposition of colonial rule.

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C19th Colonial fantasies | Robin Mitchell, "Vénus Noire: Black Women and…

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The preface to Robin Mitchell's new book, Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France (University of Georgia Press, 2020) moves me. In it, the author tells the story of her first research trip to Paris and the profound moment of her encounter with a plaster cast of Sarah Baartmann's body at the Musée de l'Homme. It is riveting, personal, and honest, the perfect entry into a book that is all of these things. Exploring the cultural production of French representations of three extraordinary Black women (Baartmann, Ourika, and Jeanne Duval), the book interrogates the visual and literary imaginaries that white French men and women developed in relationship to these women's lives and bodies.

Subjected to a perverse "scientific" fascination, Baartmann's body became "famous" throughout and beyond France as white gazes and fantasies sexualized and pathologized her for years until she died. Brought to France from Senegal by the Maréchal Prince de Beauvau, Ourika became the subject of what Mitchell characterizes as a cultural consumptive "mania" that both emulated and rejected her story and the possibilities of her "Frenchness". The lover and common law wife of poet Charles Baudelaire, Jeanne Duval lived an entire life in France, but could never be "French enough." Marked and minoritized by their racial difference, all three women became sites of fixation and memory for a white population seeking/needing constant shoring up of their gendered and racialized identities, and a society haunted by loss and defeat in the wake of the Haitian Revolution.

The book is so beautiful, so clearly written, so overflowing with injustice, meaning, and feeling. And Mitchell's voice is there throughout, finding and honouring the voices and lives of these women. It is a book for everyone.
Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars (2009). Her current research focuses on the history of French nuclear weapons and testing since 1945. Her most recent article, '"No Hiroshima in Africa": The Algerian War and the Question of French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara' appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of History of the Present. She lives and reads on the unceded traditional territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples known as Vancouver, Canada and hopes all listeners are keeping healthy and safe at this difficult time in our world. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca).

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Robin Mitchell, "Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in...

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The preface to Robin Mitchell's new book, Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France (University of Georgia Press, 2020) moves me. In it, the author tells the story of her first research trip to Paris and the profound moment of her encounter with a plaster cast of Sarah Baartmann's body at the Musée de l'Homme.

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Episode 7: Conversations with an Inuit Philosopher

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Black History timeline | World news | The Guardian

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A timeline of two millennia of world-shaping individuals and momentous events that define Black history

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Getting to the Future by Revisiting the Past: Law, history, education, knowledge in Africa, The International Students Conference for Africa (TISCA) 2019, University of Lancaster, 5-7 April 2019

I have divided this into two parts.

During the month of October, the UK celebrates Black History Month. In February, every year, the United States marks the same occasion, though it is sometimes called African-American History Month. These month-long markers are a way to, among other things, remember people and events often left out of mainstream curricula. The name 'Black History' itself, could be seen as a misnomer, if most of what these celebrations commemorate is triumph over slavery, colonisation and racism etc, that is not Black History being marked, but White and Black History. It also seems to me (and has been remarked on by others) that the activities of BHM are often infused with an underlying presumption that while we may celebrate Pan-African culture there is no cerebral benefit to studying Black/African , that while there is something to learn from the Black experience, there is no intellectual value to Black/Africana thought. So a lot of BHM is focused on the food, fashion and music of the Other and not on the history that othered the Other. Even when we deign to celebrate people who 'fought for freedom', we omit to mention what they fought against [sneeze! White Supremacy sneeze!]. We laud people who 'gave their lives for freedom', but do not mention who or what took their lives. [sneeze!!] As a student of history and specifically African history, it seems to me that dedicating one month in this way to such a wealth of history can never be a perfect solution to continuing erasure and distortion. In one month it is almost impossible to answer all the questions that are left unanswered, to unearth the history of a world that has sub-humanised and continues to sub-humanise Blackness. Example:

What Exactly is History?

On the evening of the 1 st of April 2019, my grandmother relinquished her hold on this world and passed on to the next. I will always miss her, but I also know how lucky I have been to, throughout her life, hear first-hand accounts of what life in Nigeria was like in the 30s and 40s and 50s from the perspective of an 'ordinary' Nigerian woman. Though my grandmother was far from ordinary.

There have been many other people who have influenced my perspectives of contemporary history. In a previous post I narrated how, my grandfather, in the 1920s, trekked 2 weeks across Nigeria to seek out a formal school as they were very rare at the time. Before he died, he had told me this story so many, many times. He told me of a very different country from what exists now. He was taught by Irish and Scottish missionaries and so had an accent inflected by those interactions. It was always quite jarring to go and visit him in the village, passing by strong Ekiti Yoruba speech, thick Kwara forest, mountains covered in Savannah brush, only to be greeted in tones of 1920s Ireland.

