Part IV – Encountering Extractivism in Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North

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Editor’s Note: This is the introductory post to Part IV of the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North series edited by Isabelle Gapp and guest edited by Jonathan Peyton.


“I’ve been intrigued for quite a long time really by that incredible tapestry of tundra and taiga country, as they call it, which constitute the Arctic and subarctic of Canada. I’ve read about it, written about it occasionally, and even pulled up my parka once and gone there. Like all but a few Canadians I guess I’ve had no direct confrontation with the northern third of our country. I’ve remained of necessity an outsider and the North has remained for me a convenient place to dream about, spin tall tales about sometimes and, in the end, avoid.”

Outtake from Search into White Space (1969), National Film Board of Canada. Description, courtesy of NFB: A of group of Indigenous children walking across frame, up a knoll, building with Canadian flag in background. Slow zoom in on the Inuvialuit hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk located in the Northwest Territories. Zooms in and hold underneath flapping clothes line of DEW line radar station.
Lorene Squire, “A Summer in the Arctic,” The Beaver: A Magazine of the North, Outfit 269, Number 3 (December 1938).
Lorene Squire, Pete Nichols with “Arctic White Foxes and Blue Foxes”, on board the Nascopie, 1938. Hudson Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, 1981/28/53.

Notes

Bernauer, Warren. ““Regulatory capture” and “extractive hegemony”: the relevance of Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the state to contemporary environmental politics in Canada.” Human Geography 13, no. 2 (2020): 160-173.

Bernauer, Warren, and Robin Roth. “Protected areas and extractive hegemony: A case study of marine protected areas in the Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) region of Nunavut, Canada.” Geoforum 120 (2021): 208-217.


Feature image: Borg Mesch, View of Kirunavaara for LKAB, 1902. Photo: Borg Mesch/Tekniska Museet, Stockholm.

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Jonathan Peyton

Jonathan Peyton teaches cultural and historical geography at the University of Manitoba where he is an associate professor in the department of environment and geography. He is the author of Unbuilt Environments: Tracing Postwar Development in Northwest British Columbia (UBC Press, 2017).

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