Igor Krupnik

Reindeer pastoralism in modern Siberia: research and survival during the time of crash

In many areas across Siberia, the reindeer herding economy of the native people went into a deep recession during the post-Soviet transition of the 1990s. However, as a larger cross-section of data indicates, the reindeer stock decline is not a universal phenomenon. Nor is the present-day crisis in native Siberian herding economies an unprecedented event, as pastoralists did suffer tremendously in “traditional times”, due to the devastating epizootics and other natural disasters, and even more so, during the Soviet-induceed collectivizsation. While such a historical review by no means diminishes the scale of the present-day crisis in native herding economies, it helps to identify both the experience and traditional adaptations once used by the native Siberians during the previous times of hardship. Of those, the most efficient were: maintaining cultural and ecological diversity in local herding systems; the ability to shift quickly between nomadic population as the invaluable source of cultural knowledge, technological expertise, and of domestic reindeer stock for ultimate recovery. The modern situation in Siberia, in fact, favours increased local diversity and helps to produce a steady stream of new “winners” as well as new “losers.” This new experience has to be comprehensively documented, to produce both a reliable general overview and a detailed summary of the specific regional and local transitions.

Franz Boas and Inuktitut Terminology for Ice and Snow: From the Emergence of the Field to the “Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax”

Franz Boas, the “founding father” of North American anthropology, has long been credited with many pioneer contributions to the field of Arctic anthropology, as a result of his first and only fieldwork among the Inuit on Baffin Island, following the First International Polar Year 1882–1883. In this new “polar year” the SIKU project has initiated several studies of the Inuit terminology for sea ice and snow, including in the areas of Baffin Island once surveyed by Boas, as well as in the nearby regions of Nunavut, Nunavik, Labrador, and Greenland. Also, in the past decade the story of Boas’ fieldwork on Baffin Island has become known in full, in diaries, personal letters, and field notes. This chapter capitalizes on these new sources: it examines Boas’ knowledge of the Inuit terminology for sea ice and snow and its value to current discussion about language, indigenous knowledge, the Inuit, and beyond. It also addresses the so-called Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax debate of the past decades that misconstrues Boas’ use of the Inuit terms and the analysis of the contemporary Inuit ice and snow vocabulary.

The scope of science for the International Polar Year, 2007-2008

Produced by the ICSU/WMO Joint Committee for IPY 2007–2008 By: Ian Allison and Michel Beland (Co-Chairs), Keith Alverson, Robin Bell, David Carlson, Kjell Danell, Cynan Ellis-Evans, Eberhard Fahrbach, Edith Fanta, Yoshiyuki Fujii, Gisbert Gilbertson, Leah Goldfarb, Grete Hovelsrud-Broda, Johannes Huber, Vladimir Kotlyakov, Igor Krupnik, Jeronimo Lopez-Martinez, Tillmann Mohr, Dahe Qin, Volker Rachold, Chris Rapley, Odd Rogne, Eduard Sarukhanian, Colin Summerhayes, Cunde Xiao

A framework and database for community sea ice observations in a changing Arctic: an Alaskan prototype for multiple users

Indigenous sea ice experts from three Alaskan communities, geophysicists, an anthropologist, and information technology specialists collaborated to develop an observational framework and a database to record, archive, disseminate, and analyze sea ice observations. Observations are based on ice uses and information about ice conditions, weather, ocean state, and animal behavior relevant to hunters and to community members. Daily logs kept during the ice season have been archived since 2006, with key variables extracted for subcategories pertaining to weather and ice observations, ice-related activities, and wildlife. The observation program and the development of the associated database are discussed in terms of community wishes and information needs and the potential uses for hunters, students, and others in coastal Alaska. Database records for Gambell, Wales, and Barrow, Alaska, are analyzed to arrive at a representative seasonal cycle of ice conditions for 2006/2007. This single year is placed into a longer-term context by examining interannual variability for freeze-up and breakup dates from 2006 through 2011 extracted from the database. We discuss the adaptive nature of the database framework and its relevance to coastal communities in gathering and transmitting knowledge about the ice environment that can help in adapting to rapid Arctic change.

“It’s Cold, but Not Cold Enough”: Observing Ice and Climate Change in Gambell, Alaska, in IPY 2007–2008 and Beyond

The chapter discusses the main outcomes of 3 years (2006–2007, 2007–2008, 2008–2009) of systematic observation of ice and weather conditions in the community of Gambell (Sivuqaq) on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The 3-year recording of ice and weather in Gambell by local monitors was a part of a larger observation effort under the SIKU project. Observers from eight communities in Alaska and Russian Chukotka took daily notes of ice and weather around their home areas for several consecutive winters. Data from Gambell are the longest and the most comprehensive within this larger SIKU data set. Observations by local monitors reveal a very complex signal of change that often differs by season or location, even among the nearby communities. The 3-year record of ice and weather observations offers new insight to Arctic climate and ice scientists. It will also help Arctic residents document their cultural tradition, ice use, and knowledge in the time of rapid environmental and social change.

