The frigid landscapes of the southernmost continent may seem devoid of diversity, but a closer examination reveals the lesser-told narratives of exploration and innovation by people of colour.
While the exploits of famous white explorers like Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton are extensively documented and celebrated, and with good reason, the contributions of black, indigenous, and other people of colour (BIPoC) to polar exploration and science are often overlooked. In this Black History Month blog, we will share the stories of the extraordinary black pioneers who have shaped Antarctica’s history and continue to contribute to our understanding of the region.
Hui Te Rangiora
Māori explorer, Hui Te Rangiora, is described in Ngāti Rārua and Te Āti Awa oral tradition as having sailed south of Aotearoa (New Zealand) to a frozen region in the seventh century.
According to a 19th-century interpretation of Rarotongan legend by Stephenson Percy Smith, Ui-te-Rangiora and his crew on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea sailed south, encountering an area he called Tai-uka-a-pia with “pia” referring to arrowroot, which when scraped looks like snow. This description was interpreted as ‘a frozen sea’, by Smith, “a foggy, misty, and dark place not seen by the sun” where rocks grow out of the sea.
Recently a study by the University of Otago, Weihi et al. (2021), attempted to uncover more about under-represented groups and their links to Antarctica, collating evidence from grey literature and oral histories “to construct a richer and more inclusive picture of Antarctica’s relationship with humanity.”
“By detailing these historical and contemporary connections, we build a platform on which much wider conversations about New Zealand relationships with Antarctica can be furthered. More than this, however, we create space for other under-represented groups and peoples to articulate their narratives of connection to the southern land- and sea-scapes. In so doing, we provide significant first steps for uncovering the rich and varied ways in which Antarctica features in the lives and futures of indigenous and other under-represented communities.”
– A Short Scan of Māori Journeys to Antarctica, Weihi et al. (2021)
The study’s findings suggested that the Māori people may have been the first group to discover Antarctica’s waters. This could have been as early as the seventh century.
Their paper, A Short Scan of Māori Journeys to Antarctica, was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Barbara Hillary
Polar explorer, nurse, publisher, adventurer and inspirational speaker Barbara Hillary was the first black woman to reach both the North and South Poles – achieving this outstanding accomplishment in her 70s.
Hillary was born on June 12, 1931 in San Juan Hill, New York and raised by her widowed mother following her father’s death when she was just two years old. Though her family struggled financially,
“There was no such thing as mental poverty in our home. There was no such thing as ‘woe is me’. My mother always told me, ‘If you want something in this world, get off you a** and work for it.”.
– Barbara Hillary
Hillary earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the New School in NYC, with a specialty in gerontology, the scientific study of ageing. She became a nurse, practicing for 55 years before she retired.
Her compassion for others extended not only to her patients, but to her local community. She founded the Averne Action Association, with the goal of improving life in Arverne, New York and the Rockaway Peninsula community. She was also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Peninsula Magazine, the first racially diverse magazine published by a black woman, giving locals in Queens a voice.
After her retirement from nursing and determined not to ‘get old’ she decided to travel, and it was while dogsledding and photographing polar bears in Manitoba, Canada, she learned that no black American women had been to the North Pole. From then on, she was committed to being the first.
Hillary’s journey to the northernmost point on Earth was not easy. She faced enormous challenges in terms of health, skill, and finances. She had lost 25% of her lung capacity during a battle with lung cancer in her 60s, having already overcome breast cancer in her 20s. Yet she persevered, building up the endurance required to ski 30 miles from a Norwegian base camp to the North Pole. She never skied before.
In a time before Kickstarter and GoFundMe, Hillary also struggled to fund her $25,000 expedition. She wrote to several organizations requesting their support, including New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had referred her to the Department of Aging’s senior center instead. She defied these obstacles and on April 23, 2007, aged 75, became first black woman to set foot on the North Pole.
Hillary’s adventurous spirit and fascination with polar exploration endured. Just four years after her North Pole first, she reached the South Pole, again the first black woman to do so.
