ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to dismantle simplistic settler narratives by listening to the thoughts and stories of stakeholders, the results of which demonstrated the inadequacy of approaches that ignore gender and sexual diversity. Archaeologists have tended to ignore the inherent messiness in reconstructing the Inuit gender system, instead opting for approaches that have relied on the presence of specific diagnostic tools based on their function alone. Through the use of multiple lines of evidence and a multi-vocal approach that incorporates Inuit knowledge and opinions from a variety of perspectives, the chapter argues that complex understandings of gender can be accessible to archaeologists. If archaeologists can learn to slow down and spend more time understanding artifacts holistically, we can not only greatly improve our understandings of the past, but we can begin to tease out complexity.
