ABSTRACT
In Alaska, Captain James Cook in 1778 played a significant role in the trajectory of European exploration and ‘discovery’ and in the establishment of the narrative of Alaska Native peoples as hopelessly uncivilized and incompetent. One legacy of Captain Cook’s third voyage is the body of written artefacts that chronicle the encounters and contacts that members of his expedition had with various Alaska Native societies. As the Western world and its institutions struggle to understand the impact of climate change in the North, the Alaska Native Inupiat people and other Inuit will heed our histories and traditional cultures as one way to respond to these dramatic changes. In contrast, climate change today has resulted in a race to the Arctic today for land, military presence and resource extraction that seems characterized by thoughtless reactions from cultures propelled by a colonial appetite for financial gain and political power.
