ABSTRACT
In response to a resurging anti-sealing movement, Inuit advocates offer a contemporary counter-narrative which describes Inuit seal hunting as ‘sustainable’. Yet the present discourses on sustainability and Inuit sealing also have origins in Arctic colonial histories. In a narrative genealogy, this chapter traces ‘the seal’ through Greenland’s history, from the early colonial period to the Home Rule era, and investigates the varying sustainability narratives surrounding Inuit seal hunting. Due to the processes of Danish colonization, Inuit sealing has today come to mainly represent heritage, culture, and the past. Revisiting the cases of the Home Rule-supported enterprises of Great Greenland (sealskin) and Puisi A/S (seal sausage), the chapter elucidates how postcolonial narratives of sustainability and Inuit seal hunting have challenged and been conditioned by specific colonialities. In sum, the present work reflects on the ways in which colonial logics of sustainability have co-opted the existing and multiple relations between Inuit, seals, and hunting – and it points to the new possibilities in the decolonial critiques which are offered by Inuit counter-narratives to anti-sealing sentiments.
