also active in printmaking and graphical art. The Van Berkel collection includes women’s art and handicrafts ranging from the artist Hanne Bruun of Greenland to the Canadian Inuit artists Ada Eyetoak, Kenojuak Ashevak, Mary Pudlat, and Emily Nipisa’naaq Alerk. The final two chapters deal with the cultures of the Inuit of Greenland and the Chukchi of northeastern Siberia. Buijs highlights not only the political changes within these societies but also their spiritual culture, illustrated by the Greenlandic tupilak complex and the whale festival of the Chukchi with its elements of danger, fertility, and renewal, which is reflected in their art and handicrafts. Here we learn that, contrary to Appadurai’s contention, objects are not only endowned with meaning added by persons, they also have an intrinsic meaning and a life of their own according to the worldview of the Arctic peoples. In the epilogue, Cunera Buijs presents an overview and a profound analysis of the developments of material culture, identity, loss, and renewal in the Arctic. In this publication, we use as far as possible the latest orthography of the names of Inuit and Chukchi artists, place names, and indigenous terms following the semantic rules of the various regions. For example, the plural form of ‘tupilak’ is written differently among Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit, and therefore in this book it is spelled ‘tupilait’ and ‘tupilat’ respectively in the relevant chapters. Acknowledgements I am most grateful for the kind support, cooperation, and advice received from Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad, who supported this endeavor and commented on every part of this book. Her help and friendship have been of incalculable value to me. Bernadette: qujanaq. I am also grateful to Åge Kristiansen, Paulus Larsen, Thomasine Tarkissimat, Thomasine Umerineq, and Gideon Qeqe—five East Greenlandic consultants and friends who came to the Netherlands to add new meanings to the Arctic museum collections in Leiden and The Hague. I received much welcome help in the form of additional literature and extensive discussions from members of the
11 | Introduction
Dutch Research Group Circumpolar Cultures—namely Frédéric Laugrand, Jarich Oosten, and Cornelius Remie, some of whom have written chapters for this book. My thanks also go out to Karel Stevens, who provided additional documentation on the many objects of the Van Berkel collection; Afke Koek, who helped document the collection in the museum’s database; Ben Bekooy, who scanned and assisted with some of the illustrations; Ben Grishaver and Irene de Groot, who photographed the collection; photographs were provided by Anne van Berkel, Herman de Boer, Ingeborg Eggink, Cees de Gooyer, Ivars Sillis, Willem Rasing, Cornelius Remie, the Arctic Institute and the National Museum in Copenhagen, National Archives Canada; the Canadian Library and Archives, which provided some of the illustrations in this book; and Gioia Marini, who copyedited the text. I would also like to thank Stijn Schoonderwoerd and Laura van Broekhoven, director and head curator respectively of the National Museum of Ethnology, for their interest in publishing this collection and for the financial support they arranged. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to the Van Berkel family—especially Anne and Marijke—for their patience, hospitality, and help in sorting out all types of documentation, letters, and important notes, as well as for all the coffee and lunches. Without their help, this project would not have been possible.