THE DRAMA OF DISCOVERY
Inuit claims to Franklin shipwrecks and surrounding waters challenge long-held narratives about the Arctic
Inuit claims challenge narrative
Something dramatic is emerging from the Arctic ice and it is not just John Franklin’s recently discovered ships Erebus and Terror. The discovery of Franklin’s ships, lost searching for the Northwest Passage in 1845, has been overshadowed by dramatic revelations of archeological skulduggery, political corruption, illegal searches, and at least one police investigation surrounding disputes between private searchers and archaeologists. Such squabbling has always marred the history of exploration. But there is something unprecedented in the public dispute surrounding the ownership of these shipwrecks, signalling a dramatic turn in the approach to Indigenous sovereignty being pursued by the Inuit.
According to international shipwreck law, Franklin’s Royal Navy ships belong to Great Britain. And according to a 1997 agreement between Britain and Canada, Britain pledged to transfer ownership of the wrecks to Canada. But that non-binding agreement predates the 1999 creation of the territory of Nunavut via the Nunavut Lands Claims Agreement, which established Inuit ownership of all archeological sites and artifacts within its boundaries. As the drama of discovery unfolds, Inuit claims to the shipwrecks and their surrounding waters dramatically challenge our narratives of the Arctic.
As recent stories in the Ottawa Citizen, the Guardian and the Times indicate, an international controversy over Inuit claims that Franklin artifacts are being removed without their permission has escalated in anticipation of a major exhibition opening at Britain’s National Maritime Museum later this month. In eloquent letters addressed to ministers and even the Canadian prime minister himself, Nunavut and Inuit officials have claimed ownership of Erebus and Terror and are laying out a vision of their rights to their waters and lands that signals a new era in Indigenous sovereignty.
The Inuit are demanding a meaningful say in what happens to these shipwrecks, who gets to tell their stories, and where their artifacts should be exhibited — in London, Ottawa, or the Arctic? The consequences reach far beyond a dispute over heritage or international law.
These Arctic shipwrecks serve as a rare and valuable new kind of undersea treasure — in addition to oil and gas — in current negotiations that Inuit are undertaking in pursuit of self-determination. In 2014, Nunavut began devolution negotiations, a process to begin the transfer of control over land, water, and seabed resources from Ottawa to Nunavut’s Inuit majority. In February 2015, the Nunavut premier complained to Canada’s government that Erebus and Terror lie “in the waters between the islands in the Nunavut archipelago,” which “constitute internal waters of our Territory” and “will be the subject of future discussions between our Governments as we proceed with devolution.” This subtle redesignation — not the “Canadian archipelago” or the Northwest Passage, but the internal waters of the Nunavut archipelago — signals a significant assertion of Indigenous rights at a time of heightened interest in Arctic resources, travel and development.
Parks Canada apparently ignored this claim, however, and continued negotiating over the ships exclusively with Britain well into August 2016. Journalists again revealed that as late as July 2016 Parks Canada pondered “do we want to be proactive and seek similar agreement with Inuit community groups” as they had with Britain, “Or could/should we broach it only once ownership has been formally transferred?” In other words, “consultation” after the decisions were made remained the order of the day.
The discovery of Terror two months later was followed not only by more scandal but by a repeat of this pattern in which embarrassing stories in the press compelled Canada to “consult” with Inuit. “Shared ownership” of Erebus and Terror is what the Canadian and British governments are now promising, but as late as May 2017, the Inuit remained out of the loop regarding negotiations over the shipwrecks, their artifacts, and the planned exhibition this month in Britain.
The Inuit claims to sovereignty over Erebus and Terror — and more importantly the seabed beneath them — require us to step back and see the bigger picture surrounding these iconic ships. Instead of fixating on “the Franklin mystery,” we should be asking how the ships came to be there in the first place, how we came to find them when we did, and how these questions are related.
Erebus and Terror are iconic artifacts of Victorian Big Science and of British imperial and naval might, the largest and most expensive scientific instruments on earth when they sailed. They are relics of a distant culture that entered the Arctic with a fatal combination of scientific and imperial hubris. Today, climate change generated in the distant industrial world, with its own imperial hubris and voracious approach to resource extraction, is rapidly threatening the Arctic and its people, while also making it possible to locate such cultural resources (along with oil and gas) beneath the melting ice. The real challenge the discovery of these relics poses to us today is whether western democracy is serious about sharing authority and sovereignty — not merely “consulting”— with Indigenous people.
Franklin never asked the Inuit for permission to sail in their waters. His allies never sought authorization to hunt and survey on their lands, ransack Inuit graves for traces of their lost countrymen, or erect markers claiming possession for their Queen. The shipwreck law of “sovereign immunity” came later still, as did the ongoing dispute over the status of the Northwest Passage, whether Canadian internal waters or an international straight. And neither framework of sovereignty incorporated Inuit perspectives on the waters and coasts they call home.
Now that these Victorian ships have arrived in the 21st century, their stewardship and significance need to be addressed through the new possibilities for sovereignty available today. This means Erebus and Terror must be freed from the narrowly nationalistic and backward-looking uses to which Canada’s previous government had put them. Former prime minister Stephen Harper had announced upon the discovery of Erebus, that Franklin’s ships “laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.”
An absurd claim, as the nation of Canada did not exist when Franklin sailed and as the Inuit had occupied Nunavut for a thousand years before. But also an ironic claim, if we rethink it through the new kinds of sovereignty that Indigenous people are currently pursuing across national lines, for example in the Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic. Perhaps Erebus and Terror can serve as new instruments of sovereignty in a post-colonial Arctic.
Erebus and Terror lie in the waters of the Northwest Passage — tallurugik is its Inuit name. The ships speak eloquently to us of the Arctic archipelago as a global meeting place of cultures extending over centuries, so much more than a space of international conflict and resource extraction.
They are artifacts of encounter and disaster, but do not inherently embody a national foundational myth — the beginning of Arctic history as the arrival of the British. Instead, they should inaugurate a new conversation that goes beyond romanticized wrecks, and that recognizes Inuit people’s sovereign rights to the waters and seabeds in which the ships lie.
The nation of Canada did not exist when Franklin sailed and the Inuit had occupied Nunavut for a thousand years before.