Centering Tuniit and Inuit Social Histories through Relational Archaeologies of Place in Nunavut, Canada
Speaker: Dr. Sam Walker
Department of Anthropology | University of British Columbia
Abstract:
Inuit often describe their homeland as nalunaqtuq (uncanny, ineffable) to convey how land, water, and ice are in constant flux and inseparable from knowledge and identity. This talk explores how approaching people and places as mutual participants in the making of communities permits new perspectives on past social worlds and living heritage. I discuss ongoing projects in Nunavut that investigate the social production of Tuniit (c. 2500 BCE–1350 CE) and ancestral Inuit (c. 1150–1600 CE) settlement landscapes, and address the management of heritage sites in these contexts. Through this research, I argue for an archaeology of Place that brings Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (epistemology and knowledge) into conversation with Indigenous and relational feminisms to interrogate community relations across multiple social and spatial scales. The result is an emerging framework for addressing broader issues of intellectual authority and heritage stewardship in the Canadian Arctic.
About Dr. Sam Walker
Samantha Walker is an anthropological archaeologist whose research focuses on the social production of place and landscape. She specialized in archaeology during her BA at the University of Toronto and completed her MA at Trent University on the emergence of Late Archaic and Middle Woodland cemeteries in the upper Great Lakes region. Her MA research involved paleoenvironmental modelling, multivariate spatial analysis, and oral historical research to interpret the social roles of mortuary traditions as part of broader settlement landscapes. Sam received her PhD in anthropology from McGill University in 2024, where she examined how Tuniit (Paleo-Inuit) communities were negotiated through dynamic relations with persistent settlement places, in the Arctic maritime region of Amittuq, NU. As part of this study, she developed an epistemology of Place that engages Inuit ways of knowing with Indigenous and posthumanist feminisms, and applied archaeological, oral historical, and palaeogeographical analyses to examine traces of the spatial structures of everyday life. This was a community-based project involving sites of living history, and involved collaborations with members of the Igloolik Oral History Project and Hunters and Trappers Organization, as well as the running of a local field school and youth archaeology camp.
Photo Credit: Sam Walker