At 87, Hillary traveled to Outer Mongolia to learn about how nomadic groups living in The Steppes are affected by climate change, giving back to the community with a talk at a village school. Before her passing due to chronic illness on November 23, 2019, Hillary was planning a trip to yet another frigid destination – Russia.
George W Gibbs Jr.
George W. Gibbs Jr. was a mess attendant in the United States Navy, the only role open to African Americans at the time. Little did he know that during his service, he would become the first to set foot on Antarctica.
Gibbs’ life began in 1916 in Jacksonville, Florida, a place with limited opportunity for members of the black community, so he was encouraged by his father to leave home and explore different possibilities. According to Gibbs’ daughter, Leilani Henry, “he [Gibbs’ father] knew he [Gibbs] had bigger visions and would not be contained in a box”.
In 1935, Gibbs, then aged 23, left Jacksonville for a recruiting station in Georgia where he joined the United States Navy. His journey to Antarctica came some years later and following a competitive application process.
Every sailor coveted the honour of being hand-selected by the famed Admiral Richard Byrd to join his third expedition to the frozen continent (1939-1941). This expedition was prestigious, not only because of Admiral Byrd’s fame, but because it was financially backed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with hopes of expanding research facilities for the United States and making stronger claims to Antarctica.
According to his journals, Gibbs awoke at 5:30am each day to complete a laborious routine of cooking for sailors that could not keep their meals down, and then struggling to clean and wash clothing with minimal access to warm, fresh water.
“I am doing the same thing every day and at times I think I will go nuts, especially when I think about my race being limited to one branch of the services, regardless of the many qualifications that members of my race have…”
– From the diary of George W Gibbs, February 2, 1940
Gibbs’ commitment to good, hard work did not go unnoticed, affording him the opportunity to debark the Bear when it arrived on the Ross Ice Shelf on January 14, 1940. Admiral Byrd shook Gibbs’ hand as he took his first history-making steps, acknowledging the incredible barrier he’d just breached for African Americans, and people of colour everywhere.
Gibbs struggled against the harsh, unforgiving conditions of the frozen continent, and faced two life-threatening challenges during his time there. Just days after arriving in Antarctica, Gibbs was collecting emperor penguins for scientific study, when he and his party lost sight of the Bear in impenetrable fog. Without radio equipment, the group listened for the sound of the ship’s foghorn, following it until they eventually found their way back. On a solo walk on the ice during a rare period of free time, Gibbs fell into an unseen crevasse, thankfully narrow enough to allow him to pull himself out.
When the US entered WWII, Gibbs swapped the South Pole for the South Pacific aboard USS Atlanta where he served during the Battle of Midway Island in June 1942. Once again, Gibbs’ mettle would be tested when in November that year his ship was torpedoed. Responsible for handing out life jackets to his comrades, Gibbs himself survived the night and following day without out in shark-infested waters.
Gibbs retired from the military at the rank of chief petty officer in 1959, graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1963 and joining IBM, later his own job placement company.
Gibbs also became a civil rights leader and helped organise the Rochester branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He played a vital part in integrating service clubs, after being denied membership to the Elks Club in 1974.
Gibbs received several honours for his accomplishments. During his service in the Navy, he received the Navy Good Conduct Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the silver U.S. Antarctic Expedition Medal. The NAACP honoured him posthumously with the George Gibbs Humanitarianism Award in 2000.
The city of Rochester, Minnesota, named George W. Gibbs Elementary School in 2009 in tribute to his life and his many contributions to his community. When students learned of his incredible life story, they chose an emperor penguin as their mascot. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names also named Gibbs Point after him that same year. This rock formation is located at the northwest entrance of Gaul Cove on Horseshoe Island in Marguerite Bay (-67.806111, -67.160556).
Dwayne Fields
Polar explorer Dwayne Fields is the first black Briton to walk to the magnetic North Pole, undertaking this extraordinary feat of endurance in 2010. He has since launched the #WeTwoFoundation, which organised the first carbon negative expedition to Antarctica with disadvantaged youth.
Fields was born in Jamaica, and from a young age was fascinated with nature, spending as much time as he possibly could outside. When he moved to the UK aged six, his relationship with nature changed when his peers failed to share or nurture his passion, leaving him feeling like an outsider.
In 2005 a disagreement about a motorcycle left him staring down the barrel of a gun and became the catalyst for a radical change in the direction of his life
He had gone to a neighbouring housing estate to demand the return of his motorcycle, which had been stolen by boys he recognised. When the confrontation escalated, a man pulled a gun. He fired twice, but the gun jammed – and Fields escaped with his life. Friends urged him to take his revenge, but instead the incident forced him to re-evaluate the direction of his life.
Fields’ first step in redefining himself involved completing a charity run for Mothers Against Guns, but he felt that this was not a big enough change. At the time, he was a cashier at Boots, a British drugstore, but decided that working in a bank would garner more respect. He became a cashier at Barclays Bank, and about a year and a half later, enrolled in the University of East London.
While Fields was still a student, he came across adventurers Ben Fogle and James Cracknell on television as they were looking for a third member for their expedition to Antarctica. By the time he gained the confidence to apply, the slot had been filled. Luckily, the team was impressed by his application and fitness, so they invited him to the North Pole to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Robert Peary and Matthew Henson’s 1908-9 expedition; the first to reach the geographic North Pole.
Fields did not realise that his Arctic expedition wasn’t free. He reached out to dozens of organizations for donations without success. Eventually, he used his student loans to fund two-thirds of the trip, with the remaining one-third coming from donations earned by going door-to-door.
“It was the most horrible thing for me to do, saying to people, ‘I’m walking to the north pole, give me a pound’.”
– Dwayne Fields in a 2021 interview with Sasha Mistlin of The Guardian
Despite these early challenges, Fields has gone on to explore more of the world, including Central America, Jamaica, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Starting in 2019 with the #WeTwo Foundation, Fields and his expedition partner Phoebe Smith, have made it their mission to give other teenagers from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK the opportunity to go on adventures they never thought accessible to them. According to Fields; “There’s still a lot of young people who think certain things are impossible because they haven’t seen anyone from their background doing it. That’s where I come in. I think of all the young people who are just like me and how amazing it would be if they had a different route, or if they had deeds that inspired them.”
In spring 2022, Fields and Smith brought 10 teenagers aged 16 to 19 to explore Antarctica. They even planted enough trees to make the expedition carbon neutral (and eventually carbon negative).
Honourable Mention – Matthew Henson
Though Matthew Henson’s adventures did not take him to Antarctica, he made history as the first black man to reach the geographic North Pole on an expedition that Dwyane Fields emulated in 2008-2009 to commemorate its 100th anniversary!
Polar Science Today: A Diverse Community
While there are persistent challenges in achieving diversity and inclusion of members of the BIPoC community in Antarctic research and exploration, such as lack of funding, accessibility, and representation there has been notable progress.
While the 12 original signatories to the Antarctic Treaty (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States and Russia) have had research stations there since the 1940s and 1950s, many other countries have followed suit, bringing even more diversity to the continent. Now, India, China, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, South Korea, Turkey, and Pakistan all have Antarctic research stations hosting dozens of scientists each year.
Organisation Polar Impact, an inclusive network of racial and ethnic minorities and allies in the polar research community, supports, connects and highlighted the stories of black, Asian, indigenous, people of colour and minority ethnic professionals in the polar research community. The network, which formed in 2019, facilitates discussion about diversity in polar research through invited lectures, readings and other resources as well as providing encouragement and support within the community.
Antarctica’s increasingly diverse community of scientists, researchers, and support personnel from around the world, contribute to cutting-edge research in climate science, glaciology, biology, and more, essential for understanding the impacts of climate change and preserving this unique wilderness.
Conclusion
The contributions of people of colour to Antarctic exploration and science are a testament to the universal human curiosity and determination to explore and understand our world, regardless of one’s background or ethnicity.
By recognising and celebrating the achievements of people of colour, we honour their legacy and pave the way for a more diverse and inclusive future in polar exploration and research. Antarctica, with its stark beauty and extreme conditions, remains a symbol of our collective commitment to knowledge and discovery, where people of all backgrounds can continue to make their mark.