Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands by Andrew Stuhl (review)

Unfreezing the Arctic is a worthy addition to the recent wave of work on northern history. By "unfreezing" Andrew Stuhl means rejecting the notion of a North frozen in time—a sentiment certain to find hearty agreement among northern scholars. He also joins other historians in presenting a transnational view of the north, and emphasizing the evolving social and political roles of science. Bridging the histories of colonialism, resource management, military activity, and Indigenous self-determination, Stuhl focuses on Alaska and northwest Canada, including the Beaufort Sea, Mackenzie Delta, and surrounding region.

Stuhl begins in the late 1800s, as whalers and fur traders moved into this region, linking it to the rest of the world. After 1900 scientific expeditions (including the Canadian Arctic Expedition) sought both a mythical "Polar Continent" and to assert Canada's presence in the region. Between the world wars, Danish biologist A.E. Porsild was invited to apply range science to creating a reindeer herding industry—part of a larger effort to domesticate both Inuit and landscape. During World War II and the Cold War, military and industrial operations encountered novel environmental challenges, encouraging formation of the field of permafrost science. Since the late 1960s corporations and governments have pursued oil and gas development, while communities have expressed concern about environmental and social impacts. In the 1970s Thomas Berger's Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry and several activist-scientists encouraged local participation in decisions regarding the region's future. This process of democratization and self-determination culminated with the 1984 Inuvialuit Final Agreement, at which point Stuhl concludes his historical account.

In an epilogue, Stuhl turns to contemporary views on climate change in the Arctic, including the role of the polar bear as the icon of a once "pristine" region. This perspective, he notes, obscures how climate change is actually experienced by northerners. Finally, and invoking his own experience in the region, he calls on scholars to work with northern communities, echoing the remarkable shift over the last two decades by northern researchers toward community-based inquiry.

Stuhl does fine work explaining the central position of scientists in the history of this region: their roles in asserting national authority, guiding the "taming" of the Arctic, working out the ways and means of operating on permafrost, raising alarms regarding damage to tundra and the rest of the northern environment, even advancing democracy by working with communities. These roles were defined in terms of practice as well as knowledge—as became evident, for example, in scientists' reliance on the transport networks formed by whalers and Inuit. Other kinds of knowledge are also bound up in this history. Inuit formed diverse relations with scientists: providing essential guidance and gear, but also resisting efforts to transform them into reindeer herders, expressing frustration when scientists ignored them, and eventually, applying science to their pursuit of self-determination. Stuhl's account thus aligns with a pervasive theme in northern history: the importance of knowledge in guiding and justifying actions and in the relations of power between scientists, Inuit, and other actors.

Stuhl makes a few slips. For example, in the postwar era lower prices, not the oil industry, undermined the trapping lifestyle (112). Some of his interpretations are questionable or incomplete—concerning, for example, Vilhjalmur Stefansson's influence in northern affairs, the evolving professional status and training of northern scientists, or what the reindeer herding episode can tell us regarding the Canadian government's commitment to the north during the 1930s. And while Stuhl presents a valuable analysis of the democratization of science in Inuvik during the 1960s and 1970s, this episode could have been placed more effectively within the context of the enormous research efforts by industry that were taking place at this time, as well as the political economy of northern oil and gas development, including the eagerness of both government and industry to enable development. Finally, one might debate the...