Newsletter Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History May 2018 www.mnh.si.edu/arctic Number 25 NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR By William Fitzhugh The past year was a relatively quiet time for the ASC, a period that gave us time to consolidate and think about the future. It’s been thirty years since we ‘hung out our shingle’ in 1988, when initiatives were easier to launch than in today’s fiscal and political climate. Devolution, decentralization, and populism facilitated by new media affect our central institutions and make them challenged from many directions. Fortunately, the Smithsonian has managed to chart a steady course and has done better than the regulatory agencies in maintaining its staff and budget, despite overall institutional growth, most recently seen by the huge success of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. One major accomplishment in 2017 was the August opening of Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend in a prime space near the Rotunda. Narwhal had been under development for three years, curated by Fitzhugh and Martin Nweeia, a dental surgeon and clinical instructor at the Harvard School of Medicine whose investigation of narwhal tusk brought this mysterious animal to scientific and public attention. The exhibit has helped create a space for narwhals in the current discussion of the changing Arctic. Decreasing ice cover (this year’s winter ice extent nearly matched the lowest ever recorded), plans for trans-Arctic shipping, industrialization and mining, increasing threats of pollution, legal and military issues, impacts on subsistence species, and the rights of indigenous peoples all intersect with the present and future status of this species. The iconic nature of the narwhal has promoted media coverage and makes a useful vehicle for journalism and education. Most pleasing to the exhibit team headed by Christyna Solhan was the positive feedback from our Inuit partners. Our narwhal book, prepared with the assistance of 48 co-authors, recieved the 2017 Polar Libraries Colloquy's William Mills prize for Arctic literature. The exhibit will be up until July 2019 and after that will tour several years for the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibit Service (SITES.) This broad exposure will help spread Narwhal’s themes of history, folklore, biology, Inuit knowledge, climate change, and environmental protection at a time when the changing Arctic environment and its wider impacts are receiving widespread attention. Another major accomplishment has been a new exhibition plan for Anchorage. Our loans for the current exhibition are expiring, and most of the existing collections will be returning to storage in Washington. Aron Crowell has devised a plan based on the theme of indigenous knowledge that requires fewer objects, adds materials from non-Smithsonian institutions, and demonstrates the contributions of new scientific analyses. Kirk Johnson and Julie Decker of the Anchorage Museum have generaly agreed on Exhibition Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend. Model by Paul Brodie 2 ASC Newsletter terms for extending the NMNH-Anchorage Memo- of Agreement (MOU), and Anchorage has begun fund-raising anticipating an opening date of 2022. In addition to SITES’ interest in Narwhal, Stephen Loring, Rob Mullen and others have been working to produce Boreal: Visions of the Wilderness, the northern forest exhibit that once was a Natural History project. As awareness has risen about the adverse impacts of global warming and commercial encroachment upon this largest forest on Earth, SITES’ Carol Bossert hosted a workshop to identify themes and approaches. The workshop produced a rough plan that is being circulated nationally to identify venue prospects. Also looking forward, the ASC staff has begun consulting with international colleagues about programs connected to the 100th anniversary of the Danish Fifth Thule Expedition led by Knud Rasmussen in 1921-24. The expedition and Rasmussen’s concluding dog- sled dash across Arctic America, eventually reaching Bering Strait and Chukotka, Russia, laid the groundwork for many subsequent anthropological studies. We envision something like our former Jesup-2 program, a series of conferences, research projects, and public events taking place during this period with venues distributed around the circumpolar region. Last year also saw progress on what may become an important knowledge infrastructure system supporting digital resources. The National Science Foundation (NSF)—supported workshops in 2017 and early 2018 identified the need for a centralized retrieval system for the Arctic's highly dispersed information resources, a more advanced version of a shared web portal. NMNH’s experience with the Encyclopedia of Life has demonstrated the power of such a system for the biological sciences. An Arctic Digital Library (ADL) project would be more complicated but would have great benefits to science, the public, and indigenous Arctic groups. During the coming year, we plan to test the ADL concept by cross-connecting collections and archives from the 1881-83 International Polar Year in the Stefansson papers of Dartmouth College’s Rauner Special Collections Library and International Polar Year (IPY) materials in Smithsonian collections. Other activities in 2017 included our 3rd annual Ernest S. Burch Memorial lecture—this time by Hannah Voorhees and Rhonda Sparks, studying climate change and polar bear exploitation in northwest Alaska. Bill Fitzhugh attended the Arctic Circle meetings in Reykjavik, the Labrador Research Forum in Goose Bay, spent a week studying and lecturing in Basque Country, and had productive field projects in Labrador and Quebec. Stephen Loring explored the Labrador interior by canoe and helped shepherded a vintage St. Lawrence Island angyapik skin boat from Oregon to Washington DC (more on this below.) Aron Crowell and Dawn Biddison of the Arctic Studies Center's Alaska Office created the program, Tanning and Sewing Moosehide in the Dene Way. Igor Krupnik and Aron Crowell finished editing papers for our forthcoming Arctic Crashes: People and Animals in the Changing North and Igor reached the halfway point in his editorial task assembling the opening summary volume for the Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians. Our collection volume, Early Inuit Studies (2016), a product of the 18th Inuit Studies Conference of 2012 that we hosted at the Smithsonian, received the NMNH Science Achievement Award. Last but not least, the NMNH Arctic ethnology collections received a major addition in the form of a beautifully preserved large skin boat (angyapik) from St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, formerly in the possession of the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. The move was carefully orchestrated by Igor, Stephen, David Rosenthal (Anthropology collection manager), and our generous colleagues in Oregon. These and many other activities are reported in the following pages. As usual, I thank all those who have worked with the ASC during 2017, including our dynamic exhibit core team, advisors, and authors, photographers, and our book designers and publishers. Our office assistants led by Nancy Shorey have performed wonders: Chelsi Slotten, Mary Maisel, Igor Chechushkov, Jacob Marchman, and many more. Anthropology Chair’s office help came from Torben Rick, Laurie Burgess, Zaborian Payne, and Michelle Reed. We hope you enjoy more detailed stories in our review of the past year’s ASC activities. You can follow our current work online, using Twitter @ArcticStudies and on our blog, Magnetic North. ASC Newsletter 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Notes from the Director...............................................1 ASC Anchorage, Alaska Office...................................5 Indigenous Knowledge of Alaska and the Circumpolar North – A New Exhibition Planned for Anchorage in 2022 Glacial Retreat at Yakutat Bay, Alaska, Based On Geology, Archaeology, and Indigenous Oral Tradition Tanning and Sewing Moosehide in the Dene Way Ivory Advocacy Session Polar Lab: Collective Sharing Knowledge Alaska: Microsite Update Notice..........................................................................14 Arctic Studies Center Website Change News............................................................................15 Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend Exhibit View: Ningiukulu Teevee: Kinngait Stories A Russian Archaeology Conference in Salekhard Up From the Dead: Labrador’s First Snowmobile Drives Again! The Antarctic Snow Cruiser A Labrador Research Forum: Truth, Respect, Reciprocity, Humility, and Reconciliation Arctic Circle Conference: Reykjavik 2017 The New Arctic Mohn Prize Awarded to “The Meaning of Ice” Team and Eddy Carmack ICASS IX Charts Arctic Social Science Course Early Inuit Studies: Themes and Transitions receives NMNH Science Achievement Award for 2016 Research.....................................................................25 Quebec Gateways 2017: Hart Chalet and St. Paul Survey Archaeological Surveys in Hamilton Inlet Some Archaeological Dating can be as Simple as Flipping a Coin The Toad-Man’s Estate: an Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Shapeiau (Shapio) Lake region, Nitassinan (Labrador) From Siberia to Norway and Back: The journeys of Nita Kakot Amundsen and Camilla Carpendale Mapping Alaskan Ethnography They Live on the Ice and They’re Hunters Like We Are: Climate Change and Human-Polar Bear Relationships in Alaska Collections..................................................................45 Arctic Digital Library A New National Museum for the Ainu Charles Francis Hall: Searching for Franklin and Discovering the Arctic Further Adventures of Charles Francis Hall St. Lawrence Island Yupik Skin Boat Arrives at the Smithsonian The General Thomas Gage Birch- Bark Canoe at Firle, U.K. Firle Place: Visiting an Indian Canoe in British Rafters Outreach.....................................................................59 Captain George Comer and the Inuit of Hudson Bay Exhibit Preview A Sweet Saga: Building a Chocolate Viking Ship Research Associates, Fellows and Interns................62 From One Pole to the Other: an Intern’s Summer Introduction to the Arctic After 68 Years McBride' Return to Hokkaido, Japan Uncovering F. W. Stokes Book reviews...............................................................65 Discovering Uummannaq: an Arctic Greenland Community On the Arctic Frontier: Ernest Leffingwell’s Polar Explorations and Legacy Ramah Chert: a Lithic Odyssey Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend On Frankenstein White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic. The Fur Trade, Transportation, and Change in the Early Twentieth Century Menadelook: An Inupiat Teacher's Photographs of Alaska Villiage Life, 1907-1932 Memories....................................................................71 Full-circle: Taught and Teaching at Dartmouth Transitions..................................................................72 Elaine Elizabeth Abraham, Chuu Shaa (1929-2016) Stanwyn Shetler (1933-2017) Willis Walunga (1924–2017) – Yupik Historian Paul Apangalook (1951–2018) 2017 ASC Staff Publications.....................................76 Afterword...................................................................77 4 ASC Newsletter ERNEST “TIGER” BURCH ENDOWMENT JAMES VANSTONE ENDOWMENT Alaska State Council on the Arts Anchorage Museum Foundation Carlson Family Trust Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska CIRI Foundation Karen and Steven Compton Dartmouth College Goodman Fund Tina and John DeLapp First National Bank Alaska Priscilla Fitzhugh William W. Fitzhugh Haayk Foundation Dr. Donald Holly Margy Johnson Labrador Nunatsiavut Inuit Government Margaret A. Cargill Foundation Memorial University Metlakatia Indian Community Rika and John Mouw National Science Foundation National Park Foundation National Park Service NMNH Q?rius Education Center Notre Dame University Sealaska Heritage Foundation Gail Sieberts Smithsonian Recovering Voices Program The Provincial Archaeology Office, Government of Newfoundland-Labrador Frances Ulmer Gary Weil Windland (Wendy) Smith Rice Endowment Special thanks to following members of the Smithsonian Council for Arctic Studies who provide annual philanthropic support to the Alaska Office of the Arctic Studies Center: Morgan Christen and James Torgerson Cook Inlet Tribal Council Heather Flynn Betsy and David Lawer Lynden Incorporated Jo and Peter Michalski The Smithsonian Arctic Center (ASC) is sustained through a public-private partnership. Philanthropic donations provide funding for essential community- based collaborations, impactful educational programming for the public, and continuous research in the ever-changing Arctic region. STAFF William Fitzhugh, Director and Curator: fitzhugh@si.edu Aron Crowell, Alaska