Indigenous Arctic Infrastructures

This book focuses on the concept of unwritten Indigenous Arctic infrastructures. It takes inspiration from activists in the field of Indigenous studies, who argue that “critical” Indigenous infrastructures are often not railways, pipelines, or data cables, but instead sacred places and sustainable craftsmanship. The authors in this collection challenge the standard definition of cultural heritage and of industrial infrastructure. They encourage the critical re-thinking of roads and other forms of industrial infrastructure which can be re-tooled to support emplaced practice. Through learning from Northern and Arctic Indigenous craftspeople on how small-scale but evocative objects can define identity and landscapes, the contributors show how conical tents, trails, spoken stories, and miniature models break out of the boundaries of their metadata to generate and re-generate relationships. The volume considers the changing role of museums and protected areas in providing examples of embedded and embodied cultural practice and builds on the craft of “unwriting” objects of cultural heritage by comparing embodied and relational practice to formal classifications. It will be of interest to those working in anthropology, museum and heritage studies, archaeology, and geography, as well as Indigenous studies and Northern and Arctic studies.