Penny Ice Cap and the broader Baffin Island landscape are rich with interwoven narratives—stories and knowledge transmitted across generations through carved and painted wooden hand maps, and through patterns of human movement and migration. In exploring the nature of built space and questioning how to represent borders within a region defined by its fluidity and spatial ambiguity, I seek to present Penny Ice Cap and Baffin Island not as static geographies, but as dynamic terrains molded by human presence and deeply rooted Inuit epistemologies.

These Inuit ways of knowing—attuned to the nuanced, layered, and interconnected qualities of the land—stand in stark contrast to imposed zoning systems, such as climate maps, and to the reductive logic of extractive industries, including mining and drilling operations. Such external frameworks often overlook, or actively erase, the complex relationships between people and place that have long defined the region.

Throughout the semester, my work was an ongoing attempt to center Inuit perspectives, experiences, and cultural practices in the processes of map-making and spatial storytelling. By foregrounding these narratives, I aimed to resist colonial cartographic conventions and instead embrace a mapping practice that honors the fluid, relational, and lived realities of the Arctic landscape.