Thin Ice: Language, culture and environment in the Arctic

Crosslistings: GCEGU 21780, SIGN 27180

The Arctic is currently undergoing cultural and political upheavals due to rapid climate change and global politics. In this course, we use an interdisciplinary perspective to examine the lives of Arctic peoples—Inuit, Sámi, Nenets and others—whose lives are being disrupted due to melting sea ice, forest fires, thawing permafrost, and rising temperatures. Climate change affects the food supply: hunting, fishing, and foraging are disrupted by unreliable ice and snow conditions, altered wildlife migration patterns, and changes in plant life; fish and sea mammals are loaded with toxins. Warming in the Arctic has resulted in new access to natural resources which have long been buried under snow and ice, but such access comes at a high cost, bringing in extractive industries and a host of security issues. We examine the causes and nature of these changes and the repercussions for Arctic peoples, with a particular focus on language and cultural change. We place a particular emphasis on adaptation and change in the face of increasing threats from climate change, resource extraction, and globalization, and the consequences for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and international relations. To understand the complex interaction between human culture and the Arctic environment, we take a broad approach, considering language, literature, film and music, together with political analyses and discussions of human rights and current environmental science, and look for solutions.