INUIT VISUAL and SENSATE SOVEREIGNTY in ALETHEA ARNAQUQ-BARIL'S ANGRY INUK

Abstract

This article contends that Alethea Arnaquq-Baril's 2016 documentary film entitled Angry Inuk employs cinema to carve spaces of "visual sovereignty" centred on Inuit "sensory agency" (Michelle Raheja, Dylan Robinson). The film does so by articuÂlating visual counter-narratives that reframe seal hunting, a practice violently decried by Southern animal rights groups, through an Inuit lens. More than a mere rebuttal of Southern anti-sealing rhetoric, the film asserts Inuit knowledge in relation to land and resource management and challenges the liberatory discourse of animal rights organizaÂtions, exposing its assumptive logic as a continuation rather than a disruption of settler colonialism. As its title suggests, the film responds to anti-sealers' ire (which has long ocÂcupied centre stage and drowned Inuit voices) by making space for Inuit anger, which it presents as a righteous, ethical starting point and as the fuel necessary to rally forces against anti-sealers. But, importantly, the film also presents narratives around seal hunting that foreground Inuit "sensory agency," which Dylan Robinson describes as "modes of telling that both affirm cultural strength and assert an affective force upon those who are present." Arnaquq-Baril proposes images of shared laughter, felt cold, the joyful sounds of the communal consumption of all parts of the seal, and images of the #sealfie Twitter campaign that celebrated Inuit seal hunting with pride and humour, as a counter-narrative to the single affect of white anger and outrage put forth by anti-sealers. In meditating on the Inuit's complex resilience, Angry Inuk enacts a form of Inuit sovereignty, reclaiming a voice in the stories that shape public understanding of seal hunting. It also invites viewers to reflect on Indigenous futurity and consider how animal rights activism can be decoloÂnized so that it does not reproduce the extractive and violent logic of settler colonialism.