Covid 19 personal whereabouts

The ice pressure ridge remind us that agency is not a property that is possessed by individual readers, researchers and authors. Our ways of becoming knowledgeable always correspond intra-dependently with many other agential forces, both human and non-human.

When the spread of Covid-19 was declared a pandemic it shaped an ice-pressure ridge that was so immense, that it not so much required me to redirect- as it asked me to re-position. Both figuratively and literally.

Making a New Home

In 2019, at the start of my doctoral studies I relocated from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Katarokwi; Kingston, Ontario on the traditional homelands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabek and Huron-Wendat nations.

I had never intended this move to Kingston to be only a launch pad for my research in Inuit Nunangat. I arrived ready to commit- aspiring to make Kingston my new home.

The first months after my arrival were filled with activities to learn about- and build a relationship with this land, the communities on it, and its stories. I immersed myself, for my hope was that this place could perhaps eventually become a new home for me.

Which it did, in multiple ways, over time.

The building of these relationships however became somewhat more complicated from 2020 onwards. The COVID-19 pandemic ended up uprooting me from all my home-bases, both Dutch and Canadian.

The Netherlands in Isolation

After the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, I initially chose to take shelter in my country of origin; the Netherlands. I stayed there for three months.

Having a high-risk parent, I did not take shelter in my family home in the Netherlands, and as a result I ended up renting an apartment both in Kingston and the Netherlands.

After the first two months of self-isolating in Amsterdam, I moved in with my sister and her family to save money. I slept on an airbed and shared a room with my 2-year old nephew. Despite a lack of privacy, it was nice to be close to family. I preferred it above being alone in an apartment.

Selfportrait during lockdown

Nevertheless, my commitment to be present, and make a new home in Canada- combined with the financial stresses of maintaining two home-bases- eventually drew me back to Ontario at the first seemingly reasonable opportunity.

Kingston in Isolation

The reality of returning to Canada as an international student, during the Covid-19 pandemic, was- while I acknowledge my privilege of being able to stay safe and healthy- rough for me.

Once back in Ontario, I was stuck in my tiny in Kingston apartment by myself, without a university campus to go to, or access to the regions in which I would have to conduct my fieldwork.

I wrote a lot.

In the year that followed, between my return to Kingston in the late Summer of 2020 and the Summer of 2021, I worked on what would eventually become the testimonial reading of Gjoa Haven’s voices of Thunder.

By June 2021 I had to return to the Netherlands for family matters. During this latter trip, I was offered an affordable apartment in Amsterdam- and decided, considering the ongoing uncertainty of Covid-19 pandemic to accept it. One month later, In July 2021, I received the news that we could travel to Nunavut again for fieldwork, and Canada slowly started to open up again.

From July 2021 onward, I continued my PhD in a state of flux. I would come to Canada for fieldwork, and spent an average of six weeks up North each trip. I would then stay, on average, another six weeks in Ontario. Usually I would spend up to twelve weeks back home in the Netherlands, before I would return again to Canada.

This rotation was possible because of being awarded a Canada Graduate Vanier Scholarship, and my decision in September 2020 to purchase a campervan: "Butter". As a result of these two events, my time in Canada took a completely different shape in comparison to what it had been before.

You have found a way to "Return to Cut 1" and learn more about the creative outputs, through which we were planning to share Gjoa Haven's Voices of Thunder.

Alternatively, you can accept an "Invitation" to tag along and take a ride in "Butter". This ride will allow you to learn about the opportunities that Covid-19 brought to my research, before returning to Cut 1.

Return to Cut 1: Voices of Thunder

Invitation: Thinking from the Road During Covid-19