Problematic Postage: Canada’s Claim to the Arctic through a Postage Stamp : Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History, Summer 2020, no. 25: Problematic Postage: Canada’s Claim to the Arctic through a Postage Stamp

• Main Author: Dumas, Daniel
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany 2020
• Subjects: environmental history; environmental humanities; settler colonialism; Canada; indigenous people; stamps; Arctic; Cornwallis; eskimo*; inuit
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5282/rcc/9064; http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/9064/

Settler societies have simultaneously attempted to extinguish Indigenous claims to lands while appropriating aspects of Indigenous cultures to differentiate themselves on the global stage. They have done this through a variety of methods, including the issuance of stamps as symbols of a greater national narrative. This article seeks to demystify one such example, the 1955 “Eskimo hunter.” It is argued that this stamp, issued by the Canadian Post Office Department, sought to incorporate Inuit culture into the Canadian imaginary while strengthening the nation’s tenuous claim to the High Arctic during the 1950s, coinciding with the relocation of several Inuit families to Ellesmere and Cornwallis islands.