Director: crowella@si.edu Igor Krupnik, Curator and Ethnologist: krupniki@si.edu Stephen Loring, Museum Anthropologist and Arctic Archaeologist: lorings@si.edu Noel Broadbent, Archaeologist: broadben@si.edu Dawn Biddison, ASC Alaska, Assistant Curator: BiddisonD@si.edu Chelsi Slotten, Research Assistant and Social Media Manager: slottenc@si.edu Nancy Shorey, Program Specialist: shoreyn@si.edu RESEARCH ASSOCIATES AND COLLABORATORS Judith Varney Burch, Charlottesville,VA: judithvarneyburch@gmail.com John Cloud, Washington, DC: john.cloud666@gmail.com Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad, Kensington, MD: bengelstad@aol.com Ann Fienup-Riordan, Anchorage: riordan@alaska.net Scott Heyes, Australia: scott.heyes@canberra.edu.au William Honeychurch, Yale University: honeychw@si.edu Wilfred E. Richard, Maine: 34pondroad@gmail.com Ted Timreck, New York: theodore.timreck@verizon.net Norman Hallendy, Carp, Ontario, Canada Christopher B. Wolff, SUNY, Plattsburgh, NY: wolffc@si.edu Kenneth Pratt, BIA, Anchorage: Kenneth.Pratt@bia.gov Hunter Snyder, Dartmouth College: hunter.snyder@gmail.com SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR 2017/2018 ASC INTERNS AND VOLUNTEERS Igor Chechushkov Mary Maisel Cara Reeves M. Schuyler (Skye) Litten Iris Wang Ming-Yi Wong To make a tax deductible contribution, please contact the NMNH Office of Development at 202-633-0821 or NMNH-Advancement@si.edu THANKS TO OUR 2017/2018 PARTNERS AND DONORS ASC Newsletter 5 ASC ANCHORAGE, ALASKA OFFICE INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE OF ALASKA AND THE CIRCUMPOLAR NORTH – A NEW EXHIBITION PLANNED FOR ANCHORAGE IN 2022 By Aron L. Crowell The Arctic Studies Center and the Anchorage Museum, in collaboration with Indigenous, humanities, scientific, and educational advisors, have begun planning for the exhibition “Indigenous Knowledge of Alaska and the Circumpolar North,“ scheduled to open at the Anchorage Museum in 2022 to succeed the current Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska. The project heralds a new phase for the ASC’s research and educational program in Alaska, as pending a renewed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) effective through 2022, to be signed by National Museum of Natural History Director Kirk Johnson and Anchorage Museum Director Julie Decker. The MOU looks forward to the next four years of partnership, exhibition development, and joint programming by the two museums, extending a highly productive relationship that began in 1994. As with the Living Our Cultures exhibition which opened in 2010, it is anticipated that Indigenous Knowledge will draw on extensive circumpolar ethnological collections held by NMNH and the National Museum of the American Indian, with objects made available to Anchorage through long-term Smithsonian loan agreements. Exhibition grant proposals to the National Endowment for the Humanities and other funders are pending or in process. Development of the Indigenous Knowledge exhibition promises to be both challenging and exciting, not only because of its expansive geographical scope (including Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, and northern Russia) but because it will be guided by a broad conception of northern Indigenous Knowledge (IK) that encompasses its many and varied humanistic, scientific, technical, artistic, and spiritual dimensions. IK will be highlighted as a critically important foundation for resilient community responses to social and environmental change in the North today, and its contemporary application (sometimes in tandem with Western knowledge and technologies) will be emphasized. Thus conceived, Indigenous Knowledge includes comprehensive knowledge of northern environments, both the sea and land; practical, ecological, and spiritual knowledge of the plant and animal species that support human life and health; effective, naturally- sourced technologies and designs for Arctic living; oral traditions that preserve knowledge of human and environmental history; social knowledge, norms, ethics, and values that extend security and identity to each generation; and arts and languages that express this manifold realm of thought and belief. According to the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Indigenous (or traditional) knowledge is a “systematic way of thinking applied to phenomena across biological, physical, cultural and spiritual systems. It includes insights based on evidence acquired through direct and long-term experiences and extensive and multi-generational observations, lessons and skills. It has developed over millennia and is still developing in a living process” (ICC 2013.) The Indigenous Knowledge exhibition will present dozens of key “feature stories“ that exemplify these IK themes, told through video and digital media by northern residents and physically represented by historic objects and artifacts of the present. For arctic locations, traditional ecological knowledge of marine mammals and observations of changing sea ice conditions might be one featured topic, including the incorporation of cross-over technologies such as weather satellite imagery to predict locations of ice-edge animals. In southeastern Alaska and the Northwest Coast of Canada, Indigenous knowledge of anadromous fish and forest ecology is contributing to natural resource co-management and development decisions. All across the North, traditional values, ceremonies, languages, oral traditions, and spiritual conceptions of human relationships to the environment are interconnected and remain highly relevant, both as principles for living on the land and as resources for health, well-being, and identity. The scientific principles and technical mastery embodied by traditional technologies from arctic clothing and snowshoes to watercraft, tools, basketry, and hunting weapons will be another important exhibition theme, designed to connect with and support STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math) in northern schools. Starting in the fall of 2018, the Arctic Studies Center’s Alaska team – with Aron Crowell as project director and exhibition curator and Dawn Biddison as assistant curator and community programs manager – will begin intensive work with a distinguished advisory panel and with collections and curatorial staff at NMNH, NMAI, and the Anchorage Museum to prepare for the Indigenous Knowledge exhibition, catalog, web site, and educational programs. The NEH advisory panel includes Ann Fienup-Riordan (Calista Elders Council), Shari Fox (National Snow and Ice Data Center), Henry Huntington (Ocean 6 ASC Newsletter Conservancy), Joel Isaak (Kenaitze Indian Tribe/Kenai Peninsula College), Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi (The CIRI Foundation), Mark John (Calista Culture and Education, Inc.), Igor Krupnik (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian), Jonella Larson White (Foraker Group), Aaron Leggett (Anchorage Museum), Edna MacLean (Ilisaġvik College), Ilarion Merculieff (Global Center for Indigenous Leadership), Pitseolak Pfiefer (Nunavut Resources and Sustainable Development), Alice Rearden (Calista Culture and Education, Inc.), Melissa Shaginoff (Anchorage Museum), and Rosita Worl (Sealaska Heritage Foundation.) We anticipate that this core group and others who may join it will guide and inspire the Indigenous Knowledge Exhibition and provide a conduit to other people and stories on the community level, collectively engaging in the process of collaborative exhibition creation. The project will also build on the large body of Indigenous knowledge documentation and videography that the Arctic Studies Center has gathered through thirty years of exhibitions and programs in circumpolar arts, languages, cultures, history, and archaeology. GLACIAL RETREAT AT YAKUTAT BAY, ALASKA, BASED ON GEOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND INDIGENOUS ORAL TRADITION By Aron L. Crowell Alaskan and Northwest Coast oral traditions, including accounts of glacial movements, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, have been substantiated by archaeological and geological data (Connor et al. 2009; Crowell et al. 2013; Cruikshank 2001; McMillan and Hutchinson 2002.) At Yakutat Bay in southeastern Alaska, archaeological evidence, Tlingit oral narratives, and local Tlingit/Eyak place names illuminate the timing and extent of glacial movements by the Hubbard and Malaspina glaciers, and may be combined with glaciological data to model glacial retreat after 1200 AD. The Arctic Studies Center’s research program Glacial Retreat and the Cultural Landscape of Ice Floe Sealing at Yakutat Bay, Alaska (2011-2014) demonstrated that Eyak, Ahtna, and Tlingit settlements in Yakutat Bay followed the receding glacial front over time as residents focused hunting efforts at the glacier’s ice floe seal rookery where thousands of harbor seals congregate each summer. Three major stages of human settlement and glacial retreat have been identified. During Stage 1 (late Neoglacial to ~1200 AD) the Malaspina Glacier and the western lobe of Hubbard Glacier were merged in a single ice mass that filled Yakutat Bay and covered the western part of the Yakutat foreland (Fig. 1.) The eastern lobe of Hubbard Glacier filled Russell Fiord, as shown. The conformation of the two glaciers at their maxima is indicated by bottom channels and deposits recorded in bathymetric and seismic studies (Elmore et al. 2013; Zurbechen et al. 2015) and by prominent terminal moraines at the mouth of Yakutat Bay and the head of Russell Fiord (Barclay et al. 2001). Two large archaeological village sites on the Yakutat foreland at Lost River – Diyaaguna.éit (YAK-00019) and Wulilaayi Aan (Shallow Water Town) (YAK- 00020) – were occupied during Stage 1 (Davis 1996; De Laguna et al. 1964.) The oldest radiocarbon date for Diyaaguna.éit is 1110 +/- 50 BP (784-987 cal. AD.) The oldest date for the nearby Wulilaayi Aan village site is 740 +/- 80 BP (1218-1285 cal. AD.)According to oral tradition the original inhabitants of the Yakutat Bay area were Eyak, which is supported by artifacts and residential architecture at the two sites (Davis 1996.) During Stage 2 (~1200 to 1450 AD), the confluent Malaspina and Hubbard glaciers withdrew to a mid-bay position with a combined tidewater front Figure 1 ASC Newsletter 7 that extended from the Malaspina foreland across Yakutat Bay, marked by a prominent submarine moraine at Blizhni Point (Fig. 2.) The eastern lobe of Hubbard Glacier remained at its maximum. Paradoxically, this period of glacial shrinking at Yakutat Bay coincided with colder temperatures of the Little Ice Age and the advance of most other glaciers in southern Alaska (Calkin et al. 2001.) The retreat of Malaspina Glacier during Stage 2 left the western part of the Malaspina foreland free of ice by no later than about 1450 AD, as demonstrated by radiocarbon dates from Spoon Lake 3 (YAK-00076) and Spoon Lake 2 (YAK-00075), small village sites located east of Point Manby at Spoon lake. At Spoon Lake 3 a standard date of 750 +/- 100 BP (1040- 1410 cal. AD) was obtained in 1996, and four AMS dates obtained in 2014 ranged from 422 +/-22 BP (1440-1470 cal. AD) to 477 +/-22 (1420-1450 cal. AD). At Spoon Lake 2, a single standard date of 550 +/- 140 BP (1225-1650 cal. AD) is available. No identifiable animal bones were preserved at these sites, so harbor seal hunting cannot be confirmed, although stone scraping tools suggest seal hide processing. Evidence that the eastern front of the combined Malaspina-Hubbard Glacier retreated to the Blizhni Point moraine by 1400-1450 AD at the end of Stage 2 is provided by a tree cored near the moraine which had an estimated germination date of 1466 AD (Barclay et al. 2001.) Knight Island must have been deglaciated prior to this date as the ice retreated north, although human settlement of the island did not take place until the mid-1400s at the earliest, as shown by dates from the Tlákw.aan (Old Town) site (YAK-00007) and the North Knight Island Village site (YAK-00205). The lowest midden stratum at Tlákw.aan yielded seven AMS dates ranging from 371 +/- 23 BP to 310 +/- 24 BP. These dates fall in the late 1500s to early 1600s in radiocarbon years (i.e. prior to 1950) but intersect a plateau in the dendrochronological calibration curve with the result that calendar age estimates are bimodal with early date ranges in the mid-1400s to early 1500s and later ranges in the mid-1500s to early 1600s, both with approximately equal probability (Crowell 2018.) A single AMS age determination from the North Knight Island Village site (YAK-00205) was 384 +/-22 BP (1450-1620 cal. AD). Animal bones preserved at Tlákw.aan show a dominant focus on harbor seal hunting, and the over-representation of pups in the age profile of seal remains indicates rookery hunting at the glacial front north of Knight Island. Yakutat oral traditions (Crowell 2018; Cruikshank 2001; De Laguna 1972; Swanton 1909) state that Tlákw.aan was founded by