Take It From the Top Video Project: Northern Perspectives on the North, the South and Newcomers To Their Land

The Arctic occupies an important place in Western imagination, in particular in the development of colonial and Southern (Western) power. Through a process of co-research and community-based video making, the researcher and student researchers made several group and individual video projects investigating the North, to reclaim, celebrate and educate. The project media contributes to the expanding field of politics of representation and knowledge to empower the social and cultural perspective and expression of the Arctic people. This thesis analyses collaborative video documentation created by Aurora College Adult Education students in Inuvik who designed the research guide, interviewed, filmed, edited and also created personal video projects. It examines the North, Newcomers to the North and The South Through Northern Eyes – and their cultural and social implications and how those implications effects communications, within the North and between the North and South. From a Northern perspective of homeland and adaptation, the Southern binary of assimilation and Modernity have been incorrect, disruptive and discriminatory and it fails to interact with Northern realities of paradox, pragmatism and strength. It argues that that the dominant Southern perspective with its power-centered negative and inaccurate perceptions and portrayals need to be disempowered and discarded for authentic Northern narratives with intertwining concepts of story, voice, image and culture. Representations and experiences, present and future, are vastly different stories when told from the perspective of the North. This research endeavors to act as a conduit to contribute the direct academic voice of Northern peoples, contexts and truths through knowledge co-production and video creation. Drawing on public sociology, visual sociological theory, cultural studies, Northern studies, education and the reexamined "post"-colonial theory, this interdisciplinary thesis covers ideological processes, cultural politics, community practices and social issues that have shaped this cultural clash. Hence, this study is textually based, describing the video narratives and academically situating the work in Northern discourse becoming central and dominant in Northern research and education. This thesis tries to restart/reframe the conversation on the representation/knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of the Western Arctic and its evolving identity, power and place in the global world.