Qanuq Ilitaavut: “How We Learned What We Know” (Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary)

The chapter discusses a collaborative effort to document more than 120 local Inupiaq terms for sea ice and associated vocabulary in the community of Wales, Alaska, in 2007–2008. The value of recording indigenous words for sea ice as a key to understanding indigenous knowledge of sea ice was first tested during an earlier project on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska (2000–2002). Under the SIKU initiative, more than 20 of such local ice vocabularies were collected in indigenous communities in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka, Russia. In Wales, Winton Weaypuk, a boat captain and a speaker of the Kingikmiut dialect, led the effort to collect local ice terms, documented elders’ knowledge about ice, and took more than 100 photos of various ice-related activities in the Wales area. Traditional words for ice, illustrations of local ice forms, and the Inupiaq explanations and English translations collected for the project would be of help to young hunters, so that the knowledge is preserved for future generations.

SIKU: International Polar Year Project #166 (An Overview)

The SIKU (Sea Ice Knowledge and Use) project emerged in response to the growing public and scholarly attention to the environmental knowledge of the Arctic residents, as well as to the rising concerns about the impact of climate change on Arctic environment and polar sea ice. The special momentum for the SIKU project was created by International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008 that launched a new era of international and interdisciplinary collabration and partnership with northern communities. This introductory chapter tells how the SIKU project has originated and developed in 2004–2005; it reviews its structure made of various regional and individual initiatives, and covers major activities undertaken by the team during 2006–2009. It summarizes the key scientific outcomes and public messages of the SIKU project, as well as its contribution to the overall science program of IPY 2007–2008. It ends up with the synopsis of the present volume with the acknowledgements to many institutions and individuals who were instrumental to the success of the SIKU project.

Introduction: In the Footsteps of a Giant

On 16 September 2010, northern anthropology lost one of its most renowned ethnologists with the unexpected passing of Ernest S. Burch, Jr., who died at his home in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, at age 72 (Fig. 1). Known almost universally as “Tiger,” he was a passionate and meticulous researcher, an extremely productive and infl uential scholar, and a “professional” in the very best sense of the word. These traits earned him the enduring respect of his colleagues, who included not just social scientists but also wildlife biologists, Iñupiaq elders, local and academic historians, and those of us who cut our teeth reading Tiger’s work and discussing our research with him at meetings and gatherings through the years.1 Born in New Haven, Connecticut, on 17 April 1938, Tiger was the eldest of three children of Elsie Lillard Burch and the late Ernest S. Burch, Sr. After Tiger’s father graduated from Yale Law School, the family moved to Harrisburg, PA and then to a small nearby farm where Tiger and his siblings grew up. Tiger’s formal academic resume included a degree in Sociology from Prince ton University (BA, 1960, cum laude), graduate degrees in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (MA, 1963; PhD, 1966), and service as associate professor and chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba (1966–74; see Correll, this volume). After leaving academia in 1975, Tiger became a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution (1979) and its Arctic Studies Center in Washington, D.C. (1988, Fitzhugh, this volume). He spent the next 30 years of his career as an independent researcher. The majority of his anthropological work and writing was produced out of his home offi ce and without permanent institutional support. Burch’s arctic career began at age 16 as a junior crewmember of Donald B. MacMillan’s 1954 expedition to Labrador, Baffi n Island, and Greenland. Following a summer of fi eld research in Labrador in 1959, Burch began what turned out to be a lifelong relationship with the Iñupiaq peoples of Northwest Alaska. He spent 11 months in the village of Kivalina in 1960–1961 doing what was essentially an environmental and subsistence study. Accompanied by his wife Deanne, in May 1964 Tiger returned to Kivalina to conduct his dissertation research; however, in December the project came to a tragic halt when he was badly burned attempting to save his fi eld notes from a gasoline fi re. Despite severe injuries, just fi ve months later Tiger and Deanne were back in Kivalina. He resumed his research and completed his dissertation shortly thereafter. Tiger conducted additional fi eldwork in northwestern Alaska in 1969–70 and 1974–75, accumulating a large and diverse body of data. Those data provided the foundation for his most important publications and for the later encyclopedic trilogy on the Iñupiaq peoples of Northwest Alaska (Burch 1998, 2005, 2006) that has become the centerpiece of his scholastic legacy. Burch was a master of an ethnohistorical method that allowed him to make signifi cant contributions to the study of the Alaskan Iñupiat during the traditional and early contact era, the Caribou Inuit of Central Canada, and Inuit interactions with their Athabaskan-speaking neighbors in Alaska (Mishler, this volume) and Canada. He also compiled a comprehensive map of indigenous peoples of the Arctic ca. 1825 (Wheelersburg, this volume) and wrote several papers assessing the relevance of hunter-gatherer research (Krupnik, Stern, this volume). Burch’s work was characterized by precision, deliberation, exhaustive research using archival records, and critical attention to detail. He was entirely transparent in stating his objectives and theoretical orientations, the sources of information he consulted, and how he conducted his

Diminishing Sea Ice

In their useful Report, “A global map of human impact on marine ecosystems” (15 February, p. [948][1]), B. S. Halpern et al . wrote that “large areas of relatively little human impact remain, particularly near the poles.” They failed to take into account sea-ice diminishment, which may