Becoming-with ice: ethnography of human-sea ice relationships in Ittoqqortoormiit (Kalaallit Nunaat)
Abstract
In the Book Chapter, Arjan Wardekker, Jeanne Gherardi and I, we share our observations from Kalaalllit Nunaat/Greenland of this time of the year characterized by an attitude of waiting, when the community is “buzzing with anticipation” (Krupnik et al. 2010, ix). We describe how seasonality is shaped by the presence or the absence of sea ice that directly connects with mobility, hunting and freedom. We describe both together “the waiting season”, the period preceding the formation of ice, and more widely what we call “interstitial seasons”, the periods when neither the sea and the ice are practicable, whether the ice is too thin or the sea populated with too many drifts. The latter are increasingly long due to rapid climate change, whose impacts are four times higher in the Arctic in terms of average air temperature. To extend our thoughts, I will introduce today the idea of becoming or Pinngortitaq, that is to say “a process of the world around him coming into existence through his engagement with it” (Lennert and Berge 2019, 4). This culturally embedded understanding challenges the assumption of a rupture of stability of a physical parameter as sea-ice changes are depicted among climate sciences. It also opens space to tell stories of human and sea-ice entanglements.