Learning About Wrecksites
Like the other figures in this Knowledge-Land-Scape, wrecksites are not merely a metaphorical figure.
In the case of Gjoa Haven, two shipwrecks, respectively the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, exist in proximity to the community. These shipwrecks speak to longstanding (knowledge) encounters between Qablunaat (non-Inuit people) and Inuit across time and space. Whether such encounters materialize through site-specific instances, by for example the repurposing of wood from these shipwrecks to create traditional objects, or through more expansive relational structures like the Inuit Land Claim Agreements, the wrecksite refers, for me, to the materiality of larger agential apparatuses in encounter across time and space.
Whether such encounters happen between the apparatuses of (inter)national science-based polar bear conservation, Inuit self-determination, or polar bear co-management and monitoring, the shipwreck is a figure that gestures towards the dynamic interplay of all such material agencies, within which the Bearwatch project, my Knowledge-Land-Scape and your decisions are entangled. Here and there, the shipwrecks of such larger generative forces reveal themselves as materially constitutive agents in what can exist, and what can not exist as part of my research and this Knowledge-Land-Scape.