The Northwest Passage as a Voyage to Myth and Adventure

Is the Arctic the last frontier? With text, audio, and video, historian Elena Baldassarri describes the historical struggle to find a passage through the perilous environments of the Far North. This is a chapter of the virtual exhibition “The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources.”

The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources

This exhibition tells the story of the Northwest Passage from the pursuit of a myth to the exploitation of natural resources. Historian Elena Baldassarri takes readers on a multimedia tour of the Arctic, featuring interactive maps, photographs, videos, and interviews with experts, scholars, and elders of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada.

Elena Baldassarri

About the author

Baldassarri, Elena

Roma Tre University, Italy

Elena Baldassarri is an Assistant Professor in North American History at the Humanistic Department of Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy. Her research interests focus on the history of Canada and the United States, and the relationship between cultural and social rights in Canada. Her most recent publications cover US environmental policy, Canada’s sovereignty over the lands and waters of the Arctic. In past she has obtained a Canada Grant (2012) at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin, a Faculty Research Grants/Bourses de recherche International Council for Canadian Studies (ICCS) (2007), and a Travel Grant from the Italian Association for Canadian Studies (AISC) (2006). She is the author of several articles and books including Canada e Quebec: Un problema di identità nazionale (1947–70) [Canada and Quebec: a problem of national identity]. Roma: Viella, 2009, and has edited Percorsi migratori e accoglienza fra storia e politiche di gestione [Migration routes and migrant reception: history and policies], edited with Pia G. Celozzi Baldelli. Roma: Aracne, 2009, and La Guerra Fredda nella satira politica Est/Ovest [Cold War and political satire] edited with Pia G. Celozzi Baldelli. Roma: Aracne, 2010.

Browse the exhibition

Oyster Culture in the Estuary Worlds of Southern Queensland

|

Perspectives Issue 2017/2

Frawley’s essay explores oyster populations and technologies in southern Queensland in the late nineteenth century.

Pelicans: Protection, Pests, and Private Property

|

Perspectives Issue 2017/1

Emily O’Gorman focuses on the Australian pelicans of South Australia’s Coorong region to examine how historical and contemporary ways of protecting these birds have been entangled with class politics, cross-cultural relationships, and the law.

About the Hearth: Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North

Through interdisciplinary work in the circumpolar north, About the Hearth refocuses on issues of material culture and social organization in indigenous and local communities. In the process, it makes some compelling ethnographic and theoretical arguments.

Read more about About the Hearth: Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North

Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies: Local Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia

Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies evaluates local and indigenous ecological knowledge which may help populations cope with insecurity due to environmental, sociopolitical and economic stressors, through positive examples from Southeast Asian islands.

Read more about Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies: Local Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia

Alistair Knox (1912–1986) and the Birth of Environmental Building in Australia

by Rachel Goldlust

|

Arcadia, Autumn 2016, no. 18

Read more about Alistair Knox (1912–1986) and the Birth of Environmental Building in Australia
Log in to post comments

Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and the Politics of Postcolonial Writing

|

Perspectives Issue 2016/4

Clapperton evaluates three existing frameworks for understanding Indigenous and non-Indigenous claims to know the environment. While each framework has its strengths, they reinforce a binary between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge and keep salvage paradigms of Indigenous knowledge alive. Clapperton calls for an enlarged definition of Indigenous knowledge that could account for boundary-crossing and Indigenous people “doing” science.

Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Politics: Case Studies from Canada and Western Europe

About this issue

These essays showcase examples from Canada and Western Europe, offering insights into how different forms of environmental knowledge and environmental politics come to be seen as legitimate or illegitimate.

Content

Bombs and Biodiversity: A Case Study of Military Environmentalism in Australia

by Benjamin Wilkie

|

Arcadia, Autumn 2016, no. 15

Read more about Bombs and Biodiversity: A Case Study of Military Environmentalism in Australia
Log in to post comments

Standing on Sacred Ground: Islands of Sanctuary

This episode of a four-part documentary series reveals the struggles of indigenous Hawaiians and Australian Aboriginals to protect their sacred areas from modern and industrial encroachment.

Read more about Standing on Sacred Ground: Islands of Sanctuary

indigenous knowledge

The Northwest Passage as a Voyage to Myth and Adventure

The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources

About the author

Browse the exhibition

About this issue