The Arctic Beyond the Map: Inuit Knowledge, Sea Ice and the Northwest Passage
Updated: 2 days ago
AN Interview with Dr. Claudio Aporta
When we look at a map of the Arctic, we tend to see coastlines, islands, shipping routes and vast stretches of ice. But a map cannot tell us how a landscape is understood by the people who have travelled across it for generations.
This distinction matters as the Arctic becomes more accessible. The retreat of sea ice is changing traditional travel routes while bringing increased shipping and tourism to communities that have their own histories, knowledge systems and concerns about the scale and consequences of outside activity.
At DeSalvio Travel and Sarasota Cruise Agency, we believe that meaningful exploration requires more than choosing an itinerary. It calls for an interest in the people who know a region intimately and an understanding of the places we visit beyond what can be seen from a ship.
For this conversation, we spoke with Claudio Aporta, Professor and Canadian Chair of Marine Environmental Protection at the World Maritime University (WMU), where he also heads the Specialization in Ocean Sustainability, Governance and Management, under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Originally from Argentina, Aporta pursued his master's degree and PhD in anthropology at the University of Alberta. His research took him to Igloolik in the eastern Canadian Arctic, where he spent months travelling alongside Inuit hunters and elders, studying their knowledge of sea ice, navigation and the landscape.
His observations offer a particularly valuable perspective on Arctic navigation: how experienced travellers interpret wind, currents, snowdrifts and changing ice conditions, and how detailed oral descriptions preserve knowledge of routes across immense distances. We also discuss the history of the Northwest Passage and the challenges facing Arctic communities as environmental conditions change. These skills are key in navigating in the Arctic and make western technology and insights useless at times.
We invite you to read this conversation and consider what becomes visible when we look at the Arctic not as an empty expanse, but as a landscape with a long human history. Our thanks to Claudio Aporta for sharing his research and perspective.
When the Sea Becomes Land
I originally came from Argentina and went to Canada for my master's degree and PhD in anthropology at the University of Alberta. At the time, I was interested in the anthropology of technology and the relationship between people and technology: how they influence and change one another.
In 1998, I heard about Inuit hunters in Igloolik, a small island in the eastern Canadian Arctic, who were beginning to use GPS. The landscape there is relatively flat, so navigation was an interesting case study. But once I arrived and started travelling with people, I realized there was much more to understand.
One of the first things that struck me was their relationship with sea ice. We often look at ice from the perspective of shipping, as an obstacle that prevents vessels from moving. For the Inuit I worked with, it was an extension of the land.
The fast ice, attached to the shore, could remain for about eight months of the year. It became a surface for travelling and harvesting. There was even a kind of topography to it, with formations that appeared in the same locations year after year. People told me that they, or their parents, had been born on the ice. British explorers had recorded seasonal settlements there as early as the 1820s.
There was a history on the ice that was easy to overlook if you only saw it as something to cross.
Reading What Others Cannot See
I spent months travelling alongside experienced Inuit hunters and elders, covering thousands of kilometres by dog sled and snowmobile. Through participant observation, I gradually became part of the group and took part in their activities as much as I could. Building those relationships was essential to the research.
What impressed me most was the depth of their environmental knowledge. An experienced traveller does not simply look at the ice and decide whether it appears safe. They understand how the ice forms and breaks up, how winds interact with tides and currents, and how these forces can change conditions within a short period.
Near the edge of the fast ice, for example, formations can appear suitable for travel but later detach because of changes in the tide and wind. Understanding those processes is critical.
“Even though you might think that it's quite empty, there is probably centuries or even thousands of years of constant use of those places by the community. So it's more of a social space than an empty space, even though it might look empty to you.”
This knowledge is holistic. It combines observations that an outsider might not even recognize as relevant. Stories of people who have drifted away on ice are also preserved in oral history. They communicate accumulated experience across generations, including warnings about what can happen when conditions change.
A Landscape Remembered in Extraordinary Detail
I was particularly interested in mobility: how people moved from one place to another and how they remembered their routes.
I sometimes asked people to explain how they would reach a particular place. Rather than simply giving directions, they would reconstruct the journey through a detailed description of the horizon as it unfolded along the trail.
They might begin with the landscape around them, describe a reddish rock farther along the route, explain when to turn in relation to the prevailing wind, and then continue with the next landmarks. These narratives could describe routes of hundreds of miles.
It was an extraordinary level of spatial memory.
Traditional navigation also involved a sophisticated understanding of direction. Instead of relying on north, south, east and west, travellers used the prevailing winds as a reference system. There were names for the principal winds and directions between them. Snowdrifts formed by the prevailing winds, particularly from the west-northwest, could serve almost like a compass needle. Currents, tides and stars provided additional clues.
GPS can be extremely useful, including in conditions of zero visibility. But it tells you where you are, not necessarily what lies ahead or which areas may be dangerous. The knowledge required to travel safely cannot be reduced to a set of coordinates.
The Northwest Passage and a Changing Arctic
European explorers searching for the Northwest Passage often imagined an open sea connecting the Atlantic and Pacific. The reality was far more complicated. The Canadian Arctic is an immense archipelago, with thousands of islands and narrow passages. Routes through the Igloolik region could be particularly difficult for ships because of accumulated ice and restricted waterways.
Inuit knowledge was important to the explorers' understanding of the region. Some Inuit became cartographers in their own right, drawing remarkable maps of coastlines and other places for European expeditions.
Today, climate change is altering the conditions that have shaped travel for generations. Sea ice forms later and breaks up earlier, forcing communities to adapt their traditional routes and the seasons in which they can travel.
Learning from Inuit Food Traditions
Coming from Argentina, I had a lot to learn about dealing with the Arctic cold. I arrived with my own ideas about the clothing I should wear and the kind of food that would keep me warm, but I struggled quite a bit at first. Over time, I began eating what the Inuit were eating, and that made a real difference.
I remember the example of Arctic char, a fish similar to salmon. When people caught it while fishing, I would have a piece myself, even when it was frozen. I found that my body seemed to feel warmer almost immediately. It was a very different approach from what I had expected. I might have imagined that a hot bowl of noodle soup would be the obvious choice in extreme cold, but my experience with Inuit food traditions taught me that adapting to the environment could mean rethinking some of my own assumptions.
Traditional Inuit clothing was another subject where I came to understand how much had changed. Clothing made from materials such as caribou skin and sealskin remains part of Inuit life, but making it requires considerable harvesting, while many people now have jobs and attend school. Synthetic clothing has become more common. The relationship between traditional practices and modern life is complex, shaped by changing circumstances and pressures on the environment.
The Arctic and Tourism
The Arctic is also becoming more accessible to outside visitors. Economic opportunities can be welcome, but they depend on proper consultation, preparation and a scale that makes sense for the communities involved. Small, isolated settlements may have limited services and resources, and an incident involving a cruise ship could place considerable demands on them.
“I think respect and boundaries are the main elements when it comes to cruises, not only in the Arctic but especially there, because the communities are small and isolated.”
If I could offer one piece of advice to someone visiting the Arctic, it would be to put away the technology for a while and experience the place directly. And remember that what looks like an empty landscape may have been used by people for centuries, even thousands of years. It is a social space, with its own history, knowledge and routes.
For more information and publications of Dr. Claudio Aporta:
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