Introduction

The second case study involves their Inuit successor in Cape Dorset in the southern reaches of the Baffin Island.  In the Great Expansion, the Dorset culture inhabited the high arctic region to live and produce art.  Their Inuit successors brought with them their artistic expressions originating from the west.  The sources utilized for this thesis include: Doubleday’s, Remaining Sustainable Cultures: Constitutions, Land, and Art, and McGhee’s Ancient Peoples of the Arctic.  Material culture and the expression of identity are inherent in every culture.  Art is the record of a cultures existence but it does not account for that cultures sustainability in time.  The Dorset and Inuit created art to sustain their material culture, both created art to convey their own identity through expression.   

Globalization

Doubleday’s article explains the relations of peoples and places are increased and significant cultural changes occur due to globalization.  The author and her collaborators discussed that maintaining a cultural identity involves both a dynamic understanding of culture (2004), and acknowledging the importance of place because the culture model practices of that culture need to adapt to new stressors in their environment.  “Culture is codified not only in property rights and legislation, but also in the public artistic expressions of peoples and places” (2004:1-2)  The identity and the result of creative output was compared by two case studies from Nunavut and Scotland showing the relationship of sovereignty and claims observed at the communal level.  Both showed that identity is apart of material culture and property ownership.   The goal is not to assume the strength of either groups or their ecological context in consideration. 

Identity

With in the time of colonization and enacted legislated self-government, Inuit Art in Cape Dorset had been received as the iconographic symbol of Canadian identity.   It is the point that culture accelerates when introduced to new consumer markets.  The culture is sustained by producing art in modern capitalist globalization.  In Nunavut, a new territory had been established with most residents being Native Peoples.  Their artistic development emerged out of social and cultural relations that had evolved through shared survival in the territory.  Inuit living in cooperation with western settlers were not assimilated or dispersed from their property.  The Inuit sustained their culture through colonization and imperialism by using the political influence of their art to assert Inuit territory control of Nunavut. 

These case studies proved to point out that the tribal community when in progression of producing art retains tribal affiliations and political conflicts.  This allows the community to engage and represent their identity.  The emerging trend with Inuit art became a commodity in the global market.  For example, Cape Dorset housed early explorers and whalers that had regular contact with the Inuit inhabitants.  This relationship grew to a trading connection with Europe.  In recent times Cape Dorset artists have been acknowledged internationally through their work.  Doubleday says that Cape Dorset art is an important aspect of living “both for its literal value as a commodity and also for its symbolic value as evident of cultural distinctiveness, of Inuit identity and of Inuit narrative about the land.” (2004:396)

Conclusion

Why do we know that the Inuit and Dorset artists maintain their heritage through material culture, and what was used to express their own creative adaption to changing times.  The Dorset into came into existence when Jenness provide the first archeological record.  The Dorset artist leaves possessions behind so the archaeologist can recover the contemporary evidence and examine the work to apply archaeological theory.  We could conclude that Dorset peoples retain their material culture by producing artifacts and trading them to other groups.  This involves a great need to adapt to new environments inherent in human behavior and social relations.  We can see this happening with the contemporary Cape Dorset Inuit artist adaption to global markets.  Despite the contrast of globalization, the Inuit way of life was preserved and community identity is maintained through the manufacture of their cultural commodity.