I spent my final year of university learning about two subjects: wetlands, and the Arctic. I still love both topics. Here, I'm going to talk about a bit of writing I did that was about both.

In my Arctic lectures, the wonderful Mike Bravo discussed wonderfully abstract philosophical stances on the Arctic: the notion of the Cryopolitics, historical perspectives on the Arctic as a cosmological gateway to another world or time, and - especially - the nuanced ontologies of Arctic indigenous peoples. One of these lectures covered the idea of Inuit trail-making: how Inuit people understand their landscape and record paths of travel as narratives and so on. It's really interesting stuff! You should take a look at the Pan Inuit Trails interactive web map!

"Place names and trails are integral parts of Inuit culture and heritage. Inuit have used place names to describe different features of the land, water, and ice since time immemorial. Place names are often (but not always) descriptive of the features they are associated with, including lakes, hills, rocks, caribou passes, ice ridges, bays, islands, etc. The names are linked to places of significance, often denoting important fishing and hunting areas and camps. They are also used to describe routes of travel, and in that sense many of them are connected to well-established trails and routes.

Understanding Inuit routes is essential in order to appreciate the Inuit history and occupancy of the Arctic. Although they are not permanent features on the landscape, their geographic locations are well known, and in many cases have been used by Inuit since time immemorial. An intricate system of trails has long connected Inuit with resources and with other Inuit. Inuit routes are seasonal, ranging from open water boat routes and walking trails to sled trails. Seasonal knowledge is important because it has enabled people to travel to places where animals can be found at specific times of the year. Where migration routes are involved, being at the right place on the right day could be critical for hunting and survival."

I won't talk in detail here for fear of being wrong, but another interesting feature of Inuit trail-making is how it is a manifestation of an ontology that is related to narratives: these trails are passed down through legends where each 'beat' is associated with a different location on the trail, almost like a mnemonic. The Inuk film Atanarjuat:The Fast Runner is a super cool example of this. Here, you can also bring in and compare the Inuit with other indigenous cultures and their notions of 'relational ontologies' (things having meaning only in relation to other things).

Hopefully at this point I've got you to begin thinking about this big soup of ideas, just as I was last week. And so now we can move onto the Antarctic Adventure Jam, a super cool RPG writing jam hosted by idraluna archives. Idraluna has been using GIS to make 6-mile-grid rpg maps for a while (the Earth, the Moon, Mars) and has now created a version of un-iced Antarctica and invited people to fill it with their own work. It's super interesting seeing people intuitively drive towards an idea of a far-past or far-future here (remember what I was saying about the poles being a gateway to another world or time?). I'm hoping to fill a vast swathe of the inner tundra with some paleolithic-and-onwards stuff. But first, I wanted to write a bit of poetry. That's why I did the nokatelo marsh.

The idea behind this first submission was to create an expression of how an indigenous people might 'relate' to the landscape. I didn't use absolute terms (left, right, north, south, summer, winter): I only talked about locations in relation to other places and the activities that happen there. The marsh isn't a specific cartographically bounded area: it's the place a few days up the river where there's grass and your boots get muddy. Winter isn't the three cold months: it's the time when the sea-ice is too thick to hunt there so you move inland. I tried to write each area description as someone might explain it to someone else, using a specific structure:

• If you go this way,
• There is X Place, where there is Y.
• See, there are the Ys..

If you read closely, you might also notice that I've almost entirely stayed away from tenses and words longer than two-syllables. When I've talked about spirits or such, they've been active agents that are characterised by what they do.

When I started writing, I did the old RPG-writer classic of getting an Inuktitut dictionary and mashing together vaguely relevant words. Then, I realised that this would probably be a bit offensive and had the master-stroke idea: use toki pona. The toki pona conlang is great because, similar to Inuit culture, it's also an expression of a relational ontology. Have a look at it! Here's the dictionary and here's a guide, but I'd also recommend the main book by jan sonja.

There isn't a complex thrust to this post. All I wanted to do was explainmy process writing the nokatelo marsh, and to get you thinking about this very interesting soup of ideas. I hope I've done this well. Thanks for reading. You can look at the nokatelo marsh using this wonderful web map (coords 144.344) or on this page.

Best,
Hags