In this issue
Features
From the President
From the Executive Officer
Arctic Council Updates
ICASS V Second Announcement
ICASS V Sessions
Polish Sources and Researchers on Siberia

Departments
About IASSA
IASSA Council Members
IASSA.Net
Call for Articles
Conferences, Meetings and Workshops
For Students
Money Line
Bookshelf
Inquiries



From the President
I have seen a lot of Iceland's lovely capital Reykjavik lately and it seems that more travel is under way. The reason for that is of course that Iceland has taken over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council (AC) for 2002-04. I attended the Steering Committee meeting for the Arctic Human Development Report last December and the meetings of the Sustainable Development Working Group and of the Senior Arctic Officials in April of this year (see my brief reports below). My impression is that IASSA and its membership can learn a lot by taking a close look at AC-sponsored activities, many of which combine policy and community relevance with scholarship. At the same time, I believe that IASSA members have a lot of expertise to offer and I hope that our presence at AC meetings will contribute to making the social sciences more visible within the circumpolar North.

With the call for sessions for the next International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS V) successfully completed, the call for papers (see below) is the next stepping stone toward the congress next year. Please keep in mind that the list of sessions is preliminary; there is still room for changes and adjustments, although we hope that most potential session organizers were able to get in touch with us in time. Please check for updates at our website: http://www.uaf.edu/anthro/iassa/index.html

We are currently finalizing a number of grant proposals. If you anticipate needing travel funding for yourself or any participants in a session, please let us know as soon as possible by sending an email to Anne Sudkamp < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >. We'll need CVs and a rough budget.

Spring has arrived to Fairbanks and soon the Arctic will be experiencing its short but intensive summer. I hope you will have a pleasant and successful summer whatever your plans might be.

Peter Schweitzer

From the Executive Officer
It's been another great year here at the secretariat. We have ICASS V plans moving forward, sessions forming, members renewing their memberships, and new members coming on board. Thanks go to all of you who have participated in IASSA in one way or another this year-you are a pleasure to work with!

This summer we'll keep the office open a few hours a week. Although I won't be able to process memberships during this time, you can still send them in so they'll be ready and waiting when I come back on in late summer.

Congratulations to the following four IASSA members:

Dr. H.G. Jones, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, received the 2002 North Carolina Award for Public Service, the highest honor the state of North Carolina can bestow.

Stephanie Irlbacher Fox, a graduate student at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, won the Seventh Annual ARCUS (Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S.) Award for Arctic Research Excellence in the social sciences category for her paper, "Women's Participation in Self Government Negotiations in the Northwest Territories, Canada."

Elana Wilson, a graduate student at the Scott Polar Research Institute/Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, received an honorable mention in this ARCUS competition in the social sciences category for her paper "Gender and Nationalism in Nunavut: A Case Study of the 1997 Gender Parity Vote."

Catherine Pinard, a biologist in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, finished 12th in the 2003 Yukon Quest, a 1,026-mile sled-dog race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. She finished in 12 days, 21 hours and 26 minutes with 10 dogs. During the race, temperatures dropped to as low as -50º Farenheit.

I wish you all a happy and productive summer!

Anne Sudkamp

Arctic Council Updates
Peter Schweitzer attended the Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) meeting and the meeting of the Senior Arctic Officials (SAO) in April, 2003, in Reykjavik, Iceland. The SDWG meeting touched upon many issues of relevance for IASSA members and a short synopsis of the summary report is provided below. The SAO meeting proved to be less important for our purposes and it will only be mentioned insofar decisions concerning SDWG were made. The Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), a project of the SDWG, will be discussed separately. For more information on the Arctic Council and for detailed reports of individual projects check out the Arctic Council website at http://www.arctic-council.org/.

Sustainable Development Working Group Meeting, April 2003
The Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) of the Arctic Council met on April 7-8, 2003, in Reykjavik. It had been almost a year since SDWG last met in May, 2002. Mr. Hugi Olafsson (Iceland) is currently the chair of the SDWG. At the meeting, Mr. Boris Morgunov (Russian Federation) was nominated and selected as vice-chair for a two-year term. Mr. Pavel Sulyandziga of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) was nominated and selected as the second vice-chair of the SDWG, representing the Permanent Participants. Attendants were also informed that the new Permanent Secretariat for the SDWG has been operating since January, 2003 in Ottawa, Canada. Mr. Bernard Funston is the interim Executive Secretary until May 31, 2003.

Canada provided an update on the follow-up to the capacity-building workshop in Helsinki in 2001 and proposed a seminar/workshop with working group chairs and project leaders on capacity-building best practices, possibly in connection with the fall 2003 SDWG/SAO meeting. Finland and Canada gave an account of possible follow-up from the "Taking Wing" conference and its recommendations. Four potential follow-up activities were identified: one was approved as a new project (see below), two new project proposals - dealing with violence against women and the trafficking in women - may be presented for approval at the next SDWG meeting, and collaboration with the Arctic Human Development Report regarding gender issues was suggested.

The SDWG currently has ten active projects. Three of these are new or follow-up projects, which were approved at the Ministerial Meeting in Inari last fall. These projects include the "Arctic Human Development Report" (see separate report below), and two reindeer-related projects - "Reindeer Husbandry and Wild Reindeer/Caribou" (led by Norway) and "Product Development and Processing in Sustainable Reindeer Husbandry" ('Ofelas', led by Finland). The seven ongoing projects include: "Children and Youth" (Canada), "Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic" (SLICA, Denmark/Greenland), "Circumpolar Infrastructure Task Force" (CITF, USA), "Co-management of Marine Resources in Arctic Areas" (Saami Council), "Ecological and Cultural Tourism" (USA/Finland), "Telemedicine" (USA), and "Emerging Infectious Diseases" (USA).

The SAO meeting approved a new project proposal, entitled "Women's Participation in Decision-making Processes in Arctic Fisheries Resource Management" and put forward by Norway. This new project in the area of gender is understood as a follow-up to the Taking Wing Conference.

Considerable discussion was devoted to the so-called Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP). The last meeting of Arctic Council Ministers in Inari had tasked the SAOs to develop an action plan on sustainable development, with the aim to adopt it at the next Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting. The Russian Federation had prepared a background paper on this matter, which was discussed at the SDWG meeting. The SAOs agreed that the SDWG has the responsibility for developing a more concrete paper outlining the building blocks and possible content of the SDAP. For now, Russia will proceed with coordinating the development of a "discussion paper" or "elements of an Action Plan" for consideration at the next meeting of the SDWG and SAOs. The next SDWG meeting will be held on October 22, 2003, in Iceland.

Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) Update
Work toward AHDR was initiated at the November 2001 meeting of the SDWG and the project was formally adopted by the AC Ministerial Meeting in Inari in October 2002. The AHDR is a priority project of Iceland during its Arctic Council chairmanship, 2002-2004.

The constitution of a Steering Committee with representatives from member states, permanent participants and observers occurred at a meeting in Reykjavik in December of 2002. The meeting also confirmed the formation of an Executive Committee, which includes the two co-chairs of AHDR - Mr. Níels Einarsson (Iceland) and Mr. Oran Young (USA) - as well as Mrs. Ingvild Broch (Norway) and Mr. Rune Sverre Fjellheim (Saami Council). Based on suggestions by the Steering Committee, the Executive Committee finalized a list of lead authors for the fifteen chapters of the AHDR in March 2003. An AHDR Secretariat has been installed at the Stefansson Arctic Institute in Akureyri, Iceland, and Mrs. Joan Nymand Larsen serves as the Project Manager. The next steps include a meeting of lead authors (scheduled for mid-June) and the selection of contributing authors. IASSA is well represented among the lead authors and it is to be expected that even more IASSA members will be among the contributing authors. The project faces a tight time-schedule, as a draft of the AHDR is supposed to be presented at the next AC Ministerial Meeting in the fall of 2004.

