ABSTRACT
In August 2007 Artur Chilingarov, one of Russia’s most famous Arctic explorers, planted a tiny titanium Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole. Many international commentators were quick to argue that the act was a claim of sovereignty over the North Pole (e.g. Borgerson 2008; Doward et al. 2007). Their reactions also alluded to a sense that the entire Arctic was nothing but a barren landscape and an ungoverned political region; and given Russia’s stunt, it was necessary for the international community to determine who owned the Arctic and, indeed, who should decide who owned it. Yet, for the 160,000 Inuit who have been living in the Arctic for thousands of years, flag planting was hardly a unique event. For instance, in 2005, Canadian soldiers planted their country’s flag on Hans Island (situated in the Kennedy Channel between Canada and Greenland) and raised an inukshuk as part of ‘Exercise Frozen Beaver’.2 The Canadian landing was itself a response to Danish flag plantings on the island in 1984, 1988, 1995 and 2003.
