White As Snow: An Ethnographic Account of White Privilege and Indigeneity - Patricia Johnson-Castle

This presentation will explore concepts of race and Inuit identity. More and more Inuit are beginning to present in physically diverse ways, different than our ancestors (and different than the expectations of settler-society). All concepts of race are socially constructed but many have difficulty separating race from culture. Drawing on authors like Adrienne Keene, Charles W Mills, and Stuart Hall, Patricia Johnson-Castle employs auto-ethnography to grapple with her experiences of the gap between how she identifies and is identified, the gap between her inner-Inuk and white-presenting exterior. She thinks through how that interaction is mediated by settler-colonial expectations of what it means to be Inuk; but also the reality that she will never experience the racial discrimination, and structural violence that comes with it, that her racialized cousins and kin do. She will use a couple specific moments and experiences to highlight these tensions, such as living in South Africa (where she was identified as white and her bi-raciality/culturality was erased), and being misidentified by an elder from a different region.