Circumpolar Connections

""This stunning and revelatory book speaks collectively of maps and compasses, but not the assumed ones. taktugziun in ugiuvak--fog--is both its compass and its form of navigation. taktugziun--its wetness, its density--envelops the contours of the land, it reveals an intimacy and depth of knowledge that requires no invented tools or outside technologies. In Circumpolar Geographies, maps are embodied--indeed they are the body--as well as radical kinship that is held in story, song, poems, in hand drawn marks, in sewn stitches, and in tattoos inscribed like scores. Circumpolar Geographies is a book like no other. It is a collection of impressions, of ideas, of images, of narratives refigured as non- and anti- colonial maps by some of the most radical Indigenous thinkers and makers working today. And their maps aren't the usual ones, theirs are centered around the sun standing in as the North Pole, such in as in elle-hánsa/hans ragnar Mathisen/Keviselie's 1990 circumpolar map davviálbmogat that forms an apt cartography for this collection. davviálbmogat doesn't create a hierarchy between land and water, between human and animal, between colonial languages and Indigenous mother tongues, between the secular and spiritual planes. davviálbmogat uses the sámi goaddis (the drum) as its methodology, a reminder that songs are maps, too, and that they sing other worlds into being.""--Candice Hopkins, curator and scholar, citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation ""Circumpolar Connections conveys the richness, diversity, and power of Indigenous cultural expressions of the Arctic. As these works bespeak deep ties between Native peoples and their lands, they demonstrate the role of creative practices in place-making. Beautifully illustrated and designed, this remarkable book is itself a work of art.""--Shari M. Huhndorf, Professor of Native American Studies, University of California, Berkeley