Inuit and American Assemblages of a Cold War Radar Base

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology of Marginalization and Resilience in the Northeast", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper examines the results from a multi-modal survey conducted on the northeastern-most coast of North America. It focuses on the assemblage of a Cold War radar base constructed near the community of Hopedale, Nunatsiavut, the Inuit self-governing region of Labrador, Canada. This assemblage reveals the dual nature of the material culture present at the site, reflecting both militaristic and leisure-related items prioritized and shipped to the sub-Arctic by the US, as well as the significant waste generated by excessive technological development during the 1950s-60s. Further, this assemblage (and its absences—i.e., items removed from the base by Nunatsiavummiut) reveals the way that Inuit reckon in the present and past with US Air Force occupation. I argue that Inuit circumvent slow and acute forms of violence wrought by the USAF through adaptive re-use of the radar site to 1) navigate the landscape and 2) facilitate practices that go beyond mere subsistence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Archaeology of Marginalization and Resilience in the Northeast

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow