4. Peoples of the Arctic

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Klaus Dodds ◽  
Jamie Woodward

‘Peoples of the Arctic’ focuses on the 4 million people that live north of the Arctic Circle, providing an important distinction between indigenous and settler residents, as over 1 million indigenous peoples live in the eight Arctic states. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first people in the Arctic arrived about 40,000 years ago as there were Upper Palaeolithic hunting communities in north-eastern Siberia. There is considerable diversity of indigenous peoples that have called the Arctic home. Arctic demographers predict that more and more Arctic peoples will be based in towns and cities, but in the Russian and North American Arctic there will still be dispersed and small-scale settlements. Indigenous peoples of the Arctic are culturally, economically, and politically active in all the Arctic states.

Polar Record ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-255
Author(s):  
Klaus J. Dodds

President Barrack Obama became, in September 2015, the first US president to travel north of the Arctic Circle. Having started his Alaskan itinerary in Anchorage, attending and speaking at a conference involving Secretary of State John Kerry and invited guests, the president travelled north to the small town of Kotzebue, a community of some 3000 people with the majority of inhabitants identifying as native American. Delivered to an audience in the local high school numbering around 1000, the 41st US president placed his visit within a longer presidential tradition of northern visitation: I did have my team look into what other Presidents have done when they visited Alaska. I’m not the first President to come to Alaska.Warren Harding spent more than two weeks here – which I would love to do. But I can't leave Congress alone that long. (Laughter.) Something might happen. When FDR visited – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – his opponents started a rumor that he left his dog, Fala, on the Aleutian Islands – and spent 20 million taxpayer dollars to send a destroyer to pick him up. Now, I’m astonished that anybody would make something up about a President. (Laughter.) But FDR did not take it lying down. He said, “I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks – but Fala does resent attacks. He's not been the same dog since.” (Laughter.) President Carter did some fishing when he visited. And I wouldn't mind coming back to Alaska to do some fly-fishing someday. You cannot see Alaska in three days. It's too big. It's too vast. It's too diverse. (Applause.) So I’m going to have to come back. I may not be President anymore, but hopefully I’d still get a pretty good reception. (Applause.) And just in case, I’ll bring Michelle, who I know will get a good reception. (Applause.) . . .. But there's one thing no American President has done before – and that's travel above the Arctic Circle. (Applause.) So I couldn't be prouder to be the first, and to spend some time with all of you (Obama 2015a).


1891 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-104
Author(s):  
Henry H. Howorth

Among the many interesting issues raised by the discovery of Mammoth remains in large numbers along the Arctic borders of Eastern Asia, one has, I think, ceased to be polemical. So far as I know, there is no serious student who now contests the fact that the Mammoth and his companions lived where their remains are found. The rooted trees upon which they fed, and the southern river-shells which were their contemporaries, both of which are found with their remains (both being incapable of migration), prove incontestably what a score of other arguments show, that the fauna of North-Eastern Siberia in the Mammoth age, like its flora, must be explained by some other theory than migration. This I have urged in many ways in my work on the Mammoth.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Andy Fernanda Probotrianto

The Arctic Circle, without a doubt, has turned into a region of various complexities and holds a huge prominence in the contemporary world; especially if one link it with discourses regarding energy, resources, and maritime issues which have helped in triggering wide international contestations. These discourses, consequently, are getting more proliferated as the polar ice melting. However, the existing paradigm carried about within the research of the region tends to be ignorant of those whom are marginalized, yet distinctly significant to the shaping of the Arctic environment, under the shadows of nation-states and high politics agendas: the indigenous peoples. This article, therefore, would contribute to the political discourse of the Arctic by elaborating the perspective of indigenous people in regards of the ongoing dynamics. Utilizing Critical Cosmopolitanism as a normative basis, as well as taking the approach offered by Critical Geopolitics, this writing will try to deconstruct how the nation state’s prolonged hegemony impacting the Arctic Circle, displaying the significance held by indigenous communities, as well as factors leading to its heighten representation—with a more through focus on Inuit Peoples in regard of their population and prominence within the discourse. This article reveals that the shifting global paradigm which, in time, echoing Cosmopolitanism values, such as inclusivity, paves a way to the growing representation to the indigenous peoples.


Author(s):  
Oksana Sarkisova

In this chapter Oksana Sarkisova examines the depiction of indigenous peoples in the Soviet Arctic and how these representations have changed in accordance with the ideological narrative of a communist state in the 1920s and the 1930s. Examining films both central to and outside the canon of Soviet film history, such as Dziga Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World (1926), Vladimir Erofeev’s Beyond the Arctic Circle (1927) and Shneiderov’s Two Oceans (1933), Sarkisova uncovers a little-known history of Arctic indigenous representation, and how these representations fundamentally shifted with the end of Leninism and the beginnings of Stalinism. Sarkisova also explores the profound role played by Polar exploration in the Soviet imaginary during these years, tracing its shifting ideological underpinnings in the process.


Author(s):  
E.N. Romanova ◽  
L.B. Stepanova

The unique body of materials collected by the Soviet ethnographer and the North scholar I.S. Gurvich (1919–1992) in places of compact residence of the indigenous peoples of Yakutia (the Yukagir expedition of 1959) for the first time determined scientific interest in the problem of medical anthropology, which reflected original ideas about diseases and health as a vital unity (body and soul), as well as symbolic “charging” of medical practices. The purpose of this research is an attempt to understand the spiritual experience of the peoples of Yakutia in the context of social, epidemiological, and climatic disasters. An interpretation of the visual image of epidemics in the traditional worldview of the indigenous peoples of Yakutia is given. The main object of this research, which recon-ciles the past and present, is the traditional world of long-lasting “perception” and “experience” of mass epidemics by indigenous people of the North. The methodological innovation of the paper is the study of colonial diseases in the framework of social and cognitive anthropology. With the example of local ideas about diseases and treatment in different ethnic communities of North Asia (the Yakuts, Evens, and Yukagirs), we analyze a complex socio-cultural phenomenon that emerged in the 17th century from the historical contacts between local and foreign origin cultures. The cultural dimension of the epidemic diseases within the borders of the Arctic circle, based on the historical and ethnographic sources of the Northern expeditions of the Soviet ethnologist I.S. Gurvich, is the first attempt of the cognitive analysis, the image of the disease and symbolic strategies for its prevention. A broad semiotic analysis of the concept of disease in the indigenous peoples of the Arctic at the level of linguistic, histori-cal, mythological, folklore and ritual texts allowed us to identify the original layer of demonological representations associated with mass epidemics and symbolic strategies for their prevention. Cultural codes of the demonic char-acter-disease (space, color, object, action, ritual) are identified. Sacred practices of influencing the disease were expressed in the following ways: foresight; conciliation; gifting/redemption; deception techniques; and deliverance. Dis-eases are personified and encoded using certain characters. Obviously, the semiotic system serving the image of dis-ease in the framework of the local ethno-cultural traditions reflected the local specifics.


Polar Record ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Johannsdottir ◽  
David Cook

ABSTRACTThe Arctic Circle Assembly has established itself as a forum for stakeholders from all around the globe to discuss Arctic affairs. This includes discussion about the future of the Arctic, impacts of climate change on local inhabitants and indigenous peoples, the natural environment and wildlife, geopolitical issues, international treaties, research projects, business-related risks and opportunities, etc. At this international conference, the interests of stakeholders vary greatly. Some want to reap the economic and strategic benefits of melting glacial and sea ice, while others want to reduce the negative impacts of climate change. It is therefore important to analyse the conference discourse in order to understand the main emphases of stakeholders, and if some express their views more loudly than others. Through greater weight of voice in the Assembly and beyond, some stakeholders have more impact on the development of a region that is of economic, geopolitical and environmental importance, not only for the northern hemisphere but globally.


Author(s):  
Elena F. GLADUN ◽  
Gennady F. DETTER ◽  
Olga V. ZAKHAROVA ◽  
Sergei M. ZUEV ◽  
Lyubov G. VOZELOVA

Developing democracy institutions and citizen participation in state affairs, the world community focuses on postcolonial studies, which allow us to identify new perspectives, set new priorities in various areas, in law and public administration among others. In Arctic countries, postcolonial discourse has an impact on the methodology of research related to indigenous issues, and this makes possible to understand specific picture of the world and ideas about what is happening in the world. Moreover, the traditions of Russian state and governance are specific and interaction between indigenous peoples and public authorities should be studied with a special research methodology which would reflect the peculiarities of domestic public law and aimed at solving legal issue and enrich public policy. The objective of the paper is to present a new integrated methodology that includes a system of philosophical, anthropological, socio-psychological methods, as well as methods of comparative analysis and scenario development methods to involve peripheral communities into decision-making process of planning the socio-economic development in one of Russia’s Arctic regions — the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District and to justify and further legislatively consolidate the optimal forms of interaction between public authorities and indigenous communities of the North. In 2020, the Arctic Research Center conducted a sociological survey in the Shuryshkararea of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, which seems to limit existing approaches to identifying public opinion about prospects for developing villages and organizing life of their residents. Our proposed methodology for taking into account the views of indigenous peoples can help to overcome the identified limitations.


AMBIO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry P. Huntington ◽  
Andrey Zagorsky ◽  
Bjørn P. Kaltenborn ◽  
Hyoung Chul Shin ◽  
Jackie Dawson ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Arctic Ocean is undergoing rapid change: sea ice is being lost, waters are warming, coastlines are eroding, species are moving into new areas, and more. This paper explores the many ways that a changing Arctic Ocean affects societies in the Arctic and around the world. In the Arctic, Indigenous Peoples are again seeing their food security threatened and cultural continuity in danger of disruption. Resource development is increasing as is interest in tourism and possibilities for trans-Arctic maritime trade, creating new opportunities and also new stresses. Beyond the Arctic, changes in sea ice affect mid-latitude weather, and Arctic economic opportunities may re-shape commodities and transportation markets. Rising interest in the Arctic is also raising geopolitical tensions about the region. What happens next depends in large part on the choices made within and beyond the Arctic concerning global climate change and industrial policies and Arctic ecosystems and cultures.


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