"And of all these things the Polar Bear was the symbol": Charisma, Wilderness, and Whiteness
Author: E.R. Truitt
Source: American/Medieval Goes North: Earth and Water in Transit
Publication Type: Chapter in a Book
Summary:
This chapter traces European and settler North American encounters with the polar bear, from the early medieval period until the present day, and reveals how the polar bear has been employed by European and white settlers to erase Indigenous people from the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. The consequences of this erasure, especially at a moment when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, are devastating to the well-being of the millions of people, most of them Indigenous.