Northern History of Science at the History of Science Society Conference

Yesterday the 2017 History of Science Society Conference kicked off in Toronto.  I attended one of the first sessions, and heard three fascinating papers:

- "The 'Forgotten' Expedition: Chronicity, Sovereignty, and the Search for Inuit Cancer, 1903-1960," by Jennifer Fraser, of the University of Toronto.
- "Psychological Fallout: Radiation, Indigeneity, and Cold War Memories in the Alaskan Arctic," by Tess Lanzarotta of Yale University.
- "Northern Psychology: Isolation Research on the Mid-Canada Line," by Matthew Wiseman, of the University of Toronto.

These were three interesting perspectives on the history of health sciences in the north.  They were also excellent examples of careful and critical research, digging deep into the motives and perspectives of scientists who came from the south to examine the health of northern Indigenous people.  The relations between these scientific activities and their political contexts -- anxieties about Canadian sovereignty (in Jennifer's paper), and about Cold War security (in Tess's and Matthew's papers) -- were especially intriguing.

But what I found probably most interesting were the comments both in the papers themselves and in the following discussion, about the positioning of researchers that come from the south to study northerners.  Both the presenters, and Matt Farish of the University of Toronto, who delivered a terrific commentary, put many of these issues on the table.  It's also an issue I've been wrestling with myself for the last few years, as I've continued working on my history of northern science.

Matt highlighted the ideas expressed by Emilie Cameron in her recent book, Far Off Metal River.  As Matt stressed, this is really an important book, that anyone doing northern history should study carefully (and in fact, it's relevant to studying history in any context of unequal power relations).  Emilie considered how non-Inuit (Qablunaat) understand the north, in the context of the continuing influence of colonial perspectives on the environment, knowledge, and northerners themselves -- as seen, for example, when Inuit "Traditional Ecological Knowledge" gets plugged into environmental accounts that are framed in terms of science and settlers' assumptions about what counts as reliable evidence.  As she explains, it can be difficult for people from outside the north to understand the relational nature of northern stories: that they are not just sources of information, but are themselves part of the ties that bind people together and link them with the land.

As Matt and the panel participants stressed, this view has big implications for how we should be doing northern history.  How, as we write this history, do we take into consideration our tacit assumptions about reliable historical evidence -- so often shaped by the accessibility of written records -- that, implicitly, diminish the significance of northern memories and stories, or that fail to acknowledge the relational nature of these stories?

Studying the history of science in the north sharpens this challenge: added to our assumptions about the reliability of written evidence, is the history of scientists themselves dismissing (and so failing to record or credit) Indigenous stories.  And the consequences of this dismissal are unavoidable as we study the archives of northern science.

These are interesting challenges, worth considering by anyone studying northern history, and it was great to have an opportunity to think about this yesterday at the History of Science Society conference.    It's surely a good sign, at any rate, that such questions are now being addressed at conferences like this one.  As this panel showed, we can always count on students to push such questions into the foreground.