| As a special and changing trans-regional waterway located in Arctic Canada, the Thelon River elicits multiple and often incommensurable perceptual visions (e.g., "homeland," "wilderness," "heritage," and "resource frontier"). This dissertation engages interdisciplinary literatures, diverse theoretical perspectives, and case study research to flesh out relational geographies of nature, ethics, and travel associated with the Thelon. Attention is directed to the touristic and inhabitant dimensions of the riverscape, specifically those enacted by wilderness canoeists and residents of the Inuit settlement Qamani 'tuaq (Baker Lake, Nunavut).;Descriptive, normative, and affective aspects of enacting relational ethics are interspersed throughout the text. Drawing on community-based, participatory, visual, and experiential research methods, I illuminate: the "natures of canoeing"; the Thelon River as a moral terrain; the expression of nature-culture values in and through different Arctic mobilities; and the various human and non-human traces within the riverscape that suggest how practices of making and remaking the Thelon are manifestations of responsibility to and for others connected to personal and social-cultural identity. These suggestive and purposeful interpretations are the effect of "engaged acclimatization," a methodological vision of responsible research characterized by processes of relationship building, immersion, learning, and activism. Moreover, recurrent patterns and themes are synthesized and presented in the summation. Here, I argue that the enactment of relational ethics for and within the Thelon can be characterized by the interaction of five modes and/or attributes: place, perception, partnership, philosophy, and practice. Fostered by some of the limitations identified in the moments constituting this dissertation, ongoing and anticipated future research is also discussed.;The dissertation follows an "integrated article" format and consists of an introduction, five substantive chapters, and a conclusion/summary. Each substantive chapter is oriented by objectives relating to the broader instrumental research purpose, which is to enact (i.e., to understand, envision, and cultivate) relational ethics for and within the Thelon River watershed. This intention was designed to work with, and respond to, contemporary thinking in human geography, philosophy, and tourism studies that considers "nature" as the ongoing convergence of multiple social-ecological-cultural relations, an ontological position that challenges many conceptual and material foundations of (environmental) ethics. |
