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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [187], (3) Lines: 11 to 31 ——— 6.911pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [187], (3) eleven Inuit Place Names and Sense of Place Béatrice Collignon Place Names and Arctic Anthropology Among early arctic scientists, Franz Boas was the first to pay attention to indigenous place names. He stated that indigenous place names should be recorded on official maps and vigorously denounced explorers and whalers alike who felt free to baptize any place they wanted and ignore Inuit toponyms .Unlikeforeignnames,heargued,Inuitplacenamesfittedthelandscape perfectly (1885: 51, cited in Cole and Müller-Wille 1984: 52). During his year of fieldwork around Cumberland Sound on Baffin Island (1883–84) Boas carefully recorded and mapped 930 place names, a project discussed in detail by Müller-Wille and Weber Müller-Wille elsewhere in this book. Their comparative study conducted a hundred years lateroffersimportantinsightsintothedynamicsofplacenamesandofInuit geographic knowledge. Most arctic anthropologists who followed in Boas’s footsteps recorded some local toponyms in the field but never conducted systematic surveys. They saw place names as one means, among others, of getting acquainted with the territory of the Inuit they were studying. Place names were part of what traditional anthropology considered the general background data all anthropologists should collect during the first weeks of fieldwork, before moving to the research itself. In the late 1960s anthropologists Saladin d’Anglure and Dorais broke with that practice and conducted a broad place name survey among the Inuit of Nunavik (northern Quebec). Yet their prior interest was neither place names nor geographic knowledge. Their collection was neither published nor analyzed. Collignon 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [188], (4) Lines: 31 ——— 6.4pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: T [188], (4) Thus it is perhaps not surprising that it took someone with a background in both cultural anthropology and geography to look at place names for their intrinsic value. In the late 1970s Müller-Wille put toponymic surveying at the center of a research agenda that linked together toponyms and knowledge of the land. Contesting the official representation of Inuit land conveyed by official maps (published in Canada by the Department of Natural Resources), he advocated for the recognition of Inuit toponymy, arguing that “in their complexity [place names show] an intimate knowledge of the land that the existing maps do not provide” (Müller-Wille 1987: xii). MüllerWille ’s main collection covers the whole of Nunavik. It was published first as a gazetteer in 1987 and then as a set of 1:50,000 maps in the 1990s. The latter are in current use in Nunavik. Müller-Wille’s surveys were conducted with the intention of recording knowledgethatwasfearedtobequicklydisappearingaselderspassedaway. The loss of traditional place names was presumed to be one of the many consequences of the settling down process of the 1950s and 1960s. Both researchers and elders worried about such a situation, and in many communities the elders often requested that toponymic surveys be conducted to ensure that their knowledge would outlive them. “Throughout my work on place names with the Inuit I found that their concern was the same as in Aivilik (Repulse Bay): to transfer the knowledge of their land with its place names into a form that would ensure its continuation with future Inuit generations and project a true image and identity of the land” (Müller-Wille 1987: xii). Toponymic survey projects in the Canadian Arctic also gained the support of Inuit politicians. From a geopolitical perspective, putting Inuit names on the maps was seen as an efficient way of asserting Inuit rights to land and a strong act of Inuit empowerment. Toponymic surveys are also often presented as a useful tool for preserving the ability of younger Inuit to travel on their land. The assumption was that place names are part of a wider knowledge related to traveling and hunting. It is common to hear Inuit asserting that if you know the place names, you cannot get lost: Land marks were also observed in naming places. All land features like hills, lakes, rivers, islands...

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