My other grandfather, who was older than my other two grandparents, used to tell us stories of British colonial district officers who would travel to his out of the way village to collect colonial taxes. He would tell us of how he and one of his wives - he had eight - had to trek 4 days from Olle Bunu to Auchi with barrels of palm oil on their heads to sell. My grandparents are all gone now, but they have left me their living stories. And so, I know I have been lucky. I have been given the gift of living history.

History, as we know it, is the record of what those who keep the archive will say happened when those who actually lived through it are no longer here to tell us the truth about what they remember. History is the record. History is political memory.

Then What is Black History?

I have already stated that the almost universal habit of limiting history to racialised Others hides more than it reveals, but let us precede thus... It is almost impossible to talk about Black History without talking about the imperial/colonial archive. Where exactly, can we go to find Black history? To unearth hidden and erased histories, we look in colonial records, in slave records, and in that sense Blackness as history exists only as a reaction to Whiteness. Black History Month then becomes a chronological site for us to mark and rehearse only the trials, tribulations of Black people as we have reacted to racialisation as we have passed through time. But these sites have also become a shrine of not-forgetting, horological monuments and testaments to the vast and varied multitude who preceded us all across this terrestrial space. Month-long resurrections of memories of the departed, of those who wore our skin and went ahead of us to draw back the night under which we had been flung, and ensure that we have the measure of freedoms that we have today.

We must also note that the study of history should not just be backward looking, but forward-looking. What good is history if we do not learn from it? So, Black History Month gives us an overt opportunity to look to the future to chart a way forward for a people with full knowledge of where our people have been, the dreams they have dreamed, the hopes, the victories, the tragedies and triumphs of the past.

And so I return to my the question. What is Black History?

Because history is testimony, it is also subjective. History is the interpretation (arising from the record) of past events, of things that the powerful choose to remember as time passes. And so, a lot of history is distorted and missing. As Siddhartha Mitter says, it is; 'Established, not settled. History is restless. Afterlives are busy. Every record is incomplete. Many records are absent. Most records. The archive is mostly omission.' Take a few seconds and dwell on that with me for a bit. ' The archive is mostly omission.' Our archive is mostly omission. As people who believe that we are intimately connected to our ancestors and that they live on in us, we are the missing.

History, as record, as testimony, interpretation and memory of time, is always political. But what we call Black history is especially so. So, we must resist the temptation to join in the tendency often exhibited to confine Black History to boundaries that attempt to confine our identity and tie it to Whiteness. As a reaction or counterpoint to Whiteness. We are who we say we are. As we realise that history is political, we also realise that in its presence as mythology and in its absence as epistemic silencing, it has had political effect on geographical spaces. A lot of this is seen in how 'Africa' as political idea is distorted, confined and maligned. We should not stand for it. Because, let us face it, even though we often try, we cannot effectively and categorically talk about Blackness without talking about Africa; we should not talk about Africa without talking about all her Diaspora's. We are still the missing.

So Black history is complex and interconnected. It is not one thing. We are many things. We really do carry multitudes inside us, but Black History is also the connection of many multitudes. It is full of ideological remnants and cultural leftovers that surprise our different sub-communities, in a turn of phrase, an attitude, in food, in dance, in song, in the face of my Nigerian Uncle looking back at me from the body of a Trinidadian stranger. Black people are Black History. Political history is personal history and personal history is political history. Because we believe we are connected to our ancestors and that we have some influence over the future of our children and children's children, we can and do exist across time and space. We are living history. But if we do not know our history what are we living for? We are still the missing. We are history because the past lives on in us. As James Baldwin says, we are controlled by history, we carry it within us, it is present in everything we do.

So, this is why our history is precious. Remember that history is a record of interpretation pre-disposed to the subjectivity of who tells the story. But who tells Black History? Who tells the history of Black History? African history? African history is mostly missing, African history is a history of erasure, of obliteration, minimisation, infantilization, exotification. That template of othering in history is cast around Black bodies today. So we must know who we were, to know who we are and thus who we may be. Africa as the origin of Blackness is both a physical/geographical space, and also a political space of consignment, negative myth-making, forgetting and erasure. Now as it was then. We are still the missing and unseen.

African woman, lawyer, teacher, poet and researcher. Singer of songs, writer of words, very occasional dancer of dances. I seek new ways of interpreting the African experience within our consciousness to challenge static ideology.

