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

In this era of concern over the politicization of science and its embattled role in public policy, Andrew Stuhl's Unfreezing the Arctic offers a timely historical reflection on the important social role of science and scientists. It is far from an uncritical intervention, however; rather, in his exploration of a century of scientific exploration and investigation of the Western Arctic, Stuhl raises deep questions about the entanglements of scientific knowledge and practice with the settler colonial reterritorialization of Inuit lands. In offering a "transnational environmental history of science," Stuhl's account represents a novel contribution to histories of Arctic science that will also be of interest to the growing number of scholars exploring historical geographies of science.

Departing from traditional scholarly narratives of Arctic exploration situated within national or imperial contexts, Stuhl grounds his study in the Inuit territories of the Inupiat (in Alaska) and Inuvialuit (in Canada's Northwest Territories) in the transformative period between the 1880s and 1980s. The study traces how Inuit lives and territories were transformed during this period by successive waves of economic, military, and political interventions, each bearing on its crest a raft of scientific and technical experts seeking to characterize, understand, and (to some extent) control the Arctic environment. These successive characterizations are summarized in the titles of the five substantive chapters: dangerous; threatened; wild; strategic; and disturbed. Throughout this history, we encounter a wide range of scientific initiatives and actors, from Hudson's Bay Company explorers to the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913-18), from tundra scientists studying reindeer herding to permafrost scientists with the U.S. Naval Arctic Research Laboratory.

Arranging chapters along these diverse historical themes and episodes allows Stuhl to explore the continuities and changes in the scientific encounter with the Arctic environment (and, to some extent, with Inuit themselves). This strategy comes somewhat at the expense of narrative coherence within some chapters, as Stuhl moves back and forth across topics and national borders—a peril, I suppose, of the novel transnational frame the author adopted. Nevertheless, in focusing intently on the field activities of Arctic scientists, the book ably illustrates how scientific knowledge was both shaped by and in turn facilitated the projects of outsiders in the region, whether economic, strategic, or political.

Yet these interventions were not unidirectional, and in the excellent fifth chapter Stuhl deftly explores how the emergence of environmental concerns with industrial development in the "fragile" Arctic intersected with rising Inuit sovereignty and political claims in the 1970s. This chapter provides important new insights into the simultaneous indigenous mobilization and contestation of Western scientific knowledge and southern scientists in their struggles against—and in some cases, for—industrial development. The emergence of environmental assessment requirements for major resource developments such as pipelines provided a platform for Inuit to advance claims for recognition and to assert sovereignty over their traditional territories—often in close collaboration with sympathetic scientists.

In emphasising the colonial context of Arctic science, Unfreezing the Arctic resonates with the well-established literature linking science, environment and colonialism associated with historians and geographers of science, including Roy McLeod, David Livingstone, Richard Grove and others. While not entirely neglecting these perspectives, Stuhl roots his study more directly in environmental and Arctic histories which have similarly highlighted the influence of scientific actors in the region's (inter)national histories. While rightly connecting the modern field sciences with ongoing colonial processes that unfolded throughout the period in question, somewhat confusingly the term "postcolonial" (p. 11) is deployed to describe the entire period and region in question. Although wishing to avoid the term "decolonial" to describe more recent Inuit engagements with science in the era of land claims, the designation postcolonial fails to capture the ways in which settler colonialism provided (and continues to provide) "the structures through which land was used, studied, and managed." A more explicit engagement with the recent literature in settler colonial studies might have clarified these terms.

Indeed, Stuhl's epilogue invites readers to consider the endurance of these colonial relations in the contexts of contemporary climate science, in particular. He rightly criticizes recent scientific and political representations of climate peril that have "re-established the north as empty of people and history, clearing space for another round of intervention" (p. 149). Only in "unfreezing" such ahistorical and colonial representations of the Arctic, and by heeding the experiences, knowledge and aspirations of Arctic residents themselves, Stuhl suggests, can southern scientists (and historians!) contribute to a more ethical and socially just response to the many environmental and social challenges of the region.