Labrador Inuit and Europeans, Contact and Long-term Relations

The earliest Inuit migration from Alaska to the eastern Arctic in the 13th century coincided with Inuit introduction to Norse material culture. Subsequent migrations brought Inuit into northern Labrador in the late 15th century and a century later their encampments dotted the length of the Labrador coast as far south as the Quebec North Shore, and in time also northwestern Newfoundland. The evidence increasingly suggests that there was never an extended period when Labrador Inuit did not have European goods, obtained either through direct or indirect processes. This is especially true for southern Labrador. Papers in this session consider a many-layered contact landscape. Topics may include Inuit as arbiters of contact relations; dissecting notions of contact; the shifting tenor of cross-cultural interactions from the 1500s to the 1800s; maintenance and viability of Inuit society over the long term; recent archaeological and archival research.