Ahtna and Eyak clans from the Copper River and Gulf of Alaska coast who arrived at Yakutat Bay when Knight Island was treeless, sandy, and covered only with patches of strawberries. These observations describe an early stage of postglacial plant succession that would be consistent with the uncovering of Knight Island perhaps a century earlier as the ice retreated north toward Blizhni Point. Oral narratives describe the position of the Yakutat glacier at the time of the Ahtna-Eyak migration as a single ice front that extended across Yakutat Bay to its eastern shore as depicted in Figure 2. Travelers who wished to cross the bay by canoe or by walking on the glacier would first listen from inside a hollow tree at Point Manby for sounds of approaching storms (De Laguna 1972). A group of brothers who led the migration to Yakutat Bay are said to have gone hunting in a canoe near the glacier, which was “the seals’ home” (Swanton 1909.) Residents of Yakutat Bay refer to both Malaspina and Hubbard glaciers by the same toponym, Sít’ Tlein (Tlingit, “big glacier”) because in oral tradition the two glaciers used to be one (Thornton 2012:17-23), as in Stages 1 and 2. Additionally, the toponym for Yakutat Bay is Yaakwdáat (“the place where canoes rest”), but originally derives from an Figure 2 8 ASC Newsletter Eyak name Diyaʼqudaʼt, or Ya.gada.at “a lagoon is forming” which refers to the opening up of the bay during glacial retreat (Deur et al. 2015:23). During Stage 3 (~1450 to 1880 AD) withdrawal of the ice continued to the extent that Malaspina Glacier became landlocked and Hubbard Glacier retreated to approximately its modern positon at the head of Disenchantment Bay (the inner portion of Yakutat Bay) (Fig. 3.) The eastern lobe of Hubbard Glacier began retreating about 1750 AD and reached the head of its drainage in about 1860 AD (Barclay et al. 2001). Glacial positions and archaeological sites during Stage 3 are shown in Figure 3. The exact timing of Hubbard Glacier’s withdrawal from the Blizhni Point moraine has not been established, but by July 1791 when the Alessandro Malaspina expedition visited Yakutat Bay the ice had retreated far into Disenchantment Bay (Olson 2002.) Malaspina’s chart and a view painted by expedition artist Tomas de Suria both show Hubbard Glacier in approximately modern position, or possibly somewhat farther north than today. Despite the intense cold of the late Little Ice Age there is no indication that Hubbard Glacier was re-advancing. Malaspina met Tlingit residents of a small shoreline settlement south of Disenchantment Bay known as Laaxaa Tá (or Tłaxátà) – from the Eyak word laaxaa meaning “near the glacier” (Thornton 2012:20.) This village is said to have been an “old sealing camp” used at an earlier time when densely packed ice floes in Disenchantment Bay made camping there difficult (De Laguna 1972.) The Laaxaa Tá site (YAK-00011) was researched by the Smithsonian team in 2013 and although no datable organics were recovered from archaeological testing it can be assumed that it is older than any camps in Disenchantment Bay. In oral tradition Woogaani Yé (YAK-00202) is known as an ancestral Laaxaayík Teikweidí clan sealing camp and fort that was destroyed (the name means “burned up”) in an attack by the L’uknax.adí clan in about 1805 (De Laguna 1972.) The oral information suggests that Woogaani Yé was established after Laaxaa Tá and that hunters may have been seasonally exploiting the seal rookery in Disenchantment Bay for some time prior to Malaspina’s visit. No remains of this site have been discovered. The final phase of intensive indigenous settlement and seal hunting in Disenchantment Bay is represented by a large historic sealing camp (YAK-00012) just north of Point Latouche known as Keik’uliyáa in Eyak and Shaanáx Kuwóox’ (“wide valley”) in Tlingit. Several separate components of this camp were investigated by the Smithsonian project in 2011 and 2013. Oral, historical, and artifact evidence indicate that it was used for both subsistence and market seal hunting from about 1840 through the 1930s (Crowell 2017). Although the original site was tectonically uplifted and displaced back from the shoreline during the Yakutat earthquakes of 1899, significant portions of it are entirely undisturbed, ruling out any 19th century Hubbard re-advance to this location or beyond. In conclusion, archaeological sites and oral information including place names provide important dating control for analysis of the Yakutat Bay’s glacial history. These data indicate that the behavior of Hubbard Glacier has been quite unusual – retreating throughout the Little Ice Age but advancing and retreating repeatedly during recent warm decades, including expansionary episodes that closed off Russell Fiord in 1986 and 1992. From a cultural standpoint, glacial dynamics and the linked biological phenomenon of mass harbor seal concentrations in the glacial floe field have been important elements of Yakutat history, so it is not surprising Figure 3 ASC Newsletter 9 that the glacial story is so well documented by Yakutat oral traditions and place names. A full interdisciplinary exploration of this topic is planned by archaeologist Aron Crowell (Arctic Studies Center), Tlingit cultural specialist Judith Ramos (Indigenous Studies Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks), geologist Sean P. Gulick (University of Texas, Austin), and glaciologist Daniel E. Lawson (Dartmouth College) for journal publication. TANNING AND SEWING MOOSEHIDE IN THE DENE WAY By Aron L. Crowell and Dawn Biddison Older generations of Alaskan Dene (Athabascan) peoples tanned moosehides using time-tested methods that transformed raw skins into strong, supple leather for sewing beaded or quill-embroidered tunics, jackets, mittens, bags, and moccasins as well as everyday essentials such as dogsled harnesses. Hides were aged and scraped to remove flesh and hair; soaked with a tanning solution made of animal brains (usually the moose’s own); scraped again and stretched on a frame; and smoked over rotten spruce wood to impart water resistance, a golden-brown color, and an evocative scent. Tanned skins take on characteristics that are entirely different from unprocessed rawhide or “rawmane,” which is stiff, tough, and best suited for making strong lines and lashings. The processes that transform highly degradable fresh hide into soft, stable leather comprise a branch of Indigenous science. For example, the purpose of scraping the inner dermis layer after removing the hair and epidermis is to thin and relax the skin by breaking down tough collagen and elastin fibers. Brain matter used in tanning contains lipids which penetrate and replace the water content of the dermis, allowing the processed hide to remain soft instead of drying and stiffening. A rule of thumb is that every animal has a brain just large enough to tan its own hide. Because traditional tanning is arduous, time-consuming, and requires technical knowledge that has declined in recent generations, most moosehides are now sent out to commercial tanneries for processing with synthetic chemicals. The resulting product is of poor quality and aesthetically unappealing in comparison with hand- processed skins. The experiential connection between the living animal and a finished work of sewn art is diminished, and an essential dimension of Dene heritage is endangered by the loss of tanning knowledge. Recognizing this, contemporary Dene artists including Joel Isaak (Dena’ina, Kenai) and Melissa Shaginoff Helen Dick and Joel Isaak use drawknives to deflesh a moosehide (Kenai). Photo by: M. Scott Moon Helen Dick and Joel Isaak use hand tools to push out moisture and soften a moosehide lashed to a wooden frame (Kenai). Photo by: Sarah Owens Jasmine Koster, Monica Shah, Sarah Owens, James Starkloff and Joel Isaak soften and stretch a moosehide over a softening frame (Kenai). Photo by: Wayde Carroll 10 ASC Newsletter (Ahtna, Chickaloon) have been learning to process moosehides in the old way for use in their work, and both are teaching students in their communities, where they have discovered strong and growing interest. Joel and Melissa have been mentored by elders and culture bearers including Helen Dick (Dena’ina, Lime Village), Jeannie Maxim (Ahtna, Chickaloon), and Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart (Ahtna, Rural and Native Student Services Coordinator, Kenai Peninsula College). The Alaska Office of the Arctic Studies Center was delighted to work with this group of committed artists, elders, and students during 2017-18 to carry out Moosehide Tanning and Sewing in the Dene Way, the latest project in the Material Traditions series. This collaborative program (see ASC newsletters 2011-2017) supports and documents the renaissance of Alaska Native arts and knowledge and engages audiences in Anchorage and Indigenous communities around the state. For Moosehide, Dawn Biddison coordinated with the two lead artists, the Anchorage Museum, the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, the Chickaloon Traditional Council, and the Dena’ina Wellness Center to produce a series of five community events and work sessions in Kenai and Chickaloon from Sept. 2017 through Feb. 2018 in addition to a five-day artists’ residency in Anchorage (Dec. 11-15, 2017). During the first events in September and October, held at the Dena’ina Wellness Center in Kenai and on a beach by the Kenai River, Joel Isaak and Helen Dick took students and apprentices through the steps of Dena’ina-style tanning, which begins with pulling the hair from a slightly aged or “rotten” skin. That step is followed by fleshing, scraping, washing, and wringing out of the hide, then soaking it with brain solution and stretching it on a wooden frame for more scraping and softening. Under Helen and Joel’s guidance the students used an eclectic mix of traditional hand implements (various scrapers made from slate, bone, caribou teeth, and steel saw blades) and electric tools (a power washer and drills fitted with steel wire brushes) to get the job done. Witnesses and hands-on participants included artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, apprentices Jasmine Koster and Jimmy Starkloff, Helen Dick’s granddaughter, Andrea Ivanoff, Anchorage Museum conservators Monica Shah and Sarah Owens, several of Joel Isaak’s Dena’ina language students at Kenai Peninsula College, and a stream of public visitors. In December, Melissa joined Helen, Joel, Sonya, Monica, and Sarah in the backyard of Sonya’s studio in Anchorage to smoke the hide by tenting it over a smoldering punk wood fire. To record the slightly different process of Ahtna tanning, Dawn and Melissa traveled to Chickaloon in November to film the soaking of a hide in a swift-flowing stream, which helps with softening and depilation. They also documented the harvest and use of silverberries, a traditional decoration for moosehide garments. In February Melissa worked with Ahtna instructor Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart to scrape a hide with stone tools, Helen Dick shows Jasmine Koster and Andrea Ivanoff how to use a drill with wire brush to soften the hide (Kenai). Photo by: Dawn Biddison During the smoking process, Joel Isaak and Helen Dick adjust the frame which holds the moosehide over a smoldering fire (Anchorage). Photo by: Dawn Biddison ASC Newsletter 11 assisted by Joel Isaak and Helen Dick. In April, 2018 elder Jeannie Maxim will show the Ahtna technique of knife-shaving the hair from a hide and Sondra will demonstrate Ahtna smoking. Dawn Biddison has filmed all steps involved in both Dena’ina and Ahtna moosehide processing, and the completed project video will compare the techniques used by these two closely- related Dene peoples. During the December artists’ residency in Anchorage at the Arctic Studies Center Joel and Melissa demonstrated moosehide sewing and beading to museum visitors, Anchorage School District students, and beginning skin sewers Yvonne Flynn and Daniel Harrison. They studied moosehide pieces in the Smithsonian and Anchorage Museum collections including a 19th century Ahtna tunic ornamented with porcupine quills, fringes, and dried silverberries. Joel adapted the pattern of this garment for his residency project, a tunic sewn from the hide he had prepared in Kenai, and Melissa began beading a moosehide regalia collar. When interviewed for local television, Melissa reflected on the experiences of artistic rediscovery and cross-cultural connection that emerged during the project. She said, “The art, at its core, is problem solving, figuring out how to do things; you see the sort of engineering that our people had and it’s really inspiring. And it provides an opportunity for Joel and I to work together. Dena’ina and Ahtna people are really the same; we’re separated by a linguistic border that’s been imposed on us, but we’re the same. Working together allows us to break down those walls.” ASC films and produces detailed video documentation for each Material Traditions project, and past videos are accessible online (https:// naturalhistory.si.edu/arctic/ html/sharing-knowledge-alaska/ Index.html) and on DVD (free upon request to Biddisond@si.edu or Crowella@si.edu). Moosehide Tanning and Sewing in the Dene Way will be available later in 2018. Tanning and Sewing Moosehide in the Dene Way was made possible by grants and gifts from The CIRI Foundation, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the First National Bank of Alaska, the Smithsonian Council for Arctic Studies, and the Anchorage Museum. We thank these generous sponsors for supporting Alaska Native arts, cultures, and knowledge through ASC programs. Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart and Helen Dick advise Melissa Shaginoff on the moosehide yoke she created during the artists' residency at the Arctic Studies Center. Photo by: Wayde Carroll Left: Melissa Shaginoff and Joel Isaak study an Ahtna Athabascan moosehide tunic (circa 1870) with silverberry beads decorating its fringes, on exhibit in the “Alaska” exhibition at the Anchorage Museum. Photo by: Wayde Carroll Center: Joel Isaak tries on his partially finished tunic at the Arctic Studies Center residency in Anchorage. The tunic was sewn from the moosehide tanned in Kenai. Photo by: Wayde Carroll Right: Silverberries harvested at Chickaloon were frozen for storage (below) then boiled, scraped and strung to make beads (above). Photo by: Wayde Carroll 12 ASC Newsletter IVORY ADVOCACY SESSION By Dawn Biddison From "Alaska Native Ivory," a brochure produced by the U.S. Department of Interior and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board in collaboration with the Alaska State Council on the Arts (see link below): “In accordance with our cultural value of no waste, we’ve made our boats, tools, clothing, spiritual items, and artwork from the inedible parts of the gift of the walrus. They are inextricably a part of our ancient and sustainable relationship with the land and sea, and provide critical food and an important economic resource for hunters and artists in rural Alaska.” – Susie Silook, St. Lawrence Island Yupik artist “Alaska Native artists who carve Pacific walrus ivory harvested during subsistence hunting are key to our communities’ economic development, keep our traditions alive and strong, and pass down our rich heritage from one generation to the next. Our communities protect the walrus on which our continued subsistence depends.” – Alice Bioff, Kawerak, Inc. Recent state bans on the sale of all ivory are disrupting the rights and livelihoods of Alaska Native artists who legally, customarily and sustainably utilize walrus ivory. Recommended online resources about walrus ivory (www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/06/ ivory-ban-criminalize-indigenous-artists-alaska). The IACB provides details on how to buy and transport walrus ivory (https://www.doi.gov/iacb/552017- iacb-publishes-new-brochure-alaskanative-ivory). Given Alaskans' growing concerns, Dawn Biddison organized a meeting on walrus ivory advocacy in October 2017, after being contacted by Iñupiaq artist Denise Wallace on upcoming trip to Anchorage. Invitations grew to over thirty Alaska Native artists, scholars and organizational representatives, along with state and federal agency representatives. Twenty- two people attended, including: Alvin Amason (Sugpiaq artist; Professor of Art, University of Alaska Anchorage), Susan Anderson (Tlingit; President/ CEO, The CIRI Foundation), Susie Bevins-Ericson (Iñupiaq artist; Alaska Native Arts Foundation founding board member), Crystal Leonetti (Yup'ik; Alaska Native Affairs Specialist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), Meridith Z. Stanton (Director, Indian Arts and Crafts Board) and Kate Wolgemuth (Iñupiaq; Congressional staffer, Senator Sullivan's office). The meeting was structured as an opportunity for communicating concerns about walrus ivory restrictions and ideas for promoting change. It was also an opportunity for sharing information. Distributed documents included a letter urging the Cover of the brochure produced by the U.S. Department of Interior and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, featuring artwork by St. Lawrence Island Yupik artist Susie Silook ASC Newsletter 13 exclusion of walrus ivory from state bans sent from Alaska congressional members to the National Conference of State Legislators and to the National Governors Association and the ‘‘Allowing Alaska Ivory Act’’ proposed by Senator Dan Sullivan introduced on the same day to protect Alaska Native use and sale of walrus ivory, as well as mammoth ivory and whale bone (https://www.congress.gov/115/ bills/s1965/BILLS-115s1965is.pdf). A group email was maintained after the meeting for sharing updates, which was replaced by a listserv maintained by Angela Linn (Senior Collections Manager, Ethnology & History, University of Alaska Museum of the North). objects in the Living Our Cultures exhibition and of the Anchorage Museum collections. This experience advances their development as artists and strengthens the relationship between Alaska Native artists and museums through increased access to staff and collections. Developed by Dawn Biddison in partnership with Monica Shah, Director of Collections at the Anchorage Museum, two to three artists are selected annually through open-call application, and they are funded with an honorarium and travel costs. The program hosted two artists in 2017: Jacinthe LeCornu and Melissa Shaginoff. Jacinthe is Sdast’a.aas clan of the Haida Nation and was raised in Hydaburg. She is a weaver and works with cedar bark, spruce roots, nettles, maidenhair fern and wool. Melissa is Athna Athabascan and Paiute and was raised in Kenai. She is a painter and creates beadwork and jewelry. Prior to their visit, the artists spoke with Dawn and Monica to discuss their interests and to select objects and object types for study. Over two days, they studied pieces taken off exhibit and from collections, and spent time with Anchorage Museum archives staff for additional research. The artists received object photos and documentation, links to online resources for Alaska Native collections and archival photographs, and information about artist opportunities at other museums. You can view a short video about the program's first participant, Iñupiaq performance artist Allison Warden, at https://polarlab. anchoragemuseum.org/projects/polar-lab-collective. SHARING KNOWLEDGE ALASKA: MICROSITE UPDATE By Dawn Biddison The Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center’s Sharing Knowledge Alaska website offers educational and instructional videos – some with teacher’s guides and lessons – from its community collaboration programs. With assistance from NMNH website administrator James Kochert, the site has been updated to include a set of fifteen videos, Twining Cedar: Annette Island Tsimshian Basket Weaving. The Twining Cedar project was based on a partnership with The Haayk Foundation (THF) of Metlakatla, Alaska (see the 2016 newsletter article for details), with project organization and management and video filming (partial) and editing by Dawn Biddison. Key project contributors were Kandi McGilton, Tsimshian weaver and co-founder of THF, master Haida weavers Delores Churchill and her daughter, artist Holly Churchill, with additional support from Tsimshian weavers Annette Ad produced by the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat. POLAR LAB: COLLECTIVE By Dawn Biddison Polar Lab: Collective is a program that provides emerging Alaska Native artists with an introduction to museum collections research through up-close study of NMNH and NMAI 14 ASC Newsletter Topham (daughter of master carver Jack Hudson and granddaughter of master Tsimshian weaver Lillian Buchert) and Karla Booth (granddaughter of master Tsimshian weaver Violet Booth). The videos, filmed in the village of Metlakatla and at the Anchorage Museum, provide over four hours of comprehensive instruction and cultural context on how to make materials for and weave Annette Island- style twined cedarbark baskets. On materials: how to harvest and process red cedar bark, maiden hair Jacinthe LeCornu photographs a Tsimshian neck ring made from cedar bark. Photo by: Dawn Biddison Delores Churchill holds a basket from her collection woven by Tsimshian master weaver Dora Bolton. Photo by: Wayde Carroll ARCTIC STUDIES WEBSITE CHANGE Sometime in July 2018, after 30 years of development, the ASC website and most other National Museum of Natural History websites, will be taken down. This dire event is necessary because of accessibility and security issues mandated across the government and the Smithsonian, and is accompanied by a museum decision to establish a standard NMNH website format. In November 2018, we expect to have a single ASC page up containing basic information about contacts, staff, programs, and links. Future websites will have ‘term limits’ of a few to ten years and are not meant to serve, as in the past, as ‘publications’. We have arranged to have the ASC Newsletters and Field Reports accessible on the Smithsonian Institution Library site with links provided on the ASC page that appears in NOTICE fern and canary grass. On weaving: how to plait and twine a bottom; how to weave the edge, sides and rim; and how to weave designs using overlay and false embroidery (supplemental weft) techniques. Go to https://naturalhistory.si.edu/arctic/html/ sharing-knowledge-alaska/Index.html or search for “ASC Sharing Knowledge Alaska” with Google Chrome (for best viewing) to find the link. Limited number of DVD copies are available by request, as well as full resolution HD files. November. Archive copies of old pages will be stored at the ASC and can be made available upon request. We will continue to maintain our ASC blog, Magnetic North (http://nmnh.typepad.com/arctic studies/), the ASC twitter account (@arcticstudies), and facebook account (http://www.facebook.com/ pages/Arctic-Studies-Center/133066950060693). In addition, the museum will maintain the ASC Alaska Office website (https:// Alaska.si.edu). Please bear with us as we go through the transition period. In the meantime, we will post the urls for our newsletter and field reports as soon as we have that information. For more information, contact Nancy Shorey at shoreyn@si.edu ASC Newsletter 15 NARWHAL: REVEALING AN ARCTIC LEGEND narwhal as an Inuit subsistence resource, a source of raw material for tools, and a partner revered in oral history and myth. A video loop captures Inuit hunters intercepting narwhals at the ice edge and shows dramatic drone footage of narwhals feeding on a school of fish, apparently by stunning them with high frequency sonic emissions. This section of the exhibit displays an elaborate soapstone sculpture by Canadian Inuit artist Abraham Anghik Ruben made in the form of an inuksuk interlaced with arctic animals, hunters, and narwhals. Scientists have long been perplexed about the function of the narwhal tusk. Many explanations have been proposed, including breaking ice, competing for mates, spearing fish for food, or digging molluscs from the seabed. In fact, there is little evidence for any of these explanations. Instead, the exhibit explores other hypotheses. Some scientists believe the tusk is a “secondary sexual characteristic” that develops in males to attract females. However, recent studies by Martin Nweeia and his colleagues, who studied the tusk‘s anatomy in fossil and living narwhals, find that it may also have a sensory function, aiding the NEWS By William Fitzhugh In August 2017, following three years of planning and production, the National Museum of Natural History opened “Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend.” The exhibition is accompanied by a book edited by William Fitzhugh and Martin Nweeia, who also curated the exhibit. Narwhal will be on view until mid-2019. Commonly called the “unicorn of the sea,” the narwhal and its unique tusk, which is a tooth, have inspired art, legend, and cultural practices for centuries. Modern science coupled with Native knowledge is now revealing surprising information about the narwhal, whose name comes from an Old Norse term for the spotty coloration of drowned sailors. The exhibit presents the science and cultural history of the animal and serves as an entry point for learning about Arctic cultures, climate change, and the rapidly changing Arctic environments. The exhibition presents four main messages: narwhal biology, ecology, and environment; the narwhal’s place in European history and mythology; new research on the function of the tusk; and its relationship with Inuit communities. The exhibition also explores the future of the narwhal whose fortunes are entwined with the changing Arctic climate and reduction of its icy habitat. Much of this new knowledge results from collaboration between scientists and Inuit people who have known and lived with narwhals for millennia. Throughout