Peter Schweitzer


ICASS V-Second Announcement and Call for Papers
The International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA) is pleased to issue the second announcement for the 5th International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS V) to be held at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA from May 19-23, 2004.

These international congresses are held every three years, bringing together people from all over the world to share ideas about social science research in the Arctic. The last one, ICASS IV, was held in Quebec City, Canada from May 16-20, 2001, hosting some 300 participants from 17 different countries.

IASSA is now calling for papers. Please submit abstracts by December 31, 2003 to Anne Sudkamp, < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, or to the IASSA secretariat mailing address: PO Box 757730, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7730, USA; tel.: +1-907-474-6367; fax: +1-907-474-6370.

Please include paper title, author name(s), complete contact information for author(s), the abstract in 100-200 words, and the session to which it pertains. Presentations will be 20 minutes long.

Following is a preliminary list of sessions and organizers. Please note that paper abstracts should be sent to Anne Sudkamp and inquiries about sessions should be sent to session organizers.
Conference organizing committee members include Peter Schweitzer, chair; Amy Lovecraft, Molly Lee, Richard Caulfield, Gordon Pullar, Jonathan Rosenberg, Gary Kofinas, Jordan Titus, Pips Veazey and Anne Sudkamp.

ICASS V Sessions: a Preliminary List

Arctic Policy: Re-examining Shifting Boundaries
Session Proposed by: Peter J. May < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Session Chair: Fae Korsmo, NSF, < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Proposed Discussants: Fae Korsmo and Greg Poelzer < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
In keeping with the theme of ICASS V, this proposal is for a session that will examine various aspects of the shifting boundaries that have defined Arctic policy in the United States and Canada. One aspect is the role that indigenous knowledge has performed in shaping policy. A second aspect is the interplay of global considerations with national, regional, and local considerations in defining Arctic policy. A third aspect is the changing agenda that comprises Arctic policy in the United States and Canada. This session will examine these shifting boundaries and their implications for the study of Arctic policy. Research findings will be presented that are based on an on-going study of Arctic policy in the United States and Canada being undertaken with funding by the U.S. National Science Foundation by researchers at the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, University of Washington, Seattle USA.

Building Sustainable Worlds: Native and Non-Native Perspectives on the Management of Natural Resources in the Arctic
Frank J. Sowa < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Several conflicts over the management of local natural resources as e.g. birds, reindeers and whales as well as conflicts over the establishment of nature reserves and national parks in the Arctic and Northern countries show that the increasingly globalised world has brought about new consequences for Inuit and other local people. They are more and more confronted with "Western" ideas of scientific management regimes, nature conservation and in general the category "nature". Even if there are attempts to combine the different worldviews and knowledge bases as e.g. through establishing co-management or by recognizing Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), the mutual intercultural understanding of each other is limited.

The session invites scientists to make their contribution to the following topics: theoretical and empirical aspects on native and non-native perspectives on nature, sustainability and human-animal relations in the Arctic; cultural significances of local resources for the Inuit Life-World(s) (Lebenswelt); cultural representations through local food; the implication of "nature" in political processes of nation-building; various meanings of sustainability in the Arctic; ideas of the finiteness and infinity of natural resources; methodological and scientific commitments of the management of local resources; and the Western ideas of nature protection and conservation.

Building Sustainable Worlds as a cooperative and joint task in the Arctic is only possible if there is more reciprocal hermeneutical understanding of categories, perspectives, methods and ways of knowledge production. The fundamental aim of the session is to reflect the stereotypical projections of Inuit/Eskimo of the past, to analyse contemporary conflicts and debates over the management of natural resources and to create more constructive dialogue in the future.

Children in the Arctic
Barbara Crass < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Children are one of the invisible groups of people (Moore & Scott 1997), not only in the past but, to a certain extent, in the present as well. Anthropologists often see children as either a separate topic for research or, more commonly, as a side issue to research dealing with adults. But children are a very important and visible part of everyone's daily life. They have their own culture as well as being active participants in the dominant culture of adults. This session seeks to explore aspects of children and childhood in the Arctic, past and present. Papers on archaeological, cultural, educational, medical, sociologic, folkloric and historic aspects of children are welcome.

Circumpolar Arts in an Era of Globalization
Nelson H.H. Graburn < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
In 1990, at the founding of IASSA in Fairbanks, Alaska, we convened the first panel on the arts of the Circumpolar North. Important processes of change in the arts such as the North-South connections with mainstream urban art worlds, and circumpolar cooperation in art exhibitions were then in their infancy. Since that date, some of these trends have come to fruition, for instance Arts of the Arctic, the circumpolar traveling art exhibition, organized by Ron Senungetuk and Lorne Balshine in the early 1990's, and the burst of artistic activity among Canadian Inuit artists currently living in the south. The papers of this session will examine the consequences of these events and point the way towards new trends and processes in the politics of art and culture.

Connections: Collaborations between Communities and Language Workers
Anna Berge < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, Gary Holton < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, Lawrence Kaplan < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, and Kathy Sikorski < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Past approaches to language documentation and revitalization in the North have often been structured from the top down. While such efforts have produced materials which are useful to outside researchers, these materials have not always been of direct use to language communities. Today there is a growing recognition of the value of locally based research which directly addresses the needs of the community through a collaborative approach. The future of language work in the North points toward more active participation by communities in language work and a more meaningful and engaging relationship between communities and language workers. In recognition of the conference theme, we encourage papers which explore the past, present, and/or future of these relationships. Papers which discuss current or proposed collaborative and innovative documentation and revitalization projects are especially welcome.

Effective Local Institutions for Collective Action in Arctic Communities
Sharman Haley < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Why are some small communities more successful than others in developing a sustainable mixed economy, with good public services, and positive social outcomes for residents of all ages? What are the factors that foster effective local institutions? How can communities learn to more effectively address problems and promote their own community goals? This session invites interdisciplinary inquiry into community-based collective action in the Arctic.
Effective self-governing institutions for collective action are the theoretical cornerstone for development. (Cornell 1997; Cornell and Kalt 1992, 1995, 1997, 2000; E. Ostrom 1990; V. Ostrom 1993) There are historical, cultural and political-institutional dimensions to identifying catalysts and impediments to collective action. The inquiry is necessarily interdisciplinary, and must involve both theory and practical experience. At the same time it must be collaborative, including both community stakeholders with in-depth local knowledge, and outsiders with a broad comparative perspective.

The Enemy Within: The Dilemma of the Outsider in Northern Aboriginal Communities
Ken Caine < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, Mike Salomons < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
and Deborah Simmons < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
It is widely recognized that Aboriginal groups in the Northwest Territories of Canada are leaders in land claims, self-determination, and self-government. There is much attention being paid to defining aspirations, but much less on the process to implement these aspirations. This has contributed to the development of a contradictory scenario whereby communities are compelled to hire outside professionals to achieve their self-defined aims. There is a heavy reliance on outsiders to implement the projects, but there is also much hostility towards these outsiders. There are two main reasons for this: one outsiders are perceived as representing the old paternalistic structures of the past; and two, outsiders embody the community's recognition of the gap that exists between the community's goals and their ability to independently achieve them. This session will explore this issue from both Northern Canadian and International perspectives.

