The Art of Ethnography
An ethnography is a technique used to study and learn about a person or group. Typically it involves a small group of people in their home environment. Ethnographies are supposed to provide both descriptive and interpretive information and it's up to the ethnographer to decide what observations and details are significant.
The master of this genre, especially as it's been applied to people of the Arctic, was Knud Rasmussen. Born in Jakobshavn, Greenland (known today as Ilullissat) to a Danish missionary father and an Inuit mother, Rasmussen lived with a foot in each culture. Inuit was his first language, but he could read and write in Danish. Rasmussen made a career of participating in exploratory Arctic expeditions, writing down what he learned of the Inuit and their traditions and serving as translator.
Translating from the Inuktitut dialects into Danish or English is said to be extraordinarily difficult. Many Inuit words have no European equivalent or require several European words to approximate. Rasmussen's dual-culture upbringing gave him the ability to understand what the Inuit told him with greater depth and comprehension than any other interpretor of the day. His most famous work is the "5th Thule Expedition", in which his documents his two year trek across the Arctic, from Greenland to the west coast of Alaska. During that trip, Rasmussen recorded Inuit legends that, were it not for him, would very likely have been lost in the intervening years.
I don't have any larger goal for my ethnographies beyond capturing what I see. I don't expect to affect change or even inform many people since few folks are interested in the subject to begin with and even fewer will ever learn about what I'm doing. So what's the point? Well, as Sir Edmund Hillary once explained, I do it simply because I can.
Individual Ethnographies
Husband and Wife Retired from Hunting
Moriasaq, Greenland
Hunter
Qaanaaq, Greenland
Hunter
Siorapaluk, Greenland
Inn Keeper
Qaanaaq, Greenland
Hunter
Qaanaaq, Greenland
Hunter
Siorapaluk, Greenland
Hunter
Siorapaluk, Greenland
Retired Hunter
Siorapaluk, Greenland
In their own words