the exhibit, we sense the footprints and voices of the Inuit. By highlighting this long-term relationship, the exhibit underscores the value of these animals to Inuit and demonstrates how Inuit knowledge has informed and guided modern scientific study of this fascinating mammal. The exhibit begins with a huge map of the circumpolar Arctic, the sounds of narwhals recorded in their habitat, and a full-size model of a male narwhal seen arching at the beginning of a dive, which can reach 1000 feet deep. A center case displays male and female narwhal skulls (normally, only the male has a tusk) together with a rare double-tusked male. Quotes and illustrations from medieval manuscripts track the slow evolution of European scientific awareness of narwhals that began with its introduction by Greenland Norse in the 11th century. The last section of the gallery presents the Model of a male narwhal crafted by marine mammal scientist-sculptor, Paul Brodie 16 ASC Newsletter animal's navigation in icy waters and helping it avoid drowning by being entrapped in the winter ice. The Inuit connection is an important part of the exhibition. Inuit hunt narwhals and other marine mammals for subsistence—to feed and support their families—and take only what is needed. As a result, Inuit have a strong spiritual connection to the animal, which visits their communities only for a few months of the year. The hunt is carried out with great respect for the animals. Inuit eat a traditional diet—including seal, walrus, narwhal, caribou, birds, and fish—which results in a lowered risk of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, and at the same time strengthen community bonds by sharing food with extended family and neighbors. Narwhal tusks are a valuable source of income for communities that need modern technology and have high costs of energy and food. Only Inuit are permitted to hunt narwhals, and it is a practice that is regulated to ensure sustainability. At present, the narwhal population is between 180,000 to 200,000 animals and is found mostly around northern Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic. The final section of the exhibit presents information on narwhal conservation and the impacts of climate and growing industrialization of the Arctic. The rapid loss of Arctic sea ice is encouraging nations to expand commercial activities like fishing, trans-Arctic ship transport, mining, and hydrocarbon developments. Military activities are increasing, and there are disputes over territorial and resource rights. One of the most damaging activities is sonic testing in the search for oil and gas reserves; these high-decibel blasts damage marine life and cause changes in sea mammal migration routes and nurseries. All of these, and the uncertain effects of climate change and sea-ice loss, make the Arctic one of the world’s most vulnerable regions. Narwhal was produced with support from the National Museum of Natural History and an anonymous donor. William Fitzhugh and Martin Nweeia guided the scholarly content and spent nearly three years working with a production team coordinated by Christyna Solhan. Members of the team including designer Kim Moeller, writer-researcher Laura Donnelly-Smith, researcher Caitlin Gillis, educators Trish Mace, Nicole Webster, Colleen Popson, and Jennifer Collins, and Inuit consultants Philippa Ootoowak, Charlie and Enookie Inuarak. Photographs used in the exhibition were taken by Gretchen Freund, Wilfred Richard, and Joseph Meehan, and others. We hope that the narwhal exhibit educates viewers about a new “old” place on earth, little known to the public, whose people, lands, and animals need consideration so that what has happened in many other places does not happen there. EXHIBIT VIEW: NINGIUKULU TEEVEE: KINNGAIT STORIES By Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad Through the summer and early fall of 2017, the Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C. presented a solo exhibit by Inuit graphic artist, Ningiukulu Teevee of Cape Dorset/Kinngait, Nunavut. Organized by Dr. Darlene Coward Wight, Curator of Inuit Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), the exhibit featured thirty drawings and prints from the WAG collection as well as the Government of Nunavut Fine Art Collection, on long-term loan to the Gallery. Since 2004, Ning Teevee’s images have appeared annually in the Cape Dorset print collection, and her work has been featured in commercial galleries in major cities from Montreal to Toronto, Vancouver and San Francisco. Surprisingly, however, this exhibit was the artist’s first solo presentation in a non-commercial art space. Although the exhibit has now closed, the finely illustrated catalogue, featuring curatorial essays and texts based on interviews with the artist, provides a key insight into Ning’s subject matter and artistic style. The exhibit subtitle, “Kinngait Stories” highlights Ning’s avid interest in Inuit mythology, the subject of many images, including portrayals of the Inuit sea goddess, Nuliajuk, who controls the release of sea animals to the hunter. The drawing, Appeased (2011) depicts an angakkuq (shaman) brushing Nuliajuk’s The fabled unicorn seen in the medieval “Unicorn tapestries.” Exhibit panel featuring Inuktitut words for different types of Narwhal and a photo of Cornelius Nutarak ASC Newsletter 17 hair, tangled by human transgressions. As the artist remarks, “I’ve heard stories about how people would go hungry; they couldn’t catch any animals. A shaman would go through a ritual to go down to Nuliajuk and brush her hair; she is enjoying it.” As he combs her hair, a seal is released through his efforts. Much of Ning’s work reveals a predilection for nature and bold renderings of birds and marine animals. Executed with exquisite detail, her artistic style often recalls the graphic precision of contemporary artists, such as Mark Tobey. The fine mark-making in Owl’s Lookout (2014) is just such a work – a special treat for Washington viewers where a pair of snowy owls have taken winter roost amidst the industrial piping of the Department of Agriculture, just a few blocks west of the Embassy. Likewise, Timmiqti (Bull Walrus) 2008 shows succulent tones of color in the rich patina of the animal’s neck and creamy ivory tusks, masterfully rendered by printmaker Qiatsuq Niviaqsi. The graceful image, Two Loons Nesting, reflects the collaborative partnership between the Kinngait Studios and Studio PM of Montreal in which the etching and aquatint image is formally editioned in Montreal following its approval by the artist and Kinngait Studios. Ningiukulu’s upbringing along the south coast of Baffin Island is evident in her attachment to the sea. A series of early drawings recount childhood walks along the shore, clam digging with her grandmother. Set aside for several years, the drawings, discovered by Leslie Boyd, became the source for Ning’s children’s book, Alego in 2010. The 2016 drawing Ammuumajiit (Clams) provides a contemporary rendering of the artist’s own excursions along the beach with a heaping pail of clam, mussel (uviluq), and snail (siupiruq) shells in a plastic ice cream bucket, complete with a digital bar code on the side. An apparent reflection of global warming, Ning notes, “We never used to have mussels”. Beyond the artist’s interest in themes of nature and mythology, Ningiukulu reveals a sharp talent for social commentary, particularly on women’s issues. The drawing of a young woman Arnait Tunnili (2010) with her dark hair streaming down her back, and arms richly tattooed in ancestral patterns, graces the cover of the exhibit catalogue – though the cigarette poised in her hand provides a not- so-subtle allusion to health issues of the day. A remarkably powerful image in the exhibit is Untitled (There is no excuse for abuse). Striking in both its size – 214.8 cm (over 6 feet) long – and message. Like Arnait Tunnili, the drawing is part of the curatorial endeavor to bring several new drawings by Ningiukulu into the WAG collection. The drawing reveals a recumbent woman with facial tattooing, her arm stretching over her head in an Odalisque manner. Dressed in a traditional amautik (woman’s parka), the shoulder of the parka slips down to expose a surgical scar. As Ning writes, “[The drawing] is about all the things that women go through. Some women have breast cancer.” The woman’s lower body is inscribed with a mélange of modern-day references to the North: an airplane, fox pelts, a trap, snow house, ulus, iPod, TV, propane tank, and dog team. Mid-image shows the back of a male figure, his wrists handcuffed “arrested for being abusive.” The lower segment of the drawing erupts in conflict, “The red bra is in the man’s hand: the woman is trying to fight him off. She’s covering her face; you can see her eye and her ear. And his fist.” Both the exhibition and catalogue, Ningiukulu Teevee: Kinngait Stories, provide a tantalizing introduction to the exceptional work of a gifted artist. The fully illustrated catalogue, published by the Winnipeg Art Gallery, provides thoughtful reflections on individual works by both the artist and curator. Demonstrating the impressive talent and productivity of the artist, this will have to satisfy the viewer until a full retrospective of her art work can be organized. An eager audience awaits! A RUSSIAN ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE IN SALEKHARD By William Fitzhugh Every few years Russia hosts an international conference to mark developments in the history and archaeology of the Russian North. This year the site was Salekhard, located on the Arctic Circle near the mouth of the Ob River. The program was dedicated to the topic of “sustainable development” as measured through an archaeological lens: “the existence of traditional culture in historical Conference opening remarks by Natalia Fedorova, Alexei Titovsky, Vyacheslav Molodin, and William Fitzhugh. Photo: B. Frohlich 18 ASC Newsletter perspective and possibilities of its development potential in the future…the more ancient the period studied, the more important they become.” Organizers noted that despite the high cost of logistics, substantial progress occurred during the past decade, both in terms of new discoveries and the expansion of interdisciplinary studies. The Smithsonian was represented by William Fitzhugh and Bruno Frohlich. Fitzhugh offered a paper co-authored with Harri Luukkanen summarizing their forthcoming book, Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of Northern Eurasia, to be published by Smithsonian Books in 2019. Much of the data in this historical atlas of traditional watercraft comes from Russian records, museum collections, and documentation of explorers, travelers, and ethnographers in the 16-20th centuries. Due to the fragile nature of these boats, archaeological data is almost completely missing from these records. An the important exception are the small ivory archaeological models of skin boats from the 1500- year old Ekven Old Bering Sea cemetery in Chukotka, Russia. Frohlich’s paper described how Aleut (Unangan, Russia) mortuary practices changed under influence of Russian and later American control. Strong environmental contributions came from Bruce Forbes and his colleagues documenting threats to reindeer herding from climate change and overgrazing. Vladimir Pitulko and Elena Pavlova reviewed cultural and environmental results of their Yana and Zhokov excavations. Sergei Gusev reported on preservation issues and Old Whaling sites. Mikhail Bronshtein spoke eloquently about Old Bering Sea art, and Kiril Dneprovsky on Old Bering Sea and Punuk settlements. There were excellent papers on archaeology in the White Sea, the Lower Ob, Yamal and many others. See http://arctic-arc.ru/en/abstracts/ The Salekhard program was packed with interesting papers and discussions. It was exciting to see the huge expansion of archaeology in the Yamal region under the leadership of Natalia Fedorova and the Salekhard Arctic Center. Their activities are strongly supported by the Yamal-Nenets government and local civic administration. Conference sessions took place in a new town hall equipped with excellent projection and translation facilities. Large models showed the traditional, pre-Gazprom Yamal region and the development planned for the coming decades based on oil and gas revenue. These indications of great progress and opportunity contrast strongly with my recollections of Salekhard from the mid-1990s. The western part of the Russian North has experienced booming growth, and archaeology has been a major beneficiary. One of the highlights of the meetings was an evening tour of the Salekhard museum by Natalia Fedorova. Here we saw finds from excavations I participated in in the 1990s, including the famous Iron Age mummies from Zeleny Yar and a woven belt I coaxed from permafrost at Yarte 6. The conference included a sumptuous evening at a reconstructed Nenets/Khanty tourist village in the snowy woods outside Salekhard where we