Gender Issues in the Arctic
Joanna Kafarowski < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
This session is designed to reflect the breadth and diversity of gender issues in the North. A paper may adopt a theoretical or empirical approach and address a range of topics including, but not confined to, the role of gender in governance and leadership, the impact of gender on natural resource management, gender and traditional knowledge and gender and socio-economic issues.

Globalization and Self-Determination: Assessing Challenge and Change in the Arctic
Gabrielle Slowey < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Just as colonialism and capitalism are often treated as uniformly destructive on Aboriginal systems, globalization is also considered to be detrimental to Aboriginal self-determination. But just as indigenous nations are not monolithic or unified in organization, neither are their perspectives on, or experiences of, globalization. For some, it may positively affect their quest for self-determination. For others, the experience of globalization may be a negative experience. And for others still, it may be any combination of both. For Arctic/northern societies that are often seen as especially marginalized and ill-placed to resist the tide of globalization, the question that arises is - to what extent is this assumption accurate? This session explores how globalization is changing and challenging indigenous communities in the circumpolar world. It seeks to broaden our knowledge and understanding of globalization and Aboriginal self-determination by exploring ways in which they are connected - both in theory and in practice. Topics that might be addressed in this session include issues pertaining to indigenous governance, Aboriginal agency, state-market relations, economic participation and resource development, international organization and mobilization as well as challenges that confront local associations. Participation by indigenous people and from across circumpolar regions is greatly encouraged.

Herding Reindeer and Hunting Caribou: Circumpolar Perspectives on People and Deer
Patty Gray < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, Gary Kofinas < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Alexander King < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
This panel is a forum to connect recent research among Siberian reindeer herders to a larger circumpolar perspective on the human dimensions of hunting and herding Rangifer. We want to discuss the implications deer have for social relations as well as the social relationships humans have with deer. We particularly welcome comparative papers, as well as case studies that test a theoretical paradigm connecting a broad range cultures.

Historical Archaeology in Arctic/Sub-Arctic Social Systems: Exploring Connections between the Local and the Global
James Whitney < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Robin Mills < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Historical archaeology conducted in the Arctic offers an excellent opportunity for exploring connections between local and global social systems. As a region, the northern latitudes have been in part insulated from larger global systems more so in the past than the present, owing to vagaries of climate, environment, and lack of infrastructure development. Regardless, local systems that have and continue to operate on a small scale in such regions both affect, and are affected by, external global systems operating on larger scales. Social systems have always operated on a continuous spectrum of spatial and temporal scales, but the spatial scale of direct and indirect interaction accelerated in most, if not all, indigenous areas as a result of continuing interaction with Euroamericans, and integration into large economic systems. By combining written documents, oral sources, and material culture, historical archaeology allows a multifaceted perspective of these social systems. With such diverse data sets, researchers can look at various aspects of these systems, from economies to ideologies. Papers in this session will analyze one or more aspects of such systems in the Arctic/Sub-Arctic on the local scale and how they relate to larger regional, national, and even global systems.

Indigenous Media and the Circumpolar North
Nancy Wachowich < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
This session will explore the history, politics and practice of indigenous media in the north. Media technologies, once seen as purveyors of ethnographic truths, are increasingly recognized for their ability to stimulate and foster new types of social relationships between individuals and communities. Yet, as northern peoples take greater control of their cultural productions, new ethical and political concerns emerge. Most pertinently, what roles do different forms of media have in facilitating, mediating, but also complicating cross-cultural encounters? This question opens out several themes to be addressed during this session: the compatibility and interplay between anthropology and media technology; the politics and practice of knowledge production and visuality; the power and authority of media forms; image politics and social activism; transnational and circumpolar circuits; and cross-cultural ideas of value and aesthetics. Ethnographic case studies are invited from regions across the circumpolar north and could relate to a variety of media forms including: art; film; video; television; museums; music; the internet; and others.

Indigenous Resistance in the North
Art Leete < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Resistance against the states' invasion has been widespread among the northern peoples throughout the history of contacts between hegemonic state power and local indigenous communities. Northern peoples have developed multiple forms of protest, most of which are local and situational. But in some cases their resistance has been more organized and took the form of several movements and uprisings. The form of resistance depended upon diverse issues, most of all on the aftermath of the state policy towards indigenous communities. This policy had a direct impact on native resistance, sometimes allowing more tribal sovereignty, but sometimes abandoning all achievements in this field. Characteristic of the indigenous resistance, external oppression has been combined with native ideas about social change within the northern peoples' communities. Hopefully, papers of this session will analyse different ways of northern peoples' resistance from a variety of perspectives to create a better basis of understanding of this extremely important issue.

Information Technologies Working for Indigenous Study
Victoria Churikova < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Working for a big IT company, I know that many projects deal with natural language processing (NLP), a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with analyzing, understanding and generating the languages humans use naturally in order to interface with computers in both written and spoken contexts. For this purpose we usually use English and Russian. It's time to use IT achievements for the purposes of indigenous peoples generally and for collecting databases and research in the field of minor languages. I am sure many prominent linguists of the North share my opinion. We should also join forces with programmers, who have a quite different mentality. The first step is simple: collect vocabularies and grammars of the certain languages, make good programs to process them and use in teaching purposes. We may begin with launching this process in the Novosoft company as a student (free) project. I will invite others from our company to submit papers.

Integrating Indigenous Knowledge, Ways of Knowing and World Views into the Educational Systems in the Arctic
Ray Barnhardt < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
The symposium will provide participants with examples of work that is currently underway in the circumpolar region to assist schools in integrating indigenous knowledge, ways of knowing and world views into all aspects of education, with a particular emphasis on using the local cultural and physical environment as a laboratory for learning. Presentations from each participating country/initiative will include a description of the epistemological basis for the initiative, the organizational structure being utilized, the role of Elders, and the cultural documentation process involved, as well as the implications of place-based education for curriculum development, teaching practices and support structures for schools serving indigenous peoples.

International Perspectives and Arctic Governance
Karen Erickson < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
The session has a threefold focus: (1) international perspectives as they relate to arctic interests and policies; (2) the linkage between science and alternative policy outcomes; and (3) future policy directions. Papers of the session consider the following issues:

Circumpolar affairs and the perceived mainstream of global politics make up a two-way street. How do transatlantic, Northern Eurasian, and hemispheric relations relate to circumpolar concerns? In what critical ways do the conditions and policies of the North affect current global developments? How does science address societal needs and how does research engage to improve the human condition? Special attention is given to community social and political dynamics; impact of federal fiscal policies on the Russian Far North; and new security paradigms. The rise of panarctic institutions and the proliferation of regimes occasion questions about the need, numbers, redundancy, and relevance of the initiatives that abound. On the other hand, where are the gaps? What remains to be addressed? What are the problems and challenges that require institutional responses? Does the policy and research activity of the Arctic respond to the critical issues of the times? Do the alignments, partnerships and discourse of the circumpolar community meet the needs of the primary constituents and stakeholders? In short, who creates the future of the circumpolar north, and on what basis?

