The Cartography of Kallihirua?: Reassessing Indigenous Mapmaking and Arctic Encounters

• Published in: Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization
• Main Author: Martin, Peter R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2022
• Subjects: Earth-Surface Processes; Arctic; Greenland; Inughuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cart-2021-0012; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/cart-2021-0012

This article examines a cartographic encounter that took place in 1850 between Kallihirua, a member of Inughuit community of Northern Greenland, and members of the British Admiralty. Drawing on recent literatures that critically assess histories of indigenous mapping, the article explores the troubling circumstances that surrounded this encounter and analyses two maps which were produced as a result. Informed by ongoing debates pertaining to the decolonization of geographical knowledge, the article also reflects critically upon the extent to which historical indigenous cosmologies were commensurate with non-indigenous cartographic traditions and thus reassesses the motivations that lay behind the production and circulation of these maps. The article thus concludes by arguing that while Kallihirua certainly did contribute various types of geographical knowledge during this encounter, to label him as the sole author of these maps would be a problematic act of “cartographic ventriloquism.”