Seminar by Franz Krause, Monday 9. 11. 

The Department of Ecological Anthropology invites you to the upcoming seminar talk ‘Sharing life: Inuvialuit Whaling and the Politics of Respecting Animals‘ by Franz Krause (University of Cologne).

The lecture will take place on Monday 9. 11. 2026 at 14:00 (CET) in the seminar room of the Institute of Ethnology CAS, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1. To attend in person or online, please register.

Abstract: For Inuvialuit communities of the Western Canadian Arctic, the annual beluga whale hunt is a central moment in the seasonal cycle of subsistence and sociality. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted since 2017, this presentation examines Inuvialuit whaling at the intersection of Indigenous resurgence, marine conservation and human–animal relations.

The presentation takes sharing as an entry point for exploring particular Inuvialuit understandings of human–animal relations. In the contexts I examine, sharing is understood not only as a social obligation among people, but also as a way of relating to the animals and environments that sustain life. Hunting can consequently be understood not simply as the extraction of resources from nature, but as participation in relationships of demanding and provisioning.

A regional marine protected area provides a setting in which different understandings of what it means to respect animals come into encounter. While conservation frameworks often associate respect with separating animals from human interference, some Inuvialuit perspectives emphasize forms of respect enacted through hunting, sharing and continued relationships with animals.

The presentation therefore asks what becomes visible when we unsettle the opposition between killing and caring, hunting and conservation or use and protection. The ethnographic material suggests that, in some contexts, killing an animal need not mark the end of a relationship, but can form part of the reproduction and sharing of life. This perspective foregrounds the relational dimensions of life and raises broader questions about how humans might understand their obligations to other forms of life.

Bio: Franz Krause is Professor of Environmental Anthropology at the University of Cologne and Co-Director of MESH. His research focuses on human–environment relations, particularly water, climate change and life in river deltas. He has conducted ethnographic research in the Arctic, Europe, and Southeast Asia, including long-term research with Inuvialuit and Gwich’in communities in the Canadian Mackenzie Delta.

PDF here

PDF of the Seminar Series here