The Centre of the World: Robert McGhee’s Inter-Connected Actic

Abstract

Centre of World: Robert McGhee's Inter-Connected Actic Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of Arctic World. By Robert McGhee. Toronto: Key Porter Books; Gatineau, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2004. 296 pp. $39.95 (hardcover). ISBN 1-55263-637-2. Ian MacRae As those who have researched in far North will know, Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP), from its base in resettled community of Resolute Bay (Qaussittuq) on Cornwallis Island, provides much of ground and air support for field work in Canadian High Arctic. PCSP control room can be a high-stress and high-stakes place, where Twin Otters and helicopters are deployed across thousands of kilometres of formidable terrain under fickle and often treacherous conditions. One afternoon a few years ago I was at PCSP, checking weather on Ellesmere Island, waiting to fly out to Alexandra Fiord, and as I waited I couldn't help but overhear station's chief operator who, in between firing off directions and co-ordinates to far-off pilots and ground crews into his headset-umbilicus, busily moving people and fuel and gear across Arctic archipelago, was humming old Janis Joplin tune, Me and Bobby McGee. Robert McGhee was out there somewhere, he told me, digging through a pile of old bones. It was not a slight but an homage, one that should serve as introduction enough for an eminent Canadian archaeologist, curator of Arctic Archeology at Canadian Museum of Civilization, and for his latest book-length work, Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of Arctic World (2004). If they are singing about you at PCSP, then this is good enough for me. Last Imaginary Place is a book that is truly circumpolar in scope and articulation. A compendium of some 35 years of thinking and travelling and working in Arctic, it has feel of a summarizing effort, one that treats deep patterns of climate and language and flows of goods and people across top of world. Its structure is episodic, with each of 12 chapters treating a specific region and time (the first two more generally than rest), such that entire Arctic region is covered. chapters are only loosely linked into an overall thesis, which slowly emerges as evidence accumulates, that Inuit are not a timeless, isolated, primeval people, but are our contemporaries, alive in this same historical time. Along with other northern peoples, asserts McGhee, Inuit are active participants in globalized flows of resources and economy, and are well prepared and equally willing today to manage their relationships with modern world, as indeed they always have been: The small nations of north have histories as long and as complex as those of more southerly peoples, a fact that archaeologists are continually and surprisingly demonstrating (McGhee 2004, 41). establish a baseline for his argument, McGhee reaches back to beginnings of Homo erectus in Africa, and moves forward through warming and cooling events that have impacted human and animal migrations throughout time. He traces Western perceptions of Arctic in ancient Greek thought, apocryphal escapades of Irish monk St. Brendan, Norse and their societies in Iceland and Greenland, Basque whalers and French fur traders, and English and vanity of their follies in a frozen world. Inuit shamanism and beauty, security and comfort (35) of Arctic life for hunting peoples are considered, as are European voyagers such as Thomas Hearne (who wins some respect travelling overland with Dene) and Martin Frobisher (who, mining for gold on a bleak Arctic island, gains little). Peary and Cook and their race to pole are taken up, with emphasis on support of Inughuit, local Inuit of northwestern Greenland, unsung Sherpas of north. McGhee is clear in his conclusion that Arctic has largely served as a foil, a blank screen for West to project its fears of death and imaginings of paradise: To most southerners, says McGhee, the Arctic remains what it was to their counterparts centuries and perhaps even millennia ago: ultimate otherworld (19). …