enjoyed a dinner of traditional food and drink that inspired revelry and singing. If there was anything disturbing about this highly stimulating conference, it was the foreboding that Yamal’s traditional societies are being overwhelmed by industrialization, a huge influx of southerners, and climate change, all of which pose grave threats to the indigenous culture and economy of the Nenets— the last vibrant reindeer herders of the Arctic. UP FROM THE DEAD: LABRADOR’S FIRST SNOWMOBILE DRIVES AGAIN! By Jamie Brake In 2013 and 2014 a Model T Ford truck with a patented Snowmobile conversion kit was recovered from an archaeological site in northern Labrador that served as the expedition base for the Rawson-MacMillian Subarctic Expedition station of 1927-28. The recovery was made with the help of people from the Inuit community of Nain, including Rodney Gear, Shawn Soloman, Russell Barbour, Antone Harris, David Harris, Wayne Jenkins and Elsie Jenkins of Aivek Holdings; Jacob Larkin; Jens Haven Memorial Modern Salekhard with planned development and old city in distance. In the background is a model of anticipated oil and gas infrastructure on the Yamal Peninsula. Photo: W. Fitzhugh ASC Newsletter 19 School; and Johannes Lampe, Richard Pamak, Sean Lyall, and Richard Okkuatsiak. The expedition site and the Model T were known locally ever since they were used in the 1920s, and they became recognized as an archaeological site in mid-1990s. This was the first snowmobile ever used in Labrador, and during the recovery process it became clear it would be possible to make a complete restoration. This option would be a wonderful opportunity to display a significant piece of Labrador history by actually using it. The restoration work was done for the Nunatsiavut Government by a machinist named Frank Noseworthy, in Port au Choix, Newfoundland, between 2015 and 2017. Numerous others helped over the duration of the project, including the former radio broadcaster, Winston White, his son Richard White Jr.,conservator Miki Lee, Model T enthusiasts like Andy Lasso, the late Robert MacDonald, Enos Wiseman, David Hiltz, Norman Weatherly, Apple Autoglass, the Model T Ford Club of America, and the Model T Ford Snowmobile Club. Anthropologist Peter Armitage provided photos of the machine taken in the mid-1990s when the station was first recorded as an archaeological site. Susan Kaplan and Genevieve Lemoine of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Centre at Bowdoin College provided encouragement, advice and access to MacMillan’s historical records. The fully restored modified Model T, now in running condition, arrived back in Nain in late November 2017. Between late November and late December the machine was setup for winter use with skis and tracks installed by NG staff and local people in Nain, including Joey Angnatok, Kyle Crotty, Michelle Davies, David Harris, Noah Nochasak, Sam Ittulak, Jimmy Dyson, and the author. Numerous transmission adjustments were made to allow the use of low gear, reverse, and brakes. When all these adjustments were made, we were able to test drive the restored snowmobile for the first time, almost exactly 90 years from the day it was first driven into Nain in 1927, just in time for New Year’s celebrations. Several additional test rides have been taken since early January, and on February 22nd it was driven onto the sea ice under its own power for the first time since 1928. This unique piece of Labrador history can now be used year-round to generate interest in the archaeology and history of the region, for cultural activities, and as a tourist attraction. It is regularly being viewed by excited community members, students and visitors, and the machine is attracting considerable international attention. Labrador’s first snowmobile will be out again in the coming days for a local biannual event known as the Heritage Cup Dog Team Race that will be held in Nain this winter and involves a dog-sled competition with teams representing north coast communities. What do you suppose the sled dogs will think of the new/old-fangled competition? THE ANTARCTIC SNOW CRUISER By John Cloud A recent fascinating blog (http://nddaily.blogspot. com/2017/02/fdrs-new-deal-for-antarctica-and- todays.html) devoted to the FDR administration’s New Deal revived the story of the little-known US Antarctic Service (1939-41) and its short interesting history. In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided there should be a New Deal for the Antarctic as well as the "The Ford Model T converted for snow travel with Martin Vorse, a member of the 1927-28 MacMillan expedition to a remote region of Labrador. Credit: The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College." Reprinted from New York Times "Labrador’s ‘First Snowmobile’ Heads Down the Comeback Trail" by Denis Calnan on December 5, 2014 The Snow Cruiser outside the Armour Institute of Technology, which was later merged into the University of Chicago 20 ASC Newsletter US, so he launched a huge new expedition to study the Antarctic, with Admiral Richard Byrd in charge. The Service personnel in Antarctica were supplied with parkas, mukluks, gloves, and much other necessary clothing and equipment—all made in Alaska—in a project that was part of what was called “the Indian New Deal.” The US Antarctic Service also provided the southern continent with one of the largest—and looniest—vehicles the southern hemisphere was ever subjected to: the Antarctic Snow Cruiser. The Snow Cruiser was designed and built in Illinois—for the conditions of Illinois. It had a diesel-electric engine, like modern trains, a kitchen and berths, and enough fuel for a range of, so they said, thousands of miles. It also had treadless giant rubber tires. In Antarctica, the giant wheels spun their way down into the snow constantly. So they put on chains, without much improvement. Then they discovered the behemoth got more traction in reverse, so they drove it that way. It’s longest single trip was over 90 miles—going backwards the entire route. In 1941, the Service was discontinued when the US went into WWII. The Snow Cruiser was left—in the snow, appropriately. It was covered for many years, and eventually was dug out and tried again. It performed no better and was consigned to the snow once more. No one in Antarctica presently has any idea what became of it. No doubt there are lessons to be learned from all this government work. A LABRADOR RESEARCH FORUM: TRUTH, RESPECT, RECIPROCITY, HUMILITY, AND RECONCILIATION By William Fitzhugh In recent years, research in Labrador has seen many new developments, prime among them being active participation of local and indigenous people and communities. While community research has been a steadily growing enterprise, this trend reached a new level with the organization of a province-wide colloquy called the Labrador Research Forum. As advertised in the website announcing the meetings held from 30 April- 3 May, 2017, in Happy Valley-Goose Bay: “The Labrador Research Forum is a new biennial initiative led by the Labrador Institute in partnership with the Innu Nation, the Nunatsiavut Government, the NunatuKavut Community Corporation, the Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, the Torngat Secretariat, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The goal of the first biennial conference is to bring researchers, community leaders and organizations, Indigenous governments and organizations, students, and government representatives together in dialogue and co-learning to share research taking place in Labrador, and to initiate important discussions, connections, and networks, and discuss pathways forward for a Northern-led research community.” The conference took place in Happy Valley with assists from Sheshatshiu, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Northwest River, and Mud Lake. Participants came from across the province, Canada, and the U.S. to discuss results and opportunities for collaborative research. A pronounced feature of the program was to highlight research instigated by communities and residents in collaboration with researchers from outside university and research centers. In addition to conference sessions, the conference included visits to an Innu field camp and a lavish concluding banquet with country foods. The program was organized by a team headed by Ashlee Cunsolo, director of the Memorial University’s Labrador Institute for Northern Studies in Happy Valley. The conference program emphasized the new brand of research collaboration that has emerged in Labrador in recent years. Almost all papers included local co- authors and co-presenters. Formal talks were limited essentially to abstracts to allow for the meat of the matter to emerge in open discussion. Topics focused on issues of importance to local needs and interests, not to esoteric subjects of concern only to scholars. Among the issues The Snow Cruiser stuck—in the snow Innu elder Elizabeth Penashue speaking at a reception attended by plenary speaker Margaret Kovach and Labrador Institute director Ashlee Cunsolo ASC Newsletter 21 covered were wildlife policies (the caribou crash!), the Muskrat Falls Dam controversy; climate change and its effects on subsistence hunting and trapping; educational policy; sustainable fishing; community responses to tourism; mining and forestry policies; and issues of sanitation, water quality, and food security. Several hundred people participated. The conference was full of energy, and plenary sessions were attended by government officials, wildlife officers, and Memorial University leaders as well as by local and external researchers. Mayor Jamie Snook of Happy Valley-Goose Bay hosted sessions, and business leaders from HV-GB were present and chimed in. The concluding banquet on the old Goose Bay air base was a lavish affair with beautiful slide shows of the conference and raffle prizes. The LRF has initiated a new design for scholarly research in the service of local communities, one that places the enterprise squarely in the hands of local initiators. Major themes emerging from the conference were for researchers to practice truth, respect, reciprocity, and to conduct research as reconciliation. The message is a clear departure from past practice: from now on, research is to be collaborative, address local concerns, and include a significant element of community control and participation. CRUISING THE VIKING HOMELAND By William Fitzhugh Dartmouth College asked me to guide a group of Dartmouth alumni on a Viking-themed North Sea tour in early June. Shaking off my research into 16th century Basque whalers and diving into Viking history of the 8th to 10th centuries, I flew from Bilbao to Glascow and climbed about Gohagen’s Le Boreal for a week visiting Norse and earlier sites around the North Sea. Steaming out of Glascow harbor and passing Scotland’s western isles immediately transported one back to the Viking Age; not much has changed in some of the small, seaside fishing and sheep-herding communities nestled among the skerries and coves. Early the next morning we arrived at Oban and bussed to Fort William where we boarded the Jacobite Train to Mallaig, learning about the failed Jacobite Rebellion seeking to return James VII of Scotland to the English throne in the early 18th century. The train from Fort William to Mallaig passed through the spectacular Scottish Highlands. A lecture by Elizabeth Pierce provided deep archaeological background for the northern British Isles. Our second day took us to Kirkwall in the Orkneys, and visits to the Neolithic sites of Skara Brae, famous for the 1920s excavations here by V. Gordon Childe and later by David Clark. Its near perfectly preserved stone dwellings at the sea document the importance of maritime subsistence and trade as a unique feature of early European culture history. Even more dramatic was our visit to the Ring of Brodgar with its huge circle of standing stones, and the Ness of Brodgar village being excavated by Nick Card. These excavations have revolutionized our understanding of the British Neolithic, whose monuments pre-date Stonehenge of southern Britain by nearly one thousand years. In Kirkwall we visited St. Magnus Cathedral and the town that produced early Labrador settlers, Hudson’s Bay men, and the famous explorer of the Canadian Arctic, John Rae. Back on board, we had informative lectures on Neolithic prehistory and the famous site of Jarlshof by Gillian Hovell. Jarlshof—beautifully excavated and restored— scoops Skara Brae by demonstrating a sequence of villages from Neolithic times to the Medieval Period. Its spectacular location at the southern tip of the Shetland Islands demonstrates further the significance of 5000 years of North Sea maritime economy and history. This history and Scandinavia’s connections to circumpolar regions was discussed in a lecture by William Fitzhugh. Poster session in progress. Photo: Sherilee Harper Grave of Hudson Bay Company explorer John Rae in St. Magnus cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney Restored seaside Neolithic village of Skara Brae, Orkney 22 ASC Newsletter Our night crossing of the North Sea was illuminated by the gas flares and lights of countless oil platforms that have produced immense wealth for Norway and Scotland during the past several decades. Arriving at Sognefjord in the morning we experienced the grandeur of one of the most dramatic fjords of southern Norway and took the Flamm railway, one of the steepest-grade railways in the world, constructed between 1924-1940, to Myrdal. Our final visit in Norway was Bergen, whose mild climate, deep history, and cultural wonders make it one of the jewels of the North Sea for visitors. Its harbors and skerries have been homeports for voyagers for millennia, and in modern times, it was the home of musician Edvard Grieg and artist Edvard Munch, Norway has preserved Stavkirkes and the historic Bryygen harbor village whose reconstructed medieval village and underwater archaeological excavations have revealed treasures from Viking times to the present. Our voyage ended with arrival in Copenhagen and a bus tour on the way to the airport. It’s hard to believe that seven days could produce such a fabulous tour, with so much educational value. In addition to visiting important archaeological sites like Jarlshof for the first time, I found the other lecturers to be fascinating. Hats off to Gohagen and its team of tour operators for a fabulous experience! ARCTIC CIRCLE CONFERENCE: REYKJAVIK 2017 By William Fitzhugh According to Arcticcircle. org: “The Annual Arctic Circle Assembly is the largest annual international gathering on the Arctic, attended by more than 2000 participants from 60 countries. It is attended by heads of states and governments, ministers, members of parliaments, officials, experts, scientists, entrepreneurs, business leader, indigenous representative, environmentalists, students and others from the growing community of partners and participants interested in the future of the Arctic.” (See http://www.arcticcircle.org/) In previous years, Wilfred Richard represented the Arctic Studies Center at the AC conference and wrote reports on the proceedings in this Newsletter. This year, Will and William Fitzhugh attended the conference, which took place on 13-15 October in the Harpa Conference Center in Reykjavik. As in previous years, the conference chair was Iceland’s past president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. One of the meeting highlights was a keynote talk by Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Barthomew I who called for nations to address the issues of rapid climate change in the Arctic and its impacts on indigenous peoples. Senator Lisa Murkowsky and John Holdren, former science advisor to President Barack Obama, gave talks calling for science to help solve emerging problems of the North. Special events included tours of the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica which was moored next to Harpa. The meeting’s social calendar was replete with receptions, musical performances, films, and art and photography exhibits. The conference hosted more than 60 panels, several plenaries, and special keynotes on each of the three days. Scholarly sessions ranged across fields of science, history, literature, art, business, shipping, tourism, fisheries, Arctic town mayors, and many others. Topics included issues related to youth culture and empowerment, medical care, suicide prevention, mental illness, and gender relations. Indigenous interests were well represented. Governmental policy was a central theme running through many sessions, as was concern about environmental protection and sustainable growth, given the upsurge in Arctic development. Media coverage was extensive. One area not well-represented was contributions to Arctic knowledge and education by museums and cultural organizations. Relatively few museum scientists and curators were present, and most presentations were oriented toward policy formation. Given that the Arctic Circle Assembly is probably the largest international gathering of Arctic- interested individuals, and that representatives of most Arctic national governments attend (this year Russians were mostly absent), stronger representation from museums and northern research and educational institutions would help publicize the important roles these organizations have in the North today. Next year’s meeting will be held in Reykjavik on 18-21 October. Session proposals are due by 20 May. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, former president of Iceland and conference organizer. ASC Newsletter 23 THE NEW ARCTIC MOHN PRIZE AWARDED TO “THE MEANING OF ICE” TEAM AND EDDY CARMACK By Igor Krupnik A new major arctic research prize called “The International Mohn Prize” (which could be considered as the “Arctic Science Nobel Prize”) was established in 2017 by the University of Tromsø/Arctic University of Norway for excellence in research related to the Arctic. The prize is named after Henrik Mohn (1835–1916), Norwegian meteorologist and director general of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in 1866–1913. Mohn was instrumental in the success of the first International Polar Year, 1881–1882 and of several Norwegian polar expeditions, including that by Fridtjof Nansen in Fram in 1893–1896. The Mohn Prize conducted in collaboration with the Academia Borealis – The Academy of Sciences and Letters of Northern Norway, Tromsø Research Foundation, the Arctic University of Norway (UiT), and the Mohn family. The prize amounts to 2 million NOK (approximately 210 000 €), and is awarded biennially by the Steering Committee upon recommendation of the international ‘science committee’ made of five members: Jody Deming (Oceanography), Ander Elverhøl (Geosciences), Gail Fondahl (Geography), Oran Young (Political Science), and Igor Krupnik (Anthropology). The first nominations for the prize were solicited internationally in summer-fall 2017. Following committee’s deliberation, the first- ever Mohn Prizes were awarded in December 2017 to two nominees. One went to Canadian oceanographer Eddy Carmack “for groundbreaking contributions to understanding the physics of the Arctic Ocean, its interactions with climate, land and ecosystems.” The second was to an international team of researchers and indigenous knowledge experts from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, for a multi-year project, called "The Dynamics of Human-Sea Ice Relations: Comparing Changing Environments in Alaska, Nunavut, and Greenland" (also known as "Siku-Inuit-Hila"/Sea Ice-People- Weather.) The team led the publication of the project’s results, especially as represented in the illustrated book titled The Meaning of Ice (2013, Shari Gearheard, lead editor – see ASC NSL 21, p.50). The book has subsequently been translated into three indigenous Arctic languages – North Alaskan Iñupiaq, Central Canadian Inuktitut, and West Greenlandic Kalaallistun. The set of four books represents the first time that the results of a major Arctic research project have been presented in an equal format in English and three Arctic indigenous languages, for use by local communities, in language and heritage programs, and in promoting Arctic people’s education and contribution to science. The Arctic Studies Center joins many colleagues and institutions in congratulating Eddy Carmack and the “Meaning of Ice” team that, beyond Shari Gearheard, includes local community observers; indigenous translators from Utqiagvik (Barrow), Iqaluit, and Nuuk; scientists with long collaborative ties to ASC, like Henry Huntington (Eagle River, Alaska) and Lene Kielsen Holm (Nuuk, Greenland), and publishers at the IPI Press in Hanover, NH (Peter Mittenthal and James Robb.) The next Mohn Prize for the outstanding research on the Arctic will be awarded in late 2019. ICASS IX CHARTS ARCTIC SOCIAL SCIENCE COURSE FOR 2017–2020 By Igor Krupnik The Ninth International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS IX) took place in the northern Swedish city of Umeå on June 8–12, 2017. The Congress was organized by the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA) and hosted jointly by several units at the Umeå University, the Arcum (Arctic Research Centre), the Sámi dutkan (Sami Language studies), and Vaartoe (Centre for Shari Gearheard (center), Lene Kielsen Holm, and Toku Oshima (Qaanaaq, Greenland, right) receive the Mohn Prize from Anne Husebekk, Rector of the UiT(left) – Tromso, January 2018 (Photo IPI website) 24 ASC Newsletter Sami Research). Peter Sköld, the Arcum Director and professor of history, Sami culture, and society development was the Congress’ president in his capacity of the outgoing president of IASSA. More than 800 registered participants from 20+ states and several indigenous nations from places as far away as Australia and New Zealand attended the Congress, whose official theme was “People and Places.” IASSA’s Congresses held every three years are definitely growing in size and attention over past decades. This time, the number of speakers and session applications was so large that the organizers were forced to abandon the usual practice of individual plenary speakers and replaced it with ‘plenary panels’ of five to seven participants each. The papers submitted to the Congress were arranged into 20 thematic fields, from archaeology to contemporary migrations and mobilities, with each theme assigned a special leader to select the best papers and organize them into sessions. I was asked to lead the theme called “Museums and Heritage,” that—with its 22 presented papers and one poster in four sessions—was one of the small venues of the Congress. The big topics, like resource development and extractive industries or international relations and law had 10-12 sessions and more than 100 speakers. The ASC team of Chelsi Slotten, our volunteer researcher, Nicholas Parlato, now a Master’s student at the University of Northern British Columbia, and myself participated in the session under the museums and heritage theme titled “Sustaining Arctic Cultural Heritage in the 21st Century.” At the session I chaired, Nicholas presented our joint paper telling the story of the International Guide to Online Arctic Ethnographic Collections (see ASC Newsletter 24). The highlight of the Congress was the presntation of the IASSA Honorary Lifetime Membership awards to scientists who made groundbreaking contributions to the development of Arctic Social Sciences. The 2017 awardees were our Research Associate, anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan from Anchorage and Carl Christian Olsen (Puju) from Nuuk, Greenland, director of the Greenland Language Secretariat and the chair of the ICC Language Commission and of the Greenland Language Committee. We whole-heartedly congratulate Ann and Puju on winning this prestigious award from the world community of Arctic social scientists. In the concluding plenary several bids to host ICASS X in 2020 and to lead IASSA were put to a vote. The majority of the association members voted Andrey Petrov, Director of the Arctic Center and professor of geography at the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to serve as the next IASSA president for 2017–2020 and to organize the next Congress to be held at the Northern Arctic Federal University in Arkhangelsk, Russia, in summer of 2020. EARLY INUIT STUDIES: THEMES AND TRANSITIONS RECEIVES NMNH SCIENCE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR 2016 By Igor Krupnik An Arctic Studies Center (ASC) initiated collection on the history of Inuit/Eskimo research, Early Inuit Studies: Themes and Transitions, 1850s–1980s (Igor Krupnik, ed., 2016, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press) received the NMNH Science Achievement Award for the best scholarly works published in 2016. The entire process, including the selection of nominees, was supervised by the NMNH Senate of Scientists (SoS), via a special committee chaired by Robert Hershler (curator, Dept. of Invertebrate Zoology). Altogether, five publications produced by NMNH scholars and their collaborators received the 2016 awards, including another paper from Anthropology, by Torben Rick and co-authors, on the role of indigenous oyster harvesting in the Chesapeake Bay for maintaining biological diversity. The awards were given at the NMNH all-staff meeting on November 15, 2017, by the then Associate Director for Science, Dr. Maureen Kearney. The Early Inuit Studies volume (ASC Newsletter 23, p.60) was an outcome of a special session on the history of Eskimology organized at the 18th Inuit Studies Conference hosted by the ASC at the Smithsonian in October 2012. The book contained 15 chapters written by an international team of authors that also included Bill Fitzhugh, the ASC director, as well as our colleagues from Denmark, Canada, Russia, U.S.A., France, and Austria. ASC Newsletter 25 QUEBEC GATEWAYS 2017: HART CHALET