From Tiksi you go another 50 km by motor boat to the village of Cape Bykov (Bykov Mys), where 500 people engage at 72 degrees northern latitude and harsh climate engage in coastal fishing all over the Lena River Delta. Today the only still remaining proper kolkhoz (cooperative enterprise) in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) is …
Category: Indigenous Peoples
New field site in East Siberia, Lena Delta and Tiksi
Until last year it used to be very easy to get to this fieldsite in the Lena River Delta, because direct flights from Moscow brought you to Tiksi in 6 hours. But last year the Russian army who used to run the airbase in Tiksi closed it, and shipped out all the security equipment, so …
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Oral History of the Arctic – along the shores of the ocean
The Orhelia researchers in the anthropology research team are having an intensive fieldwork season. We collect material that allows us to compare how the inhabitants of Eurasia's Arctic shoreline were affected by and respond to different state policies designed in capital cities by governments that are very far from the centres of life of our …
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Mining or golfing? Or both? Or nothing? – A perspective to mining in the north of Sweden
In a small newspaper named LKAB Framtid Luleå [LKAB Future Luleå] with a special February issue this year published by the Swedish mining company Loussavaara Kirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB), can an article with the headline "Critics are wrong: 'We need more mines'" be found. That issue was a special one for the town of Luleå that is …
New book about the history of the Sámi from Russia during Soviet times – online open access
My book “The Sámi of the Kola Peninsula: About the life of an ethnic minority in the Soviet Union” has been recently translated into English and published on the internet within the publication series of the Centre for Sámi Studies at the University of Tromsø. Using extensive biographical interviews as a primary source, this oral …
“If research doesn’t surprise you, it’s not worth the research” Julie Cruikshank
I would like to share with you some of the things we learned from Julie Cruikshank and other elders from the Yukon Territory to better understand oral history from the North. To search for surprising insights, to be open to challenges to our conventional perceptions, that was Julie's most important advice to us. Her talk …
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RAIPON indigenous peoples association new president
For those interested, the Russian Indigenous Peoples Association (RAIPON) got a new president a week ago, at a very important time in the organisation's biography, because it had been closed down for formal reasons by Russian authorities late last year. Now elections for the presidency had been held in Salekhard, the capital of my prime …
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Arctic Anthropology 