Visions of Adaptation: Indigenous Video Production in a Transforming Greenland

Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

This award will provide support for CoPI Hunter Snyder, who is a research associate at the Arctic Studies Center, to travel to Greenland to do pre-Dissertation Improvement Grant proposal consultation with local scholars and community members. In addition, the CoPI would do a proof of concept for his Photovoices methodology in Greenland by engaging in trial video education and production training with local community youth. The eventual topic for the video is how the Inuit balance between traditional hunting and fishing and prospective work in the newly developing mining industry. Building on over 4,000 years of Inuit storytelling, and the CoPI?s expertise in video production and ethnography, the researcher hopes to collaborate with Greenlanders to capture and analyze their knowledge about changing livelihoods, the lived experience of varying types of labor, and the local meaning of social and environmental change through visual media.