Exploitation and Survival: Indigenous Americans and the Commercial Whaling Industry

Native American engagement with commercial whaling connects to broader questions about the social impact of extractive industries on indigenous communities from 1492 to #idlenomore. Subsistence whaling had long existed among coastal societies in the northeast, Pacific Northwest, and Arctic when English settlers commoditized the hunt in the 17th century. Transoceanic voyages in the 18th and 19th centuries simultaneously employed indigenous people whose terrestrial resources were decreasing and depleted whale populations vital to Arctic subsistence. Archaeological concerns with colonial landscapes, ecological change, and indigenous dispossession must include Native negotiations of capitalism in maritime contexts. We invite studies of whaling as an adaptive strategy and a catalyst for cultural exchange and identity formation. We also welcome perspectives from community archaeology and revitalization movements on the discourses of whaling as environmental degradation vs. cultural survival.