|
Abstract “WATCHING ICE AND WEATHER OUR WAY”: NORTHERN RESIDENTS DOCUMENT ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE Igor Krupnik All previous IPY/IGY ventures were exemplary products of, and the monuments to, the modern Euro-American paradigm of ‘polar (or northern) science.’ Under that vision, scholarly data to be used in academic publications were to be collected by professional scientists and/or by specially trained observers, who commonly happened to be white men. Arctic indigenous residents had hardly any documented voice in the early IPY/IGY initiatives, except by serving as ‘subjects’ of scholarly research and museum collecting (mainly in IPY 1882-1883), or while working as dog-drivers, food providers, guides, and unskilled assistants to research expeditions. Natural scientists with strong interest in Native cultures were the first to break that mold and to see polar residents as a source of precious expertise on Arctic environment, particularly when individual researchers were to live in indigenous communities for substantial time (Edward Nelson, Franz Boas, Lucien Turner). A new valuable source of information emerged when local residents were stimulated by scientists or teachers to keep personal diaries or had started recording environmental observations upon their own initiative. The Smithsonian has a distinguished tradition of supporting such efforts—from Henry Collins’ work with Paul Silook from Gambell, Alaska in the 1920s to the most recent projects on indigenous sea ice knowledge documentation on St. Lawrence Island (2000–2004) and in the broader Bering Strait region (since 2006). The paper will explore the unique role of IPY 2007-2008 and of its many individual ventures focused on the documentation of indigenous knowledge of Arctic environment and climate change.
|