Locating Circumpolar Environmental Change: From Global to Local
Anne Henshaw < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Susan Crate < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Environmental change discourse is often framed in global terms. One of the effects of a globalist perspective is that it privileges an ideology of environmental detachment over local ways of experiencing the world and negotiating daily survival in the Arctic. The papers in this panel will address the degree to which differences in worldview effect policy in the realm of renewable and non-renewable resource management, climate change, and environmental degradation. How do these dynamics play out on the local, national and international stage across the arctic? To what extent is indigenous knowledge being integrated into environmental policy-making decisions in different cultural contexts? What are the historical roots that underlie any inequities that exist? What are the challenges involved in integrating different ways of knowing and approaching environmental problems at different spatial and temporal scales? Case studies will be circumpolar in coverage and will examine: 1) the roots of international policy regulating marine mammal and the growth of regional and community level self-regulation networks; 2) approaches to understanding global climate change at the scale of human activity; 3) local environmental and indigenous issues due to the impact of mining, hydroelectric dam projects, and chemical pollutants in the Arctic.

Media and Telecommunications: Crossing the Barriers Between Circumpolar Peoples
Jane George < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
This session would include a panel discussion of the impact of telecommunications on the northern peoples and our understanding of the issues facing them, featuring journalists, communications staff and others. Presenters could explore how media has been able to bring information to circumpolar residents and from them in a timely and informative way and how this new flow of information has been impacted on northern residents and researchers. It would also be interesting to have presenters discuss any aspect of media or telecommunications or even communications in a broader way in the context of this session.

Paleolithic and Mesolithic Prehistory: Recent Advances in the Russian Arctic
Dan Odess < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Vladimir Pitulko < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Over the past fifteen years, political changes, international collaboration and developments in fields allied with archaeology have led to advances in our understanding of Mesolithic and Paleolithic prehistory in the Russian Arctic. Improved precision and accuracy in dating, greater access to comparative collections, the development of paleo-genetic techniques, and improved understanding of past environments have all contributed to these advances. Scholarly exchanges and the translation of key works have also improved the dissemination of ideas and information. This session is intended to further that trend and provides an opportunity for those working on Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures in arctic Russia to share the results of recent research.

Protecting and Restoring the Relationships Between Traditional Users and Wilderness Places
Alan Watson < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Lil Alessa < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
During the autumn of 2004, a celebration is planned to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Wilderness Act. Although over half of the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System is in Alaska (58 of 105 million acres), there has been little acknowledgement of the unique direction established for protection or restoration of the relationship between rural people and wilderness lands in Alaska through passage in 1980 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. This session in May of 2004 at the Arctic Social Sciences Conference will provide an opportunity to build understanding, cooperation, and strategy for presenting this unique challenge to the larger wilderness advocacy, stewardship, and academic community during a likely September celebration. Focus will be on including native people with strong relationships to wilderness resources, federal agency planners with the challenge of developing land management plans that consider all values of these places (including economic, recreation, biological and traditional), and nongovernmental organizations with a stake in conservation and community values. Looking beyond Alaska, the circumpolar north community is taking a more in-depth look at wilderness protection as a way to ensure traditional methods of livelihood, and specific effort would be made to involve scientists, planners and native people from Finland, Canada, Russia, Iceland and Greenland in planning and participation in this session. A current initiative between the Leopold Institute and the University of Alaska provides focus and an active network of participants on research and education topics that create understanding of the relationship between evolving native cultures and wilderness protection.

Quantitative Research in Arctic Social Science
Jack Hicks < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Ailsa Henderson < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
This session will bring together individuals conducting quantitative research in the field of Arctic social science to discuss challenges and solutions. The demography and cultures of the north requires innovative adaptations to southern quantitative research practices. Election studies often exclude northern participants and existing studies of global opinion, such as the World Values Survey, contain little information from northern respondents. The collection of comprehensive statistical data is sometimes hampered by issues of cost, training and organization. This session will focus on the major challenges facing quantitative research, the impact of these challenges on Artic social science and possible solutions to commonly-perceived problems.

Resilience and Vulnerability: Understanding Cross-scale, Human-Environment Interactions in the Arctic
Grete Hovelsrud-Broda < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Marybeth Long Martello < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Increasing interconnections between global processes and arctic natural and social systems pose important challenges for the sciences. Researchers and others interested in understanding and furthering the sustainability of arctic peoples and environments require concepts and methods that facilitate cross-scale analysis of human-environment systems based on varied ways of knowing. Research approaches centered on notions of resilience and vulnerability hold promise in this regard. They necessitate interdisciplinary, participatory studies with attention to local, regional, and global-scale interactions. Based on research experiences throughout the Arctic, the papers in this panel explore the opportunities and pitfalls of vulnerability and resilience analysis. Papers will address, inter alia: "place-based" research in a global context, participation of arctic residents in the research process, integration of natural and social sciences, and the utility of resilience and vulnerability analyses in supporting policymaking and informing responses to global and other forms of change.

Science and Society in the Arctic
Amy Lovecraft < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
In the tradition of northern hemisphere governance science has become the backbone of policymaking. Competing constellations of interests use scientific data and methods to claim authority for making policy decisions in a variety of ecological, economic, and cultural arenas of conflict. Science has become the key component of what causes agencies, universities, politicians, or the public to make certain decisions or support certain lines of research. However, this causal mechanism has become subject to political interpretation by a wider audience and in a more public manner than ever before. What impact does this have on scientific research, policymaking, and public dialogue on the local, state, and national levels?

This session would focus on the how science is used in the arctic in order to make policy decisions for natural resources, public health, international policies, indigenous claims, and other areas of public decisionmaking. It would address both social and natural sciences and among its questions asks "is there an arctic science?" "if so, what does it look like?" Anticipated key issues could be the struggles between western and indigeneous worldviews, social and natural science disagreements, questions of equity and efficiency, whether the public understands the role of science in decisionmaking and whose science is used - as many arctic countries are both arctic and subararctic there is often a center-periphery divide to problem definitions.

Sites of Memory: Place Names, Keeping Places, Landscapes
Jonathan Bordo < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Ludger Müller-Wille < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
We invite papers and other discursive contributions addressing place names, keeping places and landscapes as repositories, media or labors of memory, mostly of and in the circumpolar north. Presentations might address specific locations, memno technologies, problematizations concerning the burden or social memory. We invite a plurality of interdisciplinary contributions, both theoretical and empirical as well as narratives, poetic records and demonstrations illuminating the labor of small communities to make contemporary and present immemorial pasts in the face of homogenizing and fragmenting collective forces that would deny the very need to remember. Seeking comparative perspectives, we welcome initiatives from elsewhere that would strengthen the practices of social memory in and of the Circumpolar North.

Social Science in Human Dimensions Research: Issues and Potential
Gary Kofinas < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Human Dimensions of Arctic Environmental Change research is increasingly becoming of interest to government, indigenous, and academic organizations. Several large funding agencies are expanding their research programs in this area and calling for social scientists to partner with natural science researchers in interdisciplinary endeavors that view humans as endogenous to the Arctic System. Some Human Dimension funding opportunities are tied to the requirement that participatory research be crafted to involve local communities as co-investigators. As a result, traditional ecological knowledge studies, integrated assessments, and the study of coupled human-ecological systems have become a growth industry for scholars of the North.

What are the issues that are associated with this area of research? What are the conditions that lead to its successful execution? This session explores the contributions social science and role of social scientists in this emergent genre of research. We call for papers that focus on theoretical issues and case study analyses of "Human Dimensions research," addressing the potential success and associated challenges of this area of work.

