A very new book with many beautiful pictures and a colourful text made by photographer Jeroen Toirkens and writer Petra Sjouwerman, with a historical epilogue by Diederik Veerman, was recently published in the Netherlands. It tells about a trip made following the so-called ‘Barents Road’ on the Barents Region, to the area that has been …
Category: Russian North
New publication: Nomadic and Indigenous Spaces. Productions and Cognitions
Nomadic and Indigenous Spaces. Productions and Cognitions. Edited by Judith Miggelbrink, Joachim Otto Habeck, Nuccio Mazzullo and Peter Koch (2013). Surrey: Ashgate. With contributions from the editors, Denis Wood, Denis Retaillé, Gail Fondahl, Brian Donahoe, Joseph J Long, Kirill V Istomin, Florian Stammler, Claudio Aporta, and Tim Ingold (epilogue) How is space produced and how is …
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An Unexpected Encounter at the Flight Training Unit
Some Testimonies About Forced Anti-Alcoholism Measures Among Saami People in the Soviet Union In one of my first encounters with an elder Saami on the Kola Peninsula (Russia) about five years ago I was told about an institution with the weird name Prophylactic Medical Labour Camp (russ. lechebno-trudovoi profilaktorii, or just LTP). What I was …
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Arctic city-communities and the extractive industries: urbanisation, industrial livelihoods and sustainability-considerations
The extractive industries working group (EIWG) of the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA) and the Uarctic Thematic Network on Arctic Extractive Industries start their course in the Pan-Arctic PhD programme on Arctic Extractive industries next Monday until Friday. We have a very nice group of instructors and students alike, with participants from Canada, Norway, …
Sámi people of Jona: pride and prejudice
The anthropology research team, organised by Anna Stammler-Gossmann, invites to a workshop (in Russian) with Sámi activist and writer, Aleftina Sergina from Jona village (Kola Peninsula, approx. 30 km from the Finnish border, around 100 inhabitants). Issues that we shall discuss at the meeting with Aleftina include - Lovozero is not the only Sami village …
“Before the Snow” – A documentary about Siberian people published online
The film by Christian Vagt features three important indigenous leaders and story tellers from the Khanty and Forest Nenets communities of Western Siberia – Josif Kechimov, Yuri Vella and Agrafena Pesikova. It is a short documentary filmed in 2007 in the West Siberian Taiga about indigenous concepts of their relationship with ghosts and the danger …
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In Memory of a Great Teacher
Yuri Vella left this world on the 12th of September 2013 Almost exactly 20 years ago three German students of anthropology get off a helicopter in the middle of the Western Siberian forest tundra, over 100 km from the next settlement. They see a little wooden hut and a couple with two small kids is …
Arctic Anthropology 