Abstract

A number of non-Indigenous transient workers move temporarily to the Iñupiat-majority village of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, for higher-than-average wages. This paper will take as its starting point cultural enrichment activities organized by the community’s tribal college to familiarize its non-Indigenous employees with Iñupiaq language and culture. Noting that transient workers vocally approve of “sharing culture”, it will interrogate tensions that emerged around these activities and plans to quantify participation in them. It will suggest that, for the Iñupiat staff who organize “Culture Hour”, framing enrichment activities as “sharing” has implications of relation-building and serves as a call to robustly engage with Iñupiaq socio-political formations. These implications, it will be argued, exceed the expectations of passive, affirming recognition that liberal multiculturalism has inculcated in their non-Indigenous colleagues.