The Ties That Bind: Interaction and Adaptation in the Arctic Small Tool Tradition
Dan Odess < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Some time around 4500 years ago, the first groups of coastal foragers to occupy the North American Arctic migrated from northern Alaska across Canada to Greenland. Although the cultures comprising this tradition are known by different names - Denbigh in Alaska, Pre-Dorset and Independence I in Canada, and Independence I and Saqqaq in Greenland - these early pioneers were members of a common cultural tradition characterized by small social groups, high mobility, an (apparently) very broad diet, and extreme miniaturization of lithic tools. With an emphasis on the social rather than the technological, this session will explore what is known about these peoples and their descendants, their economic adaptations, and the relationships between them and neighboring peoples.

Tradition and Western Democracy: What Road for Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic?
Kathrin Wessendorf < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Jens Dahl < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Since the 1970s, a number of self-government models have emanated in the Circumpolar North. From the sovereignty movement in Alaska over Nunavut in Canada to the Saami Parliaments in the Nordic countries, these models are based on different realities and diverse conceptions of development. They all have in common a genuine wish to strengthen traditional cultures and languages, but the paths to reach these aims are different. In spite of some common understanding of the need and wish to strengthen and develop traditional cultures based on history as well as today's realities, indigenous peoples have very diverse conceptions of how indigenous democracy diverges from Western types of democracy. Whereas a global concept of democracy and rights influences negotiations and concepts of self-government, local ideas and tradition are just as strongly voiced and as important for the developments in the regions. Furthermore, options available depend on the de facto conditions under which indigenous peoples and their non-indigenous neighbours live. The options of choosing between traditional or Western types of democracy should not only be analysed as alternatives, but the implications of choosing one path instead of another, or the attempts of finding a compromise solution, should be considered. At the same time, indigenous peoples are not always internally in agreement in their aspiration for self-government, and focus should also be upon the indigenous groups as consisting as more than homogenous units.

This session encourages a discussion on these many layers that comprise the notion of self-government and ultimately self-determination. The session organisers particularly encourage indigenous presenters and hope for a wide circumpolar participation.

Who Knows Best: How to Balance Research-Based Best Practices and Culturally-Based Best Practices in Prevention, Treatment and Healing?
Susan Soule < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > and Chris Aquino < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
The session would focus on the search for a respectful and effective balance between research-based best practices and culturally-based practices in health and behavioral health programs for indigenous people. Possible questions to examine: "Do research-based practices cross cultural lines?" "Does the best-practice have to be validated in all cultures?" "Is the requirement of faithful replication cultural imperialism?"

Polish Sources and Researchers on Siberia
As early as the beginning of the 16th century (Russia expanded across Siberia and the Far North East from the 16th to the 17th century), Siberia became home to many Polish (mostly political) exiles.

From the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century, Poland was politically dependent on Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Poles, well known as patriotic fighters, were often sentenced to stay some years out of the country.

Often they could practice their own profession, and contact with unknown interesting cultures such as paleoasiatic Koryaks, Itelmens, Ainu, Aleuts, their festivals, shaman ceremonies, and new social links created rich literature in the form of diaries, memoirs, letters and notes.

These Polish exiles were truly renaissance people. Besides their original profession they were interested in very many problems connected with the history, geography and culture of Siberia. Their work was often useful for succeeding generations of both Russian and Polish researchers.
The Russian Geographical Society often supported the scientific work of these Polish exiles. Most of them were not able to hold permanent positions, thus lectures and texts written for the society often were one of the few opportunities to earn money. An analysis of these documents shows that some of these Polish researchers were busy in different parts of Russia, as well as in Siberia.
In the past few years, Polish-Russian conferences (for example in Irkutsk and Warsaw) have created new links and stimulated new discussions.

One researcher, Benedykt Dybowski (1833- 1930), especially deserves mention. He was a charismatic medical doctor and biologist, protector of indigenous peoples' rights, geologist, and anthropologist. Besides his research on the flora and fauna of the Lake Baikal region, he also spent a few years in the Far North East, specifically Kamchatka and neighboring islands. There he collected some 1,000 botanical samples and anthropological and ethnographic items. Most of those objects are deposited in two museums in Krakow (Anthropological and Ethnographical Museums), Poland.

A photo album with original photos from the end of the 19th century and Polish collections from Kamchatka was published recently in Poland. Although only the summary is in English, the work includes some 87 photographs, including items from Benedykt Dybowski.

Next I'll research Jan Czerski, another Polish exile researcher.

Maria Dybowska, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

About IASSA
IASSA was founded in 1990 in Fairbanks, Alaska at a meeting held in conjunction with the Seventh Inuit Studies Conference. The creation of IASSA follows the suggestion made at the Conference on Coordination of Research in the Arctic held in Leningrad in 1988 to establish an international association to represent Arctic social scientists.

IASSA's objectives are:
~to promote and stimulate international cooperation and to increase the participation of social scientists in national and international Arctic research;
~to promote communication and coordination with other research organizations;
~to promote the active collection, exchange, dissemination, and archiving of scientific information in the Arctic social sciences;
~to promote mutual respect, communication, and collaboration between social scientists and northern people;
~to facilitate culturally, developmentally, and linguistically appropriate education in the North;
~to follow the IASSA statement of ethical principles for the conduct of research in the Arctic.

For more information about IASSA, including membership, please see our website at http://www.uaf.edu/anthro/iassa/index.html

IASSA Council Members
See also About IASSA
Following are the council members elected at the IASSA General Assembly held May 20, 2001 in Quebec City:
Peter Schweitzer (President), email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Noel Broadbent, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Galina Diatchkova, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Gérard Duhaime (Past President, ex officio), email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Murielle Nagy, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Birger Poppel, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Gordon Pullar, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Nancy Wachowich, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

IASSA.Net
This server list is designed for use by members and others interested in the goals of IASSA. Information, questions and communications on this server list will deal broadly with issues affecting Arctic social sciences and with matters of interest to IASSA members.

As of February 7, 2002, IASSA.Net is restricted and non-public, meaning that only subscribers may post a message and that subscribers may be added only with the approval of listowners.

To subscribe to this list, send an email message to Anne Sudkamp < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > noting who you are and why you would like to subscribe to IASSA.Net.

For more information regarding IASSA.Net, please see our website: http://www.uaf.edu/anthro/iassa/iassanet.html

Call for Articles
See also ICASS V-Second Announcement and Call for Papers

Encyclopedia of the Arctic
Last Call for Contributors
Encyclopedia of the Arctic, edited by Mark Nuttall, will be published in 2004 by Routledge, a division of Taylor and Francis. It will include some 1,200 entries arranged alphabetically.

Scientists, writers, academics, or residents of the Arctic who are interested in contributing some of the remaining unassigned entries should look at the project web site at: www.fitzroydearborn.com/london/arctic_nfs_index.htm and then contact Gillian Lindsey at < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, stating which entries they could write, and their relevant academic background and publications. Contributors will receive a fee and be fully credited in the publication. Further contact information: tel.: 1(212)216-7890.