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Black History, Knowledge, Memory & Future I

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Getting to the Future by Revisiting the Past: Law, history, education, knowledge in Africa, The International Students Conference for Africa (TISCA) 2019, University of Lancaster, 5-7 April 2019 I have divided this into two parts. During the month of October, the UK celebrates Black History Month.

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I'm listening to African Europeans by Olivette Otele, narrated by Olivette Otele on my Audible app. Try Audible and get it here: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd?asin=152936406X

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This episode features Dr. Sven Haakanson and was initially recorded for a film documentary titled "The Forgotten Slavery of Our Ancestors" that focuses on the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in what is now known as the United States.

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The Map Of Native American Tribes You've Never Seen Before : Code Switch : NPR

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Editor's note: This story, originally published in 2014, was updated on May 5, 2021 with links to the latest version of Aaron Carapella's mapFinding an address on a map can be taken for granted in the age of GPS and smartphones. But centuries of forced relocation, disease and genocide have made it difficult to find where many Native American tribes once lived.

Aaron Carapella, a self-taught mapmaker in Warner, Okla., has pinpointed the locations and original names of hundreds of American Indian nations before their first contact with Europeans.

As a teenager, Carapella says he could never get his hands on a U.S. map like this, depicting more than 600 tribes - many now forgotten and lost to history. Now, the 34-year-old designs and sells maps as large as 3 by 4 feet with the names of tribes hovering over land they once occupied.

"I think a lot of people get blown away by, 'Wow, there were a lot of tribes, and they covered the whole country!' You know, this is Indian land," says Carapella, who calls himself a "mixed-blood Cherokee" and lives in a ranch house within the jurisdiction of the Cherokee Nation.

For more than a decade, he consulted history books and library archives, called up tribal members and visited reservations as part of research for his map project, which began as pencil-marked poster boards on his bedroom wall. So far, he has designed maps of the continental U.S., Canada and Mexico. A map of Alaska is currently in the works.

What makes Carapella's maps distinctive is their display of both the original and commonly known names of Native American tribes, according to Doug Herman, senior geographer at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

"You can look at [Carapella's] map, and you can sort of get it immediately," Herman says. "This is Indian Country, and it's not the Indian Country that I thought it was because all these names are different."

He adds that some Native American groups got stuck with names chosen arbitrarily by European settlers. They were often derogatory names other tribes used to describe their rivals. For example, "Comanche" is derived from a word in Ute meaning "anyone who wants to fight me all the time," according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"It's like having a map of North America where the United States is labeled 'gringos' and Mexico is labeled 'wetbacks,' " Herman says. "Naming is an exercise in power. Whether you're naming places or naming peoples, you are therefore asserting a power of sort of establishing what is reality and what is not."

Look at a map of Native American territory today, and you'll see tiny islands of reservation and trust land engulfed by acres upon acres ceded by treaty or taken by force. Carapella's maps, which are sold on his website,serve as a reminder that the population of the American countryside stretches back long before 1776 and 1492.

Carapella describes himself as a former "radical youngster" who used to lead protests against Columbus Day observances and supported other Native American causes. He says he now sees his mapmaking as another way to change perceptions in the U.S.

"This isn't really a protest," he explains. "But it's a way to convey the truth in a different way."

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The Map Of Native American Tribes You've Never Seen Before

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Aaron Carapella couldn't find a map showing the original names and locations of Native American tribes as they existed before contact with Europeans. That's why the Oklahoma man designed his own map.

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Podcast about Cree relationality and kinship

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Podcast about Cree relationality and kinship

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https://wahkohtowin.wordpress.com/

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The Rise of Islam in Mali | African History Documentary

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The Dahomey Kingdom | African History Documentary

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Surfing & Colonization in the Pacfic

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The complicated history of surfing - Scott Laderman

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The Two Row Wampum and the Covenant Chain of Treaties

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Marie-Louise Christophe: A Haitian Queen in Great Britain

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As part of International Women's Day, we've handed the keys to the site to Lauren Hill, author of She Surf: The Rise of Female Surfing. For this week-long celebration, Lauren will be dropping an article on MSW every day until March 12 that will feature female surfers, the history, culture, the present, future, the evolution of design, podcasts and more. We'll also be featuring a range of articles from other female writers and photographers, which we'll link to in these intros -- and be bringing you more articles over the coming months too. Here's part 1, peeling back the curtain on the history of women and surfing, as it appeared in Lauren's book, She Surf.
With roots entwined amongst the royalty of Ancient Polynesia, surfing has been called The Sport of Kings. But to use this name alone is to deny the full and rightful history of the art of riding waves. It has always also been The Sport of Queens.

