Reimagining sustainable cultures: constitutions, land and art

• Published in: Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes
• Main Authors: Doubleday, Nancy, Mackenzie, A. Fiona D., Dalby, Simon
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2004
• Subjects: Baffin Island; Cape Dorset; Nunavut; Baffin; inuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0008-3658.2004.00067.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.0008-3658.2004.00067.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.0008-3658.2004.00067.x

Globalisation is about the interconnection of peoples and places in accelerated ways, but it is also about resistance and adaptation in the face of change. Discussions of sustainability now incorporate both dynamic understandings of culture and the recognition that place matters because the practices that are in need of sustaining, as well as those that pose threats, happen in particular communities and in specific geographic contexts. Culture is codified not only in property rights and legislation, but also in the public artistic expressions of peoples and places. Case studies from Nunavut and Scotland show the interrelationships of sovereignty and claims to identity and community. Art, as a result of creative action in the case of Cape Dorset Inuit printmakers and carvers on Baffin Island, and a millennium tapestry telling the stories of the Isle of Harris, complement matters of property rights. Both discussions show that identity is about material culture and property relations in respect of land. Serious discussions of sustainability, in contrast to the technical practices frequently invoked using the term sustainable development, require considerations of the dynamics of complex cultural arrangements in particular places, rather than assumptions of stability of either peoples or their ecological contexts.