Conferences, Meetings and Workshops
See also ICASS V-Second Announcement and Call for Papers and For Students in this issue, as well as the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)'s Survey of Arctic Meetings (SAM): www.iasc.no/SAM/samtext.htm and the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS)' Arctic Calendar of Events: www.arcus.org/misc/fr_calendar.html

June 5-7, 2003
2003 Athabaskan Languages Conference. Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, USA. The conference theme is Adaptation and Change in Athabascan Languages. Abstract deadline was April 1. Contact: web: www.uaf.edu/anlc/alc; conference organizer Victor Golla, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

June 6-7, 2003
Ninth International Conference on Minority Languages, ICML-IX. Kiruna, Sweden. The main theme will be revitalization of languages, especially languages spoken by small groups of people. Abstract deadline was January 17, 2003. Contact: Birger Winsa, Chair of the Organizing Committee, Department of Finnish, University of Stockholm, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden; tel.: +46-8-162359; fax: +46-8-158871; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; web: www.finska.su.se/konf03.html

June 8-12, 2003
Sharing Indigenous Wisdom: An International Dialogue on Sustainable Development. Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA. Hosted by the Sustainable Development Institute at College of Menominee Nation, the conference will bring together scholars and practitioners who are committed to the concepts of sustainable development. Abstract deadline was March 3, 2003. Contact: web: www.sharingindigenouswisdom.org/default.asp

June 12-15, 2003
Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. The main goal of this conference is to provide an opportunity for academicians and professionals from various social sciences related fields from all over the world to come together and learn from each other. Last year's conference was attended by more than 550 participants representing more than 40 countries. Abstract deadline was January 27, 2003. Contact: web: www.hicsocial.org/index.htm

June 19-21, 2003
PAT-Net 2003. Anchorage, Alaska, USA. The 2003 PAT-Net (Public Administration Theory Network) conference links important Alaskan themes to public administration theory and seeks creative responses across a broad array of interests. Abstract deadline was January 15, 2003. Contact: web: http://PATnet2003.alaska.edu/

July 5-12, 2003
XV International Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES). Florence, Italy. The congress theme is Humankind/Nature Interaction: Past, Present and Future. The congress will include the session, Indigenous knowledge and problems of Sustainability. Session contact Dorothy Billings, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Abstract deadline was December 31, 2002. Contact: web: http://www.icaes-florence2003.com/

August 17-21, 2003
The International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP) Northern Polar Regional Conference. Anchorage, Alaska, USA. Hosted by The Institute of the North, a division of Alaska Pacific University Anchorage, Alaska, the conference's theme is Joining the Northern Commons: Lessons for the world, Lessons from the world. The meeting will bring together academics, practitioners, and government officials to discuss the methods for managing the vast, commonly-or publicly owned lands, waters, wildlife, mineral, and other commons of the North. Paper and panel proposal submission deadline was May 7, 2003. Contact: Michelle Curtain, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; web: www.indiana.edu/~iascp/alaska.html

August 24-28, 2003
11th Arctic Ungulate Conference (AUC). Saariselka, Finland. The 11th AUC continues a series of ten conferences devoted to Arctic Ungulates, including five International Reindeer/Caribou Symposia, two International Muskox Symposia and three Arctic Ungulate Conferences. Deadline for registration and abstracts was April 1, 2003. Contact: email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; web: www.rktl.fi/auc/index.html

September 8-10 & 11-14, 2003
12th International Congress on Circumpolar Health. Nuuk, Greenland. These congresses have bound the international circumpolar health community together since the first congress in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1967. From September 8-10 a series of pre-congress meetings and workshops will take place. The congress will begin with a reception on September 10 and end on September 14 with a banquet. Abstract deadline was April 1, 2003. Registration deadline was May 1, 2003. Contact: web: www.icch12.org/

September 14-19, 2003
Annual Beringia Days Conference. Anadyr, Chukotka, Russia. The Chukotka Regional Administration will host the annual Beringia Days conference this year. Sponsored the past six years by the Anchorage Museum of History & Art and the National Park Service, its purpose is to report to the public the scientific and community activities that take place in the Beringian Region of northwest Alaska and Chukotka. Valid passport information will need to be provided by the end of June. Contact: in U.S.: Peter Richter: tel.: (907)257-2617; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; in Russia: Leonid Nikolaev, Chukotka Administration: tel.: 42722-267-45. Web (in Russian and in English): www.nps.gov/akso/beringia

October 20-21, 2003
Information and Communication Technology in the Arctic. Akureyri, Iceland. The Icelandic chairmanship of the Arctic Council is organizing this conference under the theme: Opportunities and Obstacles for Sustainable Development, Education and Telemedicine. Its aim is to discuss critical questions relating to the use of ICT, associated technical and social issues and benefits to Arctic residents. The conference will also suggest collaborative actions among Arctic countries to promote ICT development based on best available practice. It will bring together individuals of different backgrounds, policy makers, academics, people from business and industry and representatives of Arctic communities in order to improve the quality of life and contribute to healthy and vibrant communities in Northern rural areas. Many participants at the Arctic Council Senior Arctic Officials' meeting in Iceland October 23-24, 2003 are expected to attend. Working language of the conference will be English with simultaneous translation into Russian. Registration deadline is September 10, 2003. Contact: Yana Alexandrova, ICT Conference Coordinator, University of Akureyri, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; web: http://vefir.unak.is/ICTConference

October 24-26, 2003
The ACUNS 7th Student Conference on Northern Studies. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. See below, under For Students.

October 27-30, 2003
See also Bookshelf: New Books, Journals, Reports, etc.: Reports: SEARCH Implementation Strategy
First SEARCH Open Science Meeting. Seattle, Washington, USA. The National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs is sponsoring an open science meeting in support of the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) program. The purpose of this meeting is to inform and engage a broad arctic research community, with the ultimate purpose of inspiring them to go forth and engage in research contributing to SEARCH, both in the US and international arenas. The sponsoring agencies and the organizing committee for this meeting invite anyone interested in the potential of the SEARCH effort to participate in the discussions, especially students and colleagues from outside of the US. About 300 participants are expected. Contact: web: www.arcus.org/search/search.html

November 7-9, 2003
Havighurst Center for Soviet & Post-Soviet Studies Annual International Young Researchers Conference: Russia in Global Context: Peoples, Environments, Policies. Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA. See below, under For Students.

November 7-10, 2003
The 8th Circumpolar Universities Cooperation Conference. Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. The theme is Connecting the Circumpolar World. With a continuing and growing focus on circumpolar issues, northern institutions and governments are relying on the diverse connections that have developed between regions, agencies, NGOs, academic institutions and the various levels of government. However, there has not been a great deal of research to examine and assess the nature and effectiveness of such "connections" in the north. How are institutional structures responsible for northern development using connections? What is the nature of those connections and how are they promoting sustainable northern development? Are northern universities and colleges doing enough to work with and develop the connections needed for healthy and sustainable communities in the north? Abstract deadline was May 26, 2003. Contact: web: www.yukoncollege.yk.ca/

November 16-19, 2003
Young Scientists 1st International Global Change Conference. Trieste, Italy. This conference offers a prestigious platform for young scientists to present their research findings to leading scientists in the field. Papers and posters are invited from young scientists (age 35 years or less) on the physical, biological and human aspects of global change. Abstract deadline was March 14, 2003. Contact: Kristy Ross: email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; web: www.start.org/Fellowships/YS_Conference.html



For Students
See also Conferences, Meetings and Workshops

The ACUNS 7th Student Conference on Northern Studies
October 24-26, 2003. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Abstract deadline was April 1, 2003.
This international conference, Breaking the Ice: Transcending Borders through Collaboration and Interdisciplinary Research, will showcase student research with a northern scope and welcomes interdisciplinary inquiries. It is hosted by the Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta. Contact conference co-chairs Heather Castleden or Audrey Giles at Conference Headquarters: ACUNS 7th Student Conference on Northern Studies, C/O: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 8625 - 112 Street, Suite 308 Campus Tower, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 0H1; tel.: (780)492-1799: email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; web: http://scns.onware.ca/

Havighurst Center for Soviet & Post-Soviet Studies Annual International Young Researchers Conference: Russia in Global Context: Peoples, Environments, Policies
November 7-9, 2003. Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA.
Abstract deadline was April 15, 2003.
The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, the Institute of Environmental Sciences and the Department of Geography at Miami University are organizing this graduate student conference. In the context of a broader circumpolar discourse, they intend to initiate fruitful discussion focusing on Russia along three main lines of inquiry:

1) What are the contemporary conditions and challenges for Russia's northern indigenous peoples and what generalizations can be made about those conditions and challenges in comparison with the same parameters across the circumpolar North?
2) What are the contemporary policies for Russia's northern indigenous peoples, environmental degradation, and economic stabilization and what generalizations can be made about those policies in comparison with the same parameters across the circumpolar North?
3) What role has Russia played in the last two decades of circumpolar cooperation; what circumpolar cooperation has meant for Russia's indigenous peoples and environmental issues, and in what ways and by what means can Russia's circumpolar cooperation be improved?