Surfing has been part of Hawaiian culture since the fourth century when Polynesians settled the islands and brought wave riding with them. In pre-contact Hawaii, surfing was for everyone; mothers, grandfathers, warriors, princesses, children. In fact, historians of Ancient Polynesia acknowledge that it was women who seemed to stand in the highest regard for their skill, grace and poise as surfers. Woven deep into the chants and lore of our surfing culture's roots are the stories of revered women who rode waves with utmost grace and athleticism.

Surfing was of such value to early Hawaiians that it was forbidden to work or war during prime surf season - everyone took a full three months off over winter for social bonding via play and playful competition -- called The Makahiki Festival. The ecological abundance of the Hawaiian islands meant food was easily accessed, and so leisure was also abundant.

Back then, people knew what we have forgotten; that play is part of what makes us human. That working too hard or too often doesn't necessarily lead to increased productivity or happiness or a sense of community. Play has been an essential part of human evolution because it opens up doors to creativity, spontaneity, and envisioning new ways of being in the world. Most human cultures have tended to have more leisure time than work.

Though wave riding may have predated pre-contact Hawaiian culture elsewhere, Hawaii is recognised as the edified, spiritual home of modern surf culture. He'e Nalu, or wave sliding, was an integral aspect of Hawaiian life before European colonisation. Surfing played a role in romance, ceremony and spiritual practice. A man and woman riding a wave together was considered flirting, and often translated to relations back on land. Hawaiian myth and lore make surfing inexorable from spiritual life, even deities surfed. Back then, people knew what we have forgotten; that play is part of what makes us human

In pre-contact Hawaii heiau, or temples, were constructed throughout the Islands in dedication to various essential aspects of life: healing, growing, rain, safe voyaging, It is thought that some heiau were even dedicated to surfing. These temples were built atop bluffs for waveriders to contemplatively watch the surf below and pray for favourable conditions.

According to myth, Goddess Pele of volcanoes is referenced as one of the earliest surfers. She was taught by Kamohaoli'I, aumakua (guardian) shark god, subsequently taught her youngest sister-goddess Hi'iaka and men followed after.

In one myth, Hiʻiaka, goddess of hula, chanting, and medicine, is charged by Pele to a treacherous journey through the Islands to find Pele's favored chief Lohi'au. Upon her arrival, Hi'iaka discovers that Lohi'au has died, possibly from grief in Pele's absence. She temporarily chants and sings life back into him, but knows that the only way to permanently resuscitate him is to take him surfing. As referenced in Ian ʻAkahi Masterson's Heʻe Wahine I Ka Lani: Goddess in the Surf: "As they rose upon the wave, the dorsals of the giant fishes of the sea surged up and down on that same billow that they climbed. Hiʻiaka stood upon the surface of the water with her skirt of pahapaha seaweed and mōkila grass fluttering behind her. And Lohiʻau tried out every possible surfing stance, each of which he could perform with ease... Nothing could compare to the beauty of this surfing..."

Goddess Hiʻiaka, in all her skill with the healing arts, knew that riding waves was the perfect medicine for a broken heart.

In Hawaiian myth, mortals and supernatural beings regularly intermingle. Such was the case with Mamala, a surfing kapua, or shape-shifter, who transformed from beautiful woman to a great shark, or a gigantic lizard. In one tale, Mamala is caught in a love triangle between another kapua and a chief. The story does not end well for the male kapua, but what is abundantly documented in the myth is Mamala's great athleticism. She was known for dancing upon even the biggest surf with skill and allegedly loved the wild, windy waves whipped up within the bay of Kou (modern day Honolulu Harbor). The ocean West of Waikiki is named in her honor: Ke-kai-o- Mamala (the Sea of Mamala).

On the island of Hawai'i, during the ancient times of the gods and goddesses, Punahoa was a revered surfing chiefess. One epic tale recounts the time when her surfing skill was challenged by a group of men. She was celebrated for never losing her board and asserting her confidence in the water, with her surfing surpassed only by the supreme skill of goddess Hiʻiaka.

