Are They Coming Home? Transient Worker–Iñupiat Relations on Alaska's North Slope

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• Elizabeth Walsh (CCTL, University of Cambridge)
• Tuesday 14 October 2025, 16:30-18:00
• Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre.

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A number of non-Indigenous transient workers move temporarily to the Iñupiat-majority village of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, for higher-than-average wages. This paper will take as its starting point cultural enrichment activities organized by the community’s tribal college to familiarize its non-Indigenous employees with Iñupiaq language and culture. Noting that transient workers vocally approve of “sharing culture”, it will interrogate tensions that emerged around these activities and plans to quantify participation in them. It will suggest that, for the Iñupiat staff who organize “Culture Hour”, framing enrichment activities as “sharing” has implications of relation-building and serves as a call to robustly engage with Iñupiaq socio-political formations. These implications, it will be argued, exceed the expectations of passive, affirming recognition that liberal multiculturalism has inculcated in their non-Indigenous colleagues.

This talk is part of the Scott Polar Research Institute - HCEP (Histories, Cultures, Environments and Politics) Research Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• Department of Geography
• ESRC DTP
• Scott Polar Research Institute - HCEP (Histories, Cultures, Environments and Politics) Research Seminars
• Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre

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