Muskox multiplications: the becoming of a resource, relations and place in Kangerlussuaq, West Greenland

In the mid-1960s, 27 muskoxen were translocated from Northeast Greenland to Tatsip Ataa near Kangerlussuaq in West Greenland. In just a few decades, these 27 individuals reproduced to become a population of many thousand – now the largest population of muskoxen in Greenland. This article examines human-muskox relations in present-day Kangerlussuaq and Greenland as biosocial multiplications. Muskox – human encounters shape muskoxen as well as human sociality in Kangerlussuaq, and – ultimately – they take part in the shaping of Kangerlussuaq as a place. Through an ethnographic exploration of three sites of muskox-human engagements ̶ a human settlement on the installations of a former US air base, an empty slaughterhouse and the landscape in which muskoxen live and are hunted ̶ the article unfolds the processes through which muskoxen and humans shape each other and multiply. Diverse relations, meanings, and values come out of muskox-human encounters, and only some result in the muskox becoming a resource, understood as an element that can be utilized in a rational way, where the outcome can be measured in a specific (economic) value. Some of the meanings and values embedded in muskox-human encounters and the relations that come out of them overlap with the notion of resource, while others exceed it. Understanding how muskox become a resource, and how they do not, is crucial when wanting to understand human-muskox relations and to manage muskoxen sustainably.