Credit: This video was originally published by the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center on December 1, 2021. COURTESY THE SMITHSONIAN ARCTIC STUDIES CENTER AND THE INUIT ART FOUNDATION.
Early in the conversation, Theresie Tungilik describes Inuit art sovereignty as: “to be able to have our own Indigenous intellectual property, whether it be tangible or intangible. We do have that right to protect our art, to protect our creations—even our ideas need to be protected…”
She goes on to describe the roots of this notion in Inuit traditions, and how artistic sovereignty has long been underscored by interconnectedness—the mutual reliance of community members upon each other’s skills and creative labour: “Everything that was made into law regarding productions and creations, it was meant to respect the person who came up with the idea first… If we look at yesteryear—the old igloo days—they really had good laws that kept peace with everyone. It showed that there was respect for the creators: the first people who had ideas, the people who were willing to share their wealth of skills with other people… We could only survive as a people by sharing.”
The panellists highlighted the need for greater education on Inuit art sovereignty and explored how educational conversations could be translated into advocacy. As Dalee Sambo Dorough says: “Inuit are… like 0.000001 per cent of the world’s population, but at the same time, we have extraordinary capacity. We have extraordinary ingenuity. We have extraordinary ability to adapt. I think that if we find the roots to organize around these issues of Inuit art sovereignty—especially by the Inuit artists themselves—we can’t go wrong at chipping away at all the barriers and challenges that do exist for us.”
At the Alaska office of the Arctic Studies Center, staff work together with Alaska Native Elders, knowledge-keepers, artists, educators and cultural organizations on collaborative research, education and outreach programs. They also work with colleagues across Alaska and the Arctic. Their work benefits from the exhibition Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska at the Center’s office within the Anchorage Museum. The exhibition features more than 600 heritage pieces on long-term loan from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian collections, and it was created in collaboration with Alaska Natives, including research, layout, selected pieces, central videos, text and book essays. For content from the exhibition and programs, and for educational resources and edited webinar videos, please the Learning Lab site “Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center in Alaska” at https://learninglab.si.edu/org/sasc-ak.
