The End of Nature? Inughuit Life on the Edge of Time.

MARINE mammals; ECOSYSTEMS; ANIMAL species; ICE; OPENING ceremonies

The Inughuit of Northwest Greenland are hunters of marine mammals and other animal species of the High Arctic ecological system. Their life is rapidly changing along with the warming Arctic, and they experience massive changes in the environment that always sustained them. This fuels a question of the end of nature, to be addressed through three different natural materialities: ice, water, and land – all of them deeply infiltrating social life. The ice, now melting rapidly, has provided the infrastructure of moving into and about in the region. The water, now opening widely, has made marine mammals the major game. The land, now slowly expanding, increasingly features as a repository of unknown resources. It is suggested that the Inughuit have always dwelled within an 'ending of nature', seen as a non-linear process deeply embedded in larger geo-social processes of multiple temporalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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