The ‘deer‐men’ and the ‘bowhead‐men’: The colonial co‐optation of Arctic Indigenous knowledge within the ‘origins of the Inuit’ debates

Abstract

Drawing on recent literatures that explore the complicated role of ‘Indigenous intermediaries’ within histories of geographical exploration, and bringing these into dialogue with research exposing the colonial nature of geographical knowledge, this article studies the ways in which information extracted from an Indigenous Arctic informant named Nocum was crucial in the formation of troubling geographical understandings regarding Inuit ‘origins’ and migration. The article analyses the extractive nature of the intellectual contributions offered by the American traveller and scholar William Healey Dall, and situates them amidst their troubling imperial and racialised context. The article concludes by arguing that geographers must continue to identify and reflect critically on the role of indigenous peoples within the historical (co)production of geographical knowledge, but that they must be equally attentive to the ways this knowledge was regularly used to inform and justify various forms of imperial intervention and colonial violence.