Do You See Ice? Inuit and Americans at Home and Away by Karen Routledge

Abstract

Reviewed by: Do You See Ice? Inuit and Americans at Home and Away by Karen Routledge Ashley Allen Do You See Ice? Inuit and Americans at Home and Away. Karen Routledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xxviii+223, photographs, maps, notes. $50.00, hardcover. ISBN 978-0-226-58013-5. In Do You See Ice? Inuit and Americans at Home and Away, Parks Canada historian Karen Routledge examines the complexities and nuances of home. To the Inuit of Cumberland Sound, on Baffin Island, home is what Americans have long considered to be inhospitable, barren, and impossibly cold. Conversely, the home these Americans longed for proved itself to be equally foreboding to the Inuit. This book considers the stories of Inuit and Americans from the 1850s through the early 1920s and their views on the Arctic, as well as the tensions caused by their differences. Notably, Routledge does not discuss the Americans in the context of exploration or heroic endurance. Colonialism, the reason they were on Baffin Island, and its impacts on the region are first mentioned early in the prologue and felt throughout the book, especially in the Americans' mischaracterizations of the Arctic as bleak and unwelcoming. Across four chapters, Routledge considers the different worldviews of Inuit and Qallunaat (non-Indigenous outsiders) and how these worldviews framed their encounters with, and relationships to, their respective "homes" during the time period. In her consideration of home, Routledge focuses on the distinct geographic locations of Cumberland Sound and the northeastern United States as sites of migratory exchange. The first chapter focuses on American whalers in Cumberland Sound, leaving home in hopes of economic security and a better future. The second reflects on the stories of Hannah and Ipiirvik, an Inuit couple traveling the United States with American explorer Charles Francis Hall and encountering peculiar situations at his request, including a stint as human exhibits at P. T. Barnum's American Museum. The third examines Americans and Inuit together, using the Lady Franklin Bay expedition (1881–84) as a case study in discomfort and unfamiliarity far from home and dissecting how a disaster and the following sensationalism situated the Arctic as a dangerous and decidedly unhomelike place. Chapter 4 focuses on the Inuit who remained on Cumberland Sound, and the memories of their encounters with Qallunaat. It is here where the book shines brightest, focusing on the home that outsiders continuously [End Page 178] classify as "foreign" as just that: a home. This home just became intertwined with economic processes, international shipping companies, a physical landscape that required more perseverance and flexibility than most, and the stories that were told long aft er all of that was gone. Throughout the book, Routledge encourages the reader to reflect on questions of authenticity, home, and what it feels like to be an outsider. She makes sure to avoid placing either the Inuit or the Americans in the background of these histories, instead taking care to consider each place on its own terms within the worldview of her subjects, many times highlighting the vast differences between how each group viewed their home. The concept of home as a complex, intangible ideal is understood with equal complexity. Inuit homelands were built on ideas of mobility, and the stories she highlights display the importance of memory, experience, and an understanding of the physical landscape. This ability to adapt is highlighted in Hannah and Ipiirvik's story, where they eventually made a home in Groton, Connecticut, while missing the integral parts of their spiritual world that could only be found on Cumberland Sound. The American whalers' stories are treated with equal care, as Routledge discusses their yearning for familiarity once winter came upon the Sound and finding it in material objects like books and games, as well as in their camaraderie with one another and the local people they came to rely on. This story also does not ignore conflict. In many instances Inuit and Americans differ on their understanding of the Arctic, particularly regarding the colonial histories at play during the time frame covered within the text. Still, Routledge encourages the reader to practice empathy while reading, asking questions about the feelings of these subjects, their...