Lecture: Whaling and its Impacts

Carved Material Culture and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Pacific World

Scrimshaw is a form of folk art made by whalers and carved onto the bones, teeth, and baleen of marine mammals. Indigenous carved decorative arts and material culture from Oceania and the Arctic influenced the production of scrimshaw and was influenced by it, in turn. Native communities across the Pacific world have vibrant carving traditions and ancestral relations with marine mammals. These communities were impacted by colonialism, Western empire-building, and commercial whaling in the 1800s, and individuals joined whaling crews at sea and supported whaling voyages on land. This talk introduces the rich cultural traditions, carving forms, and material exchanges that emerged in cultural contact zones across the Pacific world because of whaling. We engage questions about identity, place, and materials, and consider how exploration and whaling impacted the production of material culture in this diverse region between 1700 and today. These historical relationships continue to shape artistic production within descendent communities – from New Bedford to Aotearoa to Utqiaġvik – exemplified by the work of contemporary artists like Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss, Jerome Saclamana, and Art Thompson.