- A paper that helped me in framing these questions of various realms of knowledge was Christine J Walley’s “They Scorn Us Because We Are Uneducated: Knowledge and Power in a Tanzanian Marine Park.”
- Knowledge within Inuit communities stem from their culture which has long depended on the ice to survive and thrive. In this essay I will refer to this as experiential knowledge or Indigenous knowledge, which refers to their understanding of climate and land through intergenerational observations. Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s The Right to be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015) helped me understand the ingenuity of Inuit knowledge.
- A pivotal work that shaped my understanding of the marginalization of Indigenous knowledge within climate science is Susan Schuppli’s “Ice-Core Media”.
- The epistemologies of Arctic climate science and Inuit knowledge represent distinct ways of understanding and interpreting the environment. Arctic climate science is rooted in the scientific method, driven by data collection and experimentation, whereas indigenous knowledge is a holistic method developed through generations living closely with the Arctic environment.
- This essay employs terms like “indigenous knowledge” and “scientific knowledge” for simplicity and ease of understanding. However, this lexicon is problematic, and I do not intend to imply the associations typically linked with these terms. A work that helped shape my understanding on this issue is Arun Agrawel’s “Dismantling the Divide between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge” (Development and Change 26, no. 3 (07, 1995): 413-440.)
- The extraction of ice cores from Arctic glaciers demands intricate infrastructure, a large workforce, and substantial funding. While this process significantly advances our understanding of climate science, its impact on the surrounding landscape and local communities must not be overlooked.
- Material evidence, as it pertains to Susan Schuppli’s work, refers to the objects, substances, or environmental elements that bear witness to conditions or events as it relates to climate or crisis. She uses these materials to connect various perspectives and offer new ways of understanding and addressing environmental issues and social injustices.
- Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s “The University and the Camp” was critical in helping me understand the spaces outside of academic institutions in creating knowledge, and decoloniality in universities.
Bibliography
- Agrawal, Arun. "Dismantling the Divide between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge." Development and Change 26, no. 3 (07, 1995): 413-440.
- Ford, James D., and Tristan Pearce. "Travelling and Hunting in a Changing Arctic: Assessing Inuit Vulnerability to Sea Ice Change in Igloolik, Nunavut." Climatic Change 87, no. 3 (2008): 193–213.
- Gearheard, Shari, et al. "It’s Not That Simple: A Collaborative Comparison of Sea Ice Environments, Their Uses, Observed Changes, and Adaptations in Barrow, Alaska, USA, and Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada." Ambio 35, no. 4 (2006): 203–11.
- Hansen, Kathryn. “Arctic Sea Ice Thinning.” NASA, Flickr. Published August 10, 2021.
- Schuppli, Susan. CAN THE SUN LIE?, accessed August 8, 2024,
- Schuppli, Susan. Climate Signals from Svalbard (2024), last modified July 24, 2020, accessed August 8, 2024.
- Schuppli, Susan. “Ice-Core Media” (2020) accessed August 8, 2024.
- Schuppli, Susan. Moving Ice (published 2024; commissioned by BEK - Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts and Sonic Acts, Amsterdam), accessed August 8, 2024.
- Siddiqi, Anooradha Iyer. “The University and the Camp”, Ardeth, 2020, Online since 01 November 2020, accessed August 9, 2024.
- Walley, Christine J. “‘They Scorn Us Because We Are Uneducated’: Knowledge and Power in a Tanzanian Marine Park.” Ethnography 3, no. 3 (2002): 265–98.
- Watson, Sheila. The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Fight to Protect the Arctic and Save the Planet from Climate Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Essay written in reflection of Susan Schuppli’s lecture and film screening with GSAPP’s AAD Arguments Lecture Series in 2024. Instructor: Ranjani Srinivasan