Illuminating traces: enactments of responsibility in practices of Arctic river tourists and inhabitants

Abstract

If taken for granted, ideas about nature underpinning nature-based tourism will often obscure or displace human livelihoods existing within a landscape. The result, whether characterised as colonial or ethnocentric, will in the minds of some correspond with injustice, contemporary or historical. In seeking to avoid static and privileging perspectives of ‘nature’, this article illuminates relational enactments of responsibility in the contrasting practices of tourists and Indigenous inhabitants of a Canadian Arctic riverscape. This intention is informed by first, the relevance of thinking ontologically about nature and, second, the aspects of Emmanuel Levinas' responsibility ethics for identifying relationships amid cultural difference. Empirically, the paper draws on participatory and visual research with guided canoeists and Inuit inhabitants of the Thelon River, illuminating that (a) culturally diverse practices contribute to making and remaking Thelon natures contemporaneously and (b) these practices can be understood as expressions of responsibility to and for others connected to personal and social–cultural identity. In addition to situating river tourists and inhabitants at the centre of responsible tourism debates, the article introduces theoretical, conceptual and methodological spaces for understanding and analysing moral engagements with others in creating culturally sensitive tourism natures and enabling transformation.

Keywords:

• nature-based tourism
• ontology
• nature
• responsibility
• Thelon River
• Arctic Canada
• participatory research

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the contributions of the research participants, the community of Baker Lake and Canoe Artic, Inc. Anautalik and Alex Hall were especially supportive and generous in sharing knowledge, time and food. The authors are grateful to the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University, the southern headquarters for the research discussed in this article, and the funding support of the Government of Canada International Polar Year, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and Carleton University. They also thank David Fennell, Sanjay Nepal and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and helpful suggestions.

Notes

For simplicity and consistency, ‘Arctic’ is used throughout this manuscript to denote both Subarctic and Arctic biomes (Bone, 2009).

Qablunaat is an Inuktitut word for non-Inuit people often used by residents of Nunavut's Kivalliq region (west of Hudson Bay). An individual non-Inuk is qablunaaq.

Recent revisions to the Canadian Tri-Council research ethics policy provide greater flexibility for university review boards, researchers, and Indigenous communities working closely together (CIHR, NSERC, & SSHRC, 2010). In particular, more support exists for the Indigenous protocol of granting participants the choice of being named in research, which signals special knowledge-sharing relationships and the participants’ custodial ownership of that knowledge (Wilson, 2008). In this spirit, tourist and inhabitant participants of this research were given the choice of being named or not. These choices are reflected in the way participants are identified in Section 5.

The number of annual independent canoeists along the Thelon is not monitored but is estimated to be fewer than 100. In 2010, at least three other operators advertised guided canoe expeditions along different sections of the Thelon. One of these also offered wildlife photography trips that departed by motorboat from Baker Lake. Indigenous inhabitants of the Thelon do not own these operations and are seldom employed by them. During the span of this research, Inuit-owned outfitters in Baker Lake appeared to be waning.

‘Anautalik’ is the self-selected pseudonym of a research participant/assistant in Baker Lake who requested that her name not be identified.