Alnayah's People: Archival Photographs from West Greenland, 1908-1909

This essay concerns an image that is often referenced in the study of pibloktoq, the western-defined set of behaviours triggered by extreme stress in the contact zone. "Alnayah having 'Piblock-to' (Arctic hysteria)" is listed as Photograph No. NP-26 in the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Centre at Bowdoin College. By placing the image in context, the essay shares Mary Louise Pratt's commitment to the understanding of contact zones as social spaces characterized by stark differences in agency and power. The essay describes but does not reproduce the traumatic content of the image and analyzes it through the concept of "visual sovereignty" as developed in Indigenous studies. Reflecting on the challenges posed to restoring the photograph to the Inughuit descendants of those depicted in it, the essay considers Project Naming, a partnership between Nunavut Sivuniksavut and the Library and Archives of Canada, as a potential model for collaboration between the archive and the community.