For more information, contact conference organizer Susan A. Crate, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Money Line
U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF)
CRDF offers the following programs and services for arctic cooperation:

~Under support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), CRDF operates an office in Moscow that is expressly devoted to providing logistical assistance to NSF-sponsored activities in arctic sciences in Russia. For a description of these services, see: www.crdf.org/ScienceLiaisonOffice/coop_progr_science_liaison_office.html

~The CRDF Grant Assistance Program (GAP) can assist with financial transfers and equipment purchase and delivery to Russia, the arctic region, and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. For more information, see: www.crdf.org/GAP/gap.html

~The CRDF Cooperative Grants Program (CGP) provides an opportunity for joint US-former Soviet teams in all areas of sciences to apply for two-year research grants. This competition is offered on a rolling basis. For more information, see: www.crdf.org/CGP/cgp.html

For further details on CRDF activities, contact: Dr. Marianna Voevodskaya, Director, CRDF/NSF Cooperative Programs/Science Liaison Office, 32a Leninsky Prospect, Room 603, 117334 Moscow V-334, Russia; tel.: (7-095) 938-5151; fax: (7-095) 938-1838; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Bookshelf: New Books, Journals, Reports, etc.
Books
Canada's Western Arctic Including the Dempster Highway: The definitive guide to Canada's Western Arctic
Western Arctic Handbook Committee
ISBN 0-9687910-0-X, 2002, 352pp, soft cover, $29.95, B&W & color photos, color illustrations. Order from the Yellowknife Book Cellar: tel.: 1-800-944-6029; fax: (867)873-6105 or from Boreal Books (Inuvik): tel.: (867)777-3748; fax: (867)777-4429; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

This handbook covers all of the NWT and Yukon above the Arctic Circle. Information includes in-depth introductions to the history of Gwich'in and Inuvialuit people, as well as natural history information about topics such as permafrost, the Mackenzie Delta, and the plants and animals that inhabit the Western Arctic. Also included are maps and detailed guides to all nine communities in the region, as well as descriptions of all of the territorial and federal parks, and heritage and historical sites.

Canoeing A Continent : On the Trail of Alexander Mackenzie
Max W. Finkelstein
ISBN 1-896219-00-4, 2002, 298pp, soft cover, $25.95, B&W photos and illustrations. Order from Natural Heritage Books: tel.: 1-800-725-9982; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

This book is a personal account of the travels of the author as he retraces, some 200 years later, the route of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the first European to cross North America. The voyages of the author, interwoven with those of Mackenzie, help the reader to grasp the outstanding effort put forward in traversing this vast and varied land en route to the Pacific Ocean.

Eskimo Architecture: Dwelling and Structure in the Early Historic Period
Molly Lee and Gregory A. Reinhardt w/ foreword by Andrew Tooyak, Jr.
ISBN 1-889963-22-4, 232pp, cloth, $45, 8.5 x 11, 170 B&W photos and illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. Order from University of Alaska Press: web: www.uaf.edu/uapress/ or University of Alaska Museum Store: web: www.uaf.edu/museum/store/index.html

Eskimo Architecture takes readers on a tour across the Arctic, examining the structures built to withstand one of the most severe environments inhabited by humans. The authors compare architecture across four Eskimo/Inuit subregions-Greenland, the Central Arctic from Baffin Island to the Mackenzie Delta, the Northwest Arctic and Bering Strait, and Southwest Alaska and Eastern Siberia - in the early years following Western contact, before the indigenous cultures were influenced by new building techniques and materials.

Grønlands naturforvaltning - ressourcer og fangstrettigheder
Frank Sejersen
ISBN 87-500-3756-0, 2003, 192pp, Dkr. 188, Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen. Order from Akademisk Forlag: web: www.akademisk.dk/bog.php3?id=527

Gwich'in Ethnobotany: Plants Used by the Gwich'in for Food, Medicine, Shelter and Tools
Alestine Andre and Alan Fehr
2002 Revised Edition. ISBN 1-896337-09-0, 68pp, soft cover, $15, B&W & color photographs. Order from the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute: email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; tel.: (867)953-3613; fax: (867)953-3820.

Over thousands of years, Gwich'in have used a variety of trees, shrubs and berries for food, medicine, shelter and tools. This publication presents information recorded from Gwich'in Elders on the use of 32 plants and 3 types of rocks and minerals. The book includes information on the Gwich'in names for these plants (in both the Gwichya Gwich'in and Teetl'it Gwich'in dialects), where they are found, and how they can be used.

Honoring Our Elders: The History of Eastern Arctic Archaeology
Edited by William W. Fitzhugh, Stephen Loring, and Daniel Odess
Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology Number 2: Washington D.C.: ASC, 2002. ISBN 0-9673429-2-9, paper, $22.50. 8 1/4 x 10 3/4, xvi + 319pp, over 150 maps and photographs. Order from the Smithsonian's Arctic Studies Center: web: www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/pub_cca.html

Ten years ago, as arctic archaeology became an established academic subject in colleges and universities, practitioners came together at Dartmouth College to tell the stories of the pioneers in arctic archaeology - Elmer Harp, Guy Mary-Rousselière, Frederica De Laguna, Graham Rowley, and others - as well as to examine the current state of arctic archaeological research. This multi-authored volume presents the proceeds of that meeting in honor of those archaeological elders, and as a tool to assess future directions.

Islands of the Arctic
Julian Dowdeswell and Michael Hambrey
ISBN 0521813336, 298pp, $38, hardback, 242 color plates, 2 tables. Order from Cambridge University Press: web: http://www.cup.org/

This work describes the flora and fauna in addition to the human influences on the environment, from the sustainable approach of the Inuit, to the devastating damage inflicted by hunters and issues arising from the presence of military security installations.

Local Knowledge, Sustainability and Visionscapes in Greenland
Frank Sejersen
ISBN 87-87874-20-4/ISSN 1601-9385, 2002, 98pp, DKr. 28,- excluding postage and VAT. Published in the series Eskimologis Skrifter, no. 17. Order from Department of Eskimology: web: www.hum.ku.dk/eskimo/english/deptseries.html; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; fax: +45 3532 9661.

Many Faces of Gender: Roles and Relationships Through Time in Indigenous Northern Communities
Edited by Lisa Frink, Rita S. Shepard, and Gregory A. Reinhardt
University Press of Colorado, Hardcover: ISBN 0-87081-677-2, $45.00; Paperback: ISBN 0-87081-687-X, $19.95; University of Calgary Press, Paperback (Northern Lights, v.2): ISBN 1-55238-093-9; 232pp, 8 B&W photographs, 16 line drawings, 13 tables, 1 map. Order from University Press of Colorado: web: http://www.upcolorado.com/ or University of Calgary Press: web: http://www.uofcpress.com/

Many Faces of Gender is an interdisciplinary volume that seeks to address the dearth of descriptions and analysis of gender roles and relationships in Native societies in the far North. The contributors challenge the widespread notion that Native women's and men's roles have been frozen in time, a concept that precludes the possibility of differently constituted gendered categories and changing power relations and roles through time. By examining the pre-historical, historical, and modern records, they demonstrate that these roles are not fixed and have indeed gradually transformed.