As Hi'iaka's lore has reminded many generations, Polynesian healers were well aware of surfing's ability to be deeply reviving to the human spirit. Some time around 400 A.D., four wave-worshipping Tahitian healers known as kāhuna or mystics, travelled to Hawaii and became renowned for their curative magic: Kahaloa, Kinohi, Kapuni and Kapaemahu. The four kahuna were māhū, meaning "in the middle," and represented the third gender as men who identified and lived as women. They mixed the girthy stature of Polyneisan men with the grace of Polynesian women, and must have been beautifully skilled surfers.
The kāhuna knew that they would eventually return to Tahitian shores, but wanted to leave a lasting legacy in Hawai'i. Besides performing many miracles of healing, the kāhuna enlisted thousands of their followers to transport four mammoth stones - each weighing more than a ton - from the highlands to rest near the coast.

Today in the heart of Waikīkī, lay four gated stones, Nā Pōhaku Ola Kapaemāhū a Kapuni, or "The Stones of Life," associated with those four magical māhū kāhuna. The stones are charged with their healing mana. A section of beach and a stretch of Waikiki surf is named in their honour.

The legend of the great surfing Princess Kelea, or Ali'i Wahine Keleanohoana'api'api, circa 1445, depicts the reality across time and space of hōpūpū, or "surf fever," the desperation of going too long without riding waves. Princess Kelea was known as the best surfer on Maui.

An O'ahu chief stole her away when he saw her beauty amongst the surf, provoked by the great skill and notoriety she might bring to his clan with her surfing prowess. Princess Kelea eventually married his cousin, a high ranking chief, and moved to their village in the uplands of O'ahu. Kelea birthed four children there, but eventually longed so deeply for the surf that she left her family to be with the ocean once again.

When she returned to the ocean and rode a sweeping south swell at Kalehuawehe, she also rediscovered a former love interest, Kalamakua. He wrapped his cape around her as she stepped ashore, symbolic of the unity of marriage. They soon wed and gave birth to Lāʻieikawai, known as the most beautiful woman in all the islands. A happy ending for the surfer who stays true to her passions.

When European notions of religiosity and alternatively rigid gender divisions came to govern Polynesia and beyond, the wild freedom of wave riding was nearly lost completely, and later assumed as an endeavour only for men.

"By 1900," legendary Olympic swimmer and surfer Duke Kahanamoku declared, "surfing had totally disappeared throughout the Islands, except for a few isolated spots... and even there only a handful of men took boards into the sea." Christian missionaries' puritanical distaste for pursuits like nearly-nude wave riding, where men and women mingled amongst the slippery sea, meant an environment not permissive of surfing. But even more significant was the decimation that came from infectious disease and the introduction of the cash economy that squashed Hawaiians once ample leisure time. With newly introduced sugar plantations to work, there was no time for surfing.

A notable exception was Princess Victoria Ka`iulaini,"an expert surfrider," according to early Twentieth Century surfer Knute Cottrell. Princess Ka`iulaini surfed the olo, a long and exceptionally heavy board reserved for royalty. Hers was made from the wili wili tree. One cannot overestimate the skill, power and strength needed to successfully ride the olo.

Princess Ka'iulani, a half-Hawaiian, half-Scottish waterwoman, served as a brave liaison between the cultures she bridged and helped to keep the tradition of surfing alive amidst the radical changes of European colonisation. At only 17, she played an active role in the preservation of Hawaiian culture during colonisation.

Princess Ka'iulani is reputed to have taken surfing to England, where she rode waves in the English Channel and may have been the first woman to stand up surf in England. Despite her early death at age 23, Princess Ka'iulaini's noble legacy of speaking truth to power is undeniable.

Before the threats of colonisation, a culture rich in aquatic lore and myth abounded in Polynesia. Surfing was part of a rich and sensuous way of life, that included hula, chanting, and outlets for play entwined with spirituality.

As made clear in Surfing, Sex, Genders and Sexualities, "The significance of females in surfing history may be all but lost in 'modern' history and practice, but... it is captured in oral histories of surfing goddesses (akua), chiefesses (ali'i), priestesses (kahuna), and shape-shifters (kupua)."

Pre-contact and old Hawaiian stories recount some of the legacy as female surfers, despite their omission from the dominant narrative of surfing legend and lore. The fact that skilled waveriders were crafted into Hawaiian mo'olelo, or myths and legends, is indicative of the reality of the inclusivity of early surfing cultures. A not so subtle reminder that riding waves is for everyone.

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The History of Female Surfing: A Legacy of Hawaiian Medicine Women, Royalty, Goddesses and More - Magicseaweed

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As part of International Women's Day, we've handed the keys to the site to Lauren Hill, author of She Surf: The Rise of Female Surfing. For this week-long celebration, Lauren will be dropping an article on MSW every day until March 12 that will feature female surfers, the history, culture, the present, future, the evolution of design, podcasts and more.