Last month, British traveler Camilla Hempleman-Adams trekked and skied across Canada’s Nunavut territory. After completing a 150-mile-long (241-kilometer-long) journey from the communities of Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung, she claimed to be the first solo woman to have traversed Baffin Island, Canada’s largest island. That declaration has now received serious backlash from Nunavut’s indigenous community.
As reported by the BBC, members of the local Inuit population refuted her claim, saying that it erased indigenous history and was fueled by a “dangerous colonial attitude.” Hempleman-Adams has since apologized for the offense she caused.
Before starting her expedition, Hempleman-Adams wrote that “Parks Canada has confirmed that there are no historical records of a female solo attempt from Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung” on her expedition website, as cited by the BBC. Once she’d completed her expedition on March 27, various outlets shared her apparent record-breaking success.
“Last week news came out of a British ‘explorer’ who became the first woman to solo traverse Baffin Island… Set aside that it was a 241km ski across Cumberland Peninsula, and not in fact Baffin Island (1500km). If you look deeper you’ll see a larger problem: erasure of Inuit on our own lands,” Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona—a member of the local Inuit community—wrote in a social media post. “In news coverage, Baffin Island is said to be uninhabited, with not much life. There is no way in hell a British colonizer is coming to Inuit Nunaat in 2025 and claiming any firsts.” Nunaat translates to “homeland.”
Wrapping up her post, Kabloona appealed for help to “call out this ignorant and racist behaviour.” She asked Hempleman-Adams to apologize and the BBC to retract its coverage. Though Kabloona may not have said it explicitly, the sentiment is clear: a solo indigenous woman most likely crossed Baffin Island before Hempleman-Adams, even though neither Inuit Heritage Trust nor Parks Canada maintain such records. Kabloona told the BBC that those records don’t exist because such journeys were “a normal way of life” for indigenous people.
Her grandmother, for example, walked hundreds of kilometers every year, often pregnant, “to Spring fishing and Winter caribou hunting grounds because that was life. Every inch of this continent has indigenous history and stories like this,” she explained in the same social media post.
In a written statement to CBC News, Hempleman-Adams reiterated the fact that she’d verified her potentially future claim with Parks Canada and wilderness experts in Qikiqtarjuaq and Pangnirtung before the expedition.
“However, if this information is incorrect, I apologize unreservedly for making an incorrect claim and for causing offence,” she wrote, as cited by CBC News. “I have deep respect for the land, its people, and their history. I have traveled in this region multiple times and hold immense admiration for its nature, culture and traditions … and I remain committed to learning from this experience and engaging with the community with the utmost respect.”
Hempleman-Adams has deactivated her Instagram and deleted her expedition blog.
