Carol Payne, Beth Greenhorn, Deborah Kigjugalik Webster & Christina Williamson

THE NORTH

Carol Payne, Beth Greenhorn, Deborah Kigjugalik Webster, and Christina Williamson, eds.  Atiqput: Inuit Oral History and Project Naming. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Atiqput: Inuit Oral History and Project Naming edited by Carol Payne, Beth Greenhorn, Deborah Kigjugalik Webster, and Christina Williamson, is an extraordinary and original interweaving of Inuit and settler images, stories, testimonies, and records from state archives that shows how names embody meaning, identification, and spirits in the North. This sophisticated and innovative mode of methodological inquiry foregrounds Inuit-centered knowledge based in Project Naming, but with historical relevance that extends far beyond the boundaries of Nunavut. These methods work alongside robust empirical detail that anchors Atiqput in the words of community members through oral history, visual narrative, and archival elaboration. The editors and contributors have produced a book and a project that elegantly shows the power of the decolonizing lens to decentre the settler colonial gaze that has long framed the North and its peoples.