User talk:Jon Rosebank

March 2024

Hello, I'm ThaddeusSholto. I noticed that you recently removed content from Robert Peary without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry; the removed content has been restored. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 21:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry Thaddeus but you are completely out of order. I explained very fully why this has been removed, giving the reference to the article in which the sexual exploitation of Inuit women was revealed in an academic journal. This photograph is unnecessary to the article and extremely offensive, both to the Inuit and to women in general. Jon Rosebank (talk) 22:03, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Use the article talk page if you want to argue for its removal but telling people to read an academic paper in an edit summary isn't an explanation. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 22:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

You do not need an explanation to argue for the removal of a naked image of an Inuit woman. It is clear and offensive exploitation. Sorry, you'll need a better defence than that. Jon Rosebank (talk) 22:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Please do not remove information from articles, as you did to Robert Peary. Wikipedia is not censored, and content is not removed on the sole grounds of perceived offensiveness. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page to reach consensus rather than continuing to remove the disputed material. If the content in question involves images, you also have the option to configure Wikipedia to hide the images that you may find offensive. Thank you. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 12:30, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

The nude photograph of Aleqasina on this page must be removed as a matter of urgency. Posting it brings the Wikipedia community into very considerable disrepute.

The known historical facts are these. Robert Peary took Aleqasina, supposedly as his Inughuit ‘wife’, when she was 14 and she had a son by him. Peary however abandoned Aleqasina when he returned to the States. She became an Inughuit man’s wife. But each time Peary returned to the Arctic he took Aleqasina as his mistress and eventually she had a second child by him.

Research in the Peary archives reveals that the members of his expeditions were in the habit of taking openly pornographic photographs of Inughuit women, who had been taken from their community in NW Greenland and housed for many months on the expedition ship. Some particularly shocking photographs show a naked woman tied to the mast of the ship. We know that their treatment by Peary and his crew caused psychological damage to the women, almost all of whom were married. Many took refuge in shacks constructed of packing cases on the shore – the traces of which have recently been rediscovered by archeologists.

This exploitation of Inughuit women belongs to the eugenicist nineteenth-century discourse of treating first peoples as ‘savages’, who could be exploited at will by white American men. (Let us note that Matthew Henson, the sole American person of colour on the team, was an exception, speaking Inuktun fluently and forming loving relationships with two Inughuit women.)

This photograph is therefore an example of overtly exploitative pornography. Indeed, it was understood as such at the time it was taken. It further betrays the racist attitudes of Peary and his white male team.

I note that Penelope Middelboe asked for its removal some days ago but her request was ignored. I have removed it several times, adding a brief explanation, but each time ThaddeusSholto has reinstated it.

Let us be clear: to reinstate this image is a statement that Wikipedia endorses exploitative and racist pornography, targeted particularly at the first peoples of the northern Americas. This contribution is intended to remove any doubt about what such an action signifies.

Dr Jon Rosebank MA (Oxon), Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Renée Hulan (2023) Alnayah’s People: Archival Photographs from West

Greenland, 1908–1909, Interventions, 25 (8), pp. 1088-1109.

Dick, Lyle (1995). "'"Pibloktoq"(Arctic Hysteria): A Construction of European-Inuit Relations?'", Arctic Anthropology 32 (2), pp. 1–42.

Susan A Kaplan and Genevieve M Le Moine, Peary’s Arctic Quest. Untold Stories from Robert E. Peary’s North Pole Expeditions (Camden, Maine 2019), pp. 60, 111-13. Jon Rosebank (talk) 10:15, 18 March 2024 (UTC)