Date of Award

Summer 8-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Political Science & Geography

Program/Concentration

Graduate Program in International Studies

Committee Director

Regina Karp

Committee Member

Ingo Heidbrink

Committee Member

Peter Schulman

Abstract

The Inughuit, a small Indigenous population in Northwest Greenland with a rich history of subsistence hunting in one of Earth’s harshest environments, have long been portrayed in Western media and academic literature as symbols of vulnerability and resilience, often depicted more as icons of climate change and a culture under threat than as actual people with hopes and aspirations. Indigenous voices are strikingly absent from these Western accounts.

As the Arctic gains prominence amid rapid growth in climate discourse, regional geopolitics, and tourism, the implications of these representations become increasingly significant. When Western crisis narratives dominate discourse and shape regulatory policies, they risk obscuring the realities of daily life, marginalizing local voices, and misrepresenting both the nature of the challenges hunters face and their responses. In this context, there is an urgent need to include local perspectives in the academic literature.

In response, this dissertation adopts a community-centered approach to explore how Inughuit hunters interpret and navigate the changes and challenges of the modern world. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews, this study introduces the Thematic Relationships of Local Narratives (TRLN) Model, a novel analytical framework designed to identify, visualize, and center local narratives. In doing so, this dissertation challenges Western crisis narratives about Arctic Indigenous communities, revealing nuance, complexity, and profound ontological differences between Western and Indigenous worldviews.

Rather than depicting a community in crisis, this research presents a grounded portrait of active engagement with a globalized world. Specifically, it reveals that hunters see climate change not as an existential crisis but as a manageable condition of Arctic life, and that changes in subsistence traditions do not necessarily signal cultural erosion. Instead, the challenge often arises from the unintended consequences of well-intentioned external policies and the resulting loss of local agency.

These findings enrich postcolonial approaches and challenge researchers to reimagine how tradition is defined and how cultural continuity can be achieved through change, not in spite of it. It argues that, rather than asking whether subsistence traditions are disappearing, the more meaningful question is how cultural practices are being constantly redefined and reproduced under new conditions.

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DOI

10.25777/f4ys-ha98

ISBN

9798193216469

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