Natural History of the Western Arctic
Western Arctic Handbook Committee
ISBN 0-9687910-1-8, 2002, 98pp, softcover, $19.95, B&W photos and illustrations. Order from the Yellowknife Book Cellar: tel.: 1-800-944-6029; fax: (867)873-6105 or from Boreal Books (Inuvik): tel.: (867)777-3748; fax: (867)777-4429; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

A companion to Canada's Western Arctic Including the Dempster Highway, this book contains additional information on the land and water, plants and animals, and the wildlife, history and geography of the Western Queen Elizabeth Islands.

[Custom and Law: Studies in Legal Anthropology]
Edited by N.I. Novikova and V.A. Tishkov
ISBN 5-9234-0021-9, Strategy Publishing House, Moscow, 2002, 399pp. Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences; Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences; Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North. It is available on the web at: http://jurant.iea.ras.ru/publ/custlaw2002/title.htm
Summaries of the papers in English are available at: http://jurant.iea.ras.ru/publ/custlaw2002/08-8.htm

This book, in Russian, describes the subject matter and organization of the Second International Summer School in Legal Anthropology, held in St. Petersburg - Pushkin from August 20-25, 2001. The school was devoted to the protection and use of natural resources and to the rights of indigenous peoples to renewable bioresources under modern conditions. Lectures and discussions focused on how those issues are resolved in international law as well as in national legislation and the common law of Russia and Canada.

The Sámi People - Traditions in Transition
Veli-Pekka Lehtola
Translated by Linna Weber Müller-Wille, with a preface by Ludger Müller-Wille
ISBN 952-5343-11-1, 2002, 139pp, EUR 20.00 plus postage, illustrated. Order from Kustannus-Puntsi Publishers: web: www.puntsi.fi/sami.htm

Sámi culture has undergone powerful changes recently. Traditions have been integrated with contemporary influences and perspectives. New kinds of Sámi participation and activism have evolved including innovative politics, informative media, expressive art and literature. Author Veli-Pekka Lehtola is a senior research fellow in the Giellagas Institute at the University of Oulu (Oulu, Finland).

Sustainable Food Security in the Arctic: State of Knowledge
Edited by Gérard Duhaime
ISBN 1-896445-23-3, 2003, Occasional Publication Series, Softcover, 243pp, 22 B&W photographs, $30. Order from Canadian Circumpolar Institute (CCI) Press: web: http://cci.onware.ca/prothos/cci.x/publication/info.p?!=public=10500012316761=48=30486817&Id=001102668

Food security in the Arctic is threatened on all fronts. Traditional food production and food economies have witnessed drastic change, brought about as a result of social, economic, and political influences. Nevertheless, traditional subsistence production continues to be very important in the food economy and security of circumpolar communities, despite a growing reliance on imported products and wage economies to meet present-day needs. This volume considers the question of food security (or food insecurity) and the various factors and mechanisms that have affected and continue to affect its sustainability: colonialism, modernization, commercialization. Issues vary between regions of the circumarctic, but many common themes emerge. The papers compiled in this volume represents the interim results of a multi-, inter, and trans-disciplinary research initiative undertaken by an international panel of experts.

Journals
Acta Borealia -A Nordic Journal of Circumpolar Societies
Acta Borealia is a multi-disciplinary scientific journal for cultural studies. The journal presents results from basic research on northern societies, including reviews of new books about the north. The contributing authors are mainly from the Nordic countries, but also from other countries performing research on circumpolar societies. The journal publishes articles in such disciplines as history, archaeology, social anthropology, ethnography, geography and linguistics.

Acta Borealia is edited by a group of scholars at the University of Tromsø, and is the only journal dedicated exclusively to a multidisciplinary, comparative focus on circumpolar societies. Contact: Taylor & Francis AS; PO Box 2562 Solli; NO-0202 Oslo; Norway; tel.: +47 22129886; fax: +47 22129890; web: www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/08003831.html

Reports
2002 Athabaskan Languages Conference Proceedings
These proceedings are now available from the Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC). This volume contains a selection of 15 papers from among the 40 presentations given at last year's conference in Fairbanks. Order from ANLC: tel.: 1-907-474-7874; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Complex Environmental Systems: Synthesis for Earth, Life and Society in the 21st Century
The National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education (ACERE) has published this report. To request a copy, email < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > or use the form that is posted on the Environmental Research and Education web site at: www.nsf.gov/ere

IASC Project Catalogue
The International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) is a non-governmental international organization founded in 1990 by member organizations in the eight arctic countries to encourage and facilitate cooperation in all aspects of arctic research, in all countries engaged in arctic research and in all areas of the arctic region. IASC's main activity is to develop research projects for which circumarctic or international cooperation is required. The project catalogue, an annual survey of IASC's main projects, is now available in print and on the IASC website: http://www.iasc.no/. Contact: IASC: PO Box 5156; Majorstuen; N-0302 Oslo; Norway; fax: +47 22 95 99 01; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

SEARCH Implementation Strategy
See also Conferences, Meetings and Workshops for October 27-30, 2003: First SEARCH Open Science Meeting.
The new version of the SEARCH (A Study of Environmental Arctic Change) Implementation Strategy is now available. A broad, interdisciplinary program, SEARCH seeks to understand the complex of significant, interrelated changes that have occurred in the Arctic in recent decades. SEARCH is beginning implementation with the funding of the first SEARCH projects. The implementation strategy is available at the SEARCH website: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/search/index.html

Strategy for Danish-Greenlandic Polar Research 2003-2007
This work by the Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland is scheduled for publication on May 13. In it the commission recommends that a special effort be made in order to ensure increased research in: Environment and Climate; Natural Resources; Cultures in Contact and Globalization - with a Greenlandic perspective; and Social Evolution, Technology, Living Conditions and Health. For more information, contact Commission secretary Charlotte Munch: email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; or see the Commission website: www.kvug.dk/commission.html

Inquiries
Seeking back issues of Etudes/Inuit/Studies and Canadian Museum of Civilisation Mercury Series
The Library of the University of Aberdeen is seeking the following issues of Etudes/Inuit/Studies:
vol 3 (1 & 2), 3(suppl.),
vol 4 (1 & 2)
vol 8 (spec.)
vol 9 (2)
They are also seeking varied issues of the Mercury Series. Contact: David Anderson, Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Seeking information about a parka
Armin Häberle of Berlin, Germany writes the following: "In a publication about the indigenous peoples of Siberia (Riewe, R., Oakes, J.: Spirit of Siberia, Vancouver 1998), I found a picture of a wear intestine parka (p.154, fig.119) to which some questions came to me some time ago, and I am still not able to answer them.

About this (Yupik) Parka there is a remark that it was made for ceremonial purposes and, "they believe that the parka of the sea god, Kerktkun, was also made from gut skin."

Is there anyone in IASSA who can specify these rituals? Are they perhaps intended to improve a successful hunt or more likely to personal protection?"

If interested, please contact Armin Häberle for additional questions regarding this parka. Contact: email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it