- Northern Affairs and Relations:An Interview with Gunther Abrahamson, conducted by Jasmin Habib with commentary by Harvey Feit
Gunther Abrahamson died in Ottawa April 2015 after dedicating more than five decades of his life to Indigenous concerns and, in particular, co-governance. He was born in Berlin in the mid-1920s but was sent out of Germany on the kindertransport to the United Kingdom in 1938 by his mother, who would perish in a concentration camp soon thereafter. Gunther remained in Scotland through the war and until the 1950s, when he would begin his journey to Canada. He reflects on some of his initial experiences in the North as well as how these affected him in later years in the interview I conducted with him in Ottawa in January 2009. A distant relative (his sister had married my grandfather's brother), I had known very little about him but I thought it might be interesting to speak with Gunther since I was preparing to conduct some of my first interviews as they related to a research project on co-governance that Harvey Feit (McMaster University), Philip Awashish (Mistissini First Nation), Sam Gull (Waswanipi First Nation), and I had been awarded, under funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Growing up, I had known only that he had worked in the government and "up north somewhere." Even after the initial interview and many subsequent meetings, where he shared personal stories about the many Inuit artists and writers to whom he had become very attached, he never once referred to his commitment to, and ongoing support of, so many Indigenous and co-governance initiatives. It was only after his passing that I was to learn about many of these relationships along with the recognition and awards he had received. In the obituary published in Arctic, Peter Usher and John MacDonald (2016) note: "Essential to his success was the respect he earned from Inuit individuals and organizations for his responsiveness to their proposals, and his refreshingly unbureaucratic, down-to-earth approach to collaboration." In the obituary published in the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board's (BQCMB) newsletter, we learn that "the BQCMB was the first wildlife co-management board to bring Indigenous people together with scientists and officials from two provinces and the territories . . ." (Caribou News in Brief 2016). It was Abrahamson who pioneered the concept, says another close friend, environmental consultant and professor Peter Usher, who knew Abrahamson since 1961: "I think Gunther was really instrumental in getting that board established" (Caribou News in Brief 2016).
What remains most interesting–if also troubling to me–is not so much the distance that Gunther seems to have placed between himself and his bureaucratic past, as Harvey Feit describes it below, but also that there remains a striking naiveté about the relationship of the government, co-governing practices, and Indigenous communities' experiences of institutions and those who entered their communities as representatives of those institutions. As Harvey notes, this seems to capture both a moment as well as a common positioning among those who have worked in and alongside Indigenous communities on a range of projects.
The interview took place in Ottawa in 2009. Gunther reviewed, revised, and approved the transcript for publication in 2014. In keeping with Anthropologica's practice of having all articles evaluated before publication, several reviewers were selected. Among them was Harvey Feit, due in no small part to his expertise, and because he had heard about my interview, but had never had the chance to read or evaluate it. He agreed to share his thoughts on the interview, as follows:
I have reread the interview with Gunther Abrahamson several times now and I stay enthusiastic about publishing it. My reactions have changed over time and my recommendation that it be published has gotten even stronger. On first reading I was struck by how much his stories were typical of stories non-Indigenous northerners tell each other, sensitive temporary northerners, how much they were probably like field ethnographers' stories elsewhere. That is [End Page 89] still true. Even his counter-reading of knowledge, getting things done in communities, and dealing...