From Placelessness to Place: An Ethnographer's Experience of Growing to Know Places at Sea

Author: Tyrrell, Martina

Source: Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology, Volume 10, Number 2, 2006 , pp. 220-238(19)

Publisher: BRILL

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Abstract:

How do we come to know the places we inhabit? What do places mean to us? What associations do we make with them? As an ethnographer and outsider I have grown, in a small way, to know places at sea along the northwest coast of Hudson Bay. In this paper I explore my growth into that knowledge, and how the sea became transformed from a blank space to a place filled with memory and association. I compare my short experience with that of local Inuit, who make use of the sea on a daily basis. Where and how do Inuit learn about places at sea? And how important are those places in their use of and movement through their marine environment?

Keywords: ENSKILMENT; ENVIRONMENT; INUIT; PLACE; SEA

Document Type: Regular paper

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853506777965785

Publication date: 2006-07-01