Envisioning Arctic Futures: Digital and Otherwise

• Published in: Museum Anthropology Review
• Main Authors: Bodenhorn, Barbara, Ulturgasheva, Olga
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Indiana University Press 2018
• Subjects: digital media; education; games; Eveny; Iñupiaq; Iñupiaq youth; human-animal relations; environmental uncertainty; narratives; new museology; Arctic; Inupiaq; Alaska; Siberia
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/article/view/23184; https://doi.org/10.14434/mar.v12i2.23184

The production of Never Alone (a recent video game incorporating Inupiaq narrative traditions and aesthetics) is one example of how indigenous peoples use digital technologies to spark young people’s interest in their own knowledge. Using comparative material from game players in Siberia and Alaska, this article explores interfaces between the knowledge needed to play such games and that required for hunting in real time. Combining attention to decolonizing education and new museology strategies, the authors suggest that the pedagogical impact of such games is strengthened when combined with face-to-face interactions with local knowledge holders. This, in turn, suggests the importance of recognizing the work of the museum as its capacity to animate knowledge, not simply to store it.