AND ST. PAUL SURVEY By William Fitzhugh The Quebec Gateways Project returned to the Quebec Lower North Shore for several weeks during August. Our field plans included the completion of excavations at House 3 in the Hart Chalet Inuit winter village and surveys and excavations at Groswater and Inuit sites found in 2016 in the St. Paul River archipelago. We hoped to expand our surveys around St. Paul and Salmon Bay, giving particular attention to Inuit and Paleoeskimo sites. Our work in both areas was stimulated by local interest in archeology and the use of heritage information that could be used for economic development and tourism. This summer’s project produced excellent results. We had a fine team, completed three excavations, and discovered several new sites. Hart Chalet (EiBh-47) Our work at the Hart Chalet Inuit site began in 2008 when we discovered that archaeological finds and mounds surrounding Clifford and Florence Hart’s cottage near the mouth of the Brador River were the foundations of three Inuit sod houses and not Basque earthworks as previously supposed by René Levesque. In subsequent years we excavated portions of Houses 1 and 2, and since 2014 nearly completed full excavation of the largest structure, House 3. The settlement plan, consisting of three sod-walled dwellings set side-by-side, suggested a single occupation by three extended families—a common pattern for 17-18th century Labrador Inuit settlements on the central Labrador coast. Caribou and harp seal remains indicated a winter occupation. European material culture including Basque roof RESEARCH tiles and Normandy stoneware supported a 17th century date with significant trade with Europeans, perhaps at the Courtemanche’s 1705 Brador fort and trading establishment located across Brador Bay. Previous work had shown that House 3 was different from Houses 1 and 2 in several respects. It was excavated a meter deep into a sand dune and lacked the clearly-defined rectangular wall outline of the other dwellings. In other respects is was similar: absence of a long entrance passage and cold-trap, and presence of plank sleeping benches, an external cooking hearth, large amounts of faunal remains and European objects and raw materials. Like most of the other Inuit winter sites on the LNS Hart Chalet organic artifacts were poorly preserved due to the mild and moist climate and acidic subarctic soil. Excavation in 2017 explored the external hearth and the southwest, northwest, and northeast walls. Finds were relatively few; in addition to nails, tile fragments, and glass, we found a 17th century French Louis XIII ‘double tournois’ coin (1632-34), a whalebone knife handle, a bear tooth toggle (both badly preserved), an iron deer spear, fragments of a large stoneware vessel, stoneware and painted faience ceramics, a lead-wrapped jigger hook, and a fragment of a cast iron pot. The coin helps explain the absence of clay pipes and Basque earthenware—the site was too early for common use of clay pipes, and too late for Basque earthenware. While excavating the sod walls of the house we found evidence of previous visitors: prehistoric Indian and Groswater Inuit artifacts dating to the last 2500 years made of Ramah chert and other local chert varieties. The house did not have the usual rectangular shape but was slightly oval; its lack of well-defined wall Left: The Jolly Pitsiulak Crew (minus Perry): l-r: Haley Adams, Iris Wang, WF, Alexandra Castellanos, Jacob Marchman Center: Soggy digging at Grand Plain Groswater site Right: Alexandra with the clincher find at Grand Isle-2: an Inuit soapstone pot fragment. Skipper Perry seen in his usual supporting role 26 ASC Newsletter boundaries may have resulted from its excavation in a sand dune. Bone and artifact midden had been dumped around the outside wall, mostly around the front of the structure. The lack of clear wall definition and the three superimposed cooking hearths found in the cooking alcove in 2016 suggest the structure had multiple re-building episodes. The absence of soapstone vessel fragments and presence of an iron pot suggest significant change in Inuit domestic practice. Grand Isle-2 (EiBk-54) For many years we considered the St. Paul River region as the most likely territory for Inuit settlement on the LNS, especially after discovering Inuit winter dwellings at Petit Mecatina, Jacques Cartier Bay, Belles Amour, and Brador. Why would Inuit have chosen NOT to occupy St. Paul, one of the richest resource zones on the LNS? When our 2016 survey failed to reveal Inuit winter settlements or any sign of graves or summer tent-rings, it seemed that the region might have been avoided because it was already occupied by Europeans when Inuit appeared here from the north in the early 1600s. Our 2017 excavations forced us to reassess this view when a rectangular foundation found in 2016 (Grand Isle-2, Fea. 1) turned out to be Inuit rather than Innu. The structure was eroding at the edge of a shore-side terrace on the north side of Grand Isle and had lost its north wall and part of the interior to the sea. Its low foundation made it barely distinguishable from the surrounding tundra. When tested in 2016, the presence of dark chert flakes, bits of rusted iron, and a c14 date of AD 1415-1455 suggested the house was a European contact period Innu dwelling. In 2017 we returned and excavated three 2x2 meter squares in the center of the structure and found most of its contents were Inuit based on the presence of Basque roof tiles, Inuit soapstone pot fragments, iron sheet metal, and large iron spikes. These materials were found on the partially preserved remains of a wood floor. Below the floor a thin peat-humus level representing the original vegetated ground surface contained flakes of dark chert, Ramah chert, and the charcoal dated above. Apparently Inuit had built a small rectangular dwelling at a location previously occupied by prehistoric Innu. The rectangular shape of the structure and its low sod walls and excavated interior suggested that it was an Inuit qarmat-type structure used during the fall when summer tents did not provide sufficient protection, but before winter pithouses were occupied. To our surprise, only 75 meters up-slope we found the partial remains of an Inuit winter dwelling (Grand Isle-2, L2). Testing revealed an excavated paved entry passage and a hearth pile containing fire-cracked rock and caribou bones. But what seemed at first to be an Inuit semi-subterranean winter house lacked any evidence of an interior: not sign of a floor or cultural level with artifacts, bones, or charcoal. The “interior” turned out to be a natural depression where Inuit had begun building a dwelling that was abandoned after creating the entry way and hearth. Probably both the rectangular L1 qarmat and the L2 unfinished winter dwelling were created by a single Inuit group. The Grand Isle-2 site complex is our first evidence of Inuit occupation in St. Paul, but it appears to have been a short-lived 17th century occupation. This group may also have contributed to the nearby boulder structures where Charles Martijn (1974) reported human remains and an Inuit snowknife at Kettle Head (Grand Isle-1) at the top of the hill a few hundred meters south of Grand Isle-2. Perhaps our initial interpretation was not so unlikely after all. The continued lack of substantial Inuit settlements like those found elsewhere on the LNS may result from Europeans having established prior ‘ownership’ of this important resource zone. Grand Isle-2 may have been the result of a failed Inuit colonization attempt. Full excavation The team with Garland Nadeau at the Grand Isle-2 Inuit qarmat site Collecting Groswater artifacts from an eroding blowout at Belles Amours ASC Newsletter 27 is planned for 2018 in collaboration with the Whiteley Museum and St. Paul communities. Grand Plain-1, L1 (EiBj-41) Grand Plain-1/ L1 is located about a kilometer east of the Old Salmon Bay settlement at the southwestern edge of a huge series of raised beaches north of Wild Cove and above Point Scramble. Tests revealed Groswater Paleoeskimo artifacts beneath a thin veneer of caribou moss, lichen, and birch shrubs. We returned in 2017 and excavated a small trench across the top of a low rocky ridge, finding flakes and tools scattered evenly across the excavation area. The site produced endscrapers, side- notched and box-based points, flake scrapers, microblades, and ground and spalled burin-like tools. The abundance of endscrapers suggested skin-working was an important activity. The site produced a small collection of Groswater Paleoeskimo artifacts dating ca. 2400-2200 BP. New Survey Sites Brief surveys were conducted at several locations between St. Paul and Brador. At Belles Amours Harbor North we found a large field of boulders where the Belles Amours Harbor Peninsula joins the mainland northeast of Isthmus Bay. This site contains a score or more of boulder pit structures, some of which are caches while others may be dwellings. The high site elevation suggests an early Maritime Archaic date. A foot survey in the blowouts in the raised beaches west of Belles Amour inner harbor produced a small collection of Groswater implements eroding from a buried soil horizon. In addition to scrapers, side-notched points, and microblades, we recovered the smallest ground burin-like tool I have ever seen, measuring less than a centimeter on a side. Chert nodules from the surrounding gravel closely resembles the material used in Groswater technology, suggesting the possibility of a source of Groswater chert in this region. The 2017 season produced important new information on Inuit and Groswater Paleoeskimo occupations of the Quebec Lower North shore, including the first instance of 16/17 century Inuit occupation of the St. Paul region. Our work was made comfortable and enjoyable by the assistance of Florence Hart, Garland Nadeau, and Eileen Schofield. As usual, Perry Colbourne as Pitsiulak skipper and his family provided critical support. Our tireless crew of students— Jake Marchman, Iris Wang, Haley Adams, and Alexandra Castellanos—supplied tireless labor and cheer, and will all become rich or famous. ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEYS IN HAMILTON INLET By William Fitzhugh The Rigolet Project completed a fourth season of surveys that included research at Mason Island, Snooks and Caravalla Coves, and the eastern part of Lake Melville. A survey in 2015 of Mason’s Island (also known as Tinker Harbor) resulted in the discovery of an unusual stone cache consisting of a circular arrangement of flat slabs surrounding a storage pit. This feature was located on a gravel terrace where we found a stemmed point, tent rings, and small circular “Indian Island” hearth features in 2015. The finds suggested several Indian groups had visited the site during the past 2000 years, attracted in part by a small harbor at the southeast edge of the terrace. The stemmed point find suggested that the cache might be connected to the David Michelin or Sid Blake sites in Northwest River. We excavated four square meters around the pit feature without encountering cultural finds. The sides of the cache pit were lined with stone slab, and at the bottom of the pit we found wood and charcoal dating 1246–1302 ca. AD (Beta 481306). No artifacts, bones, red ocher, or charcoal stains were present. The feature appears to have been a cache for food or other perishable material. The radial arrangement of surface rocks around the pit may have held down skin or birch bark covering. On the island’s northwest point we found an Inuit site with several tent rings, a grave cairn (already opened), and U-shaped Inuit hearth. Several tent rings and caches were also noted along the shore of the old harbor. On Saddle Island we extended our 2015 survey of its northern shore. This island is known for bears and bakeapples, but both were absent during our visit. Instead, we recorded tent rings and boulder caches in five locations; both Inuit and recent Settler sites were identified, while others may be Innu. Snook’s Cove was first investigated in the early 1970s by Richard Jordan during his work on Eskimo Island. Jordan excavated one Inuit house and part of a second, which Brian Pritchard of MUN returned to excavate in 2009. Our contribution was locating two rectangular sod building foundations on the forested bank of the River north of the modern settlement area, with a midden containing 19th century artifacts. These structures appear are new additions to the site inventory of the Hunt and Henley trading post that operated here starting in the 1830s and was sold to (and closed by) the Hudson’s Bay 28 ASC Newsletter Company in 1865. The combined presence of an Inuit settlement with a mid-19th century trading post make Snooks Cove of special archaeological, historical, and local interest. At nearby Caravalla Cove, we identified two rectangular sod foundations near the shore west of the mid-cove point. Tests in the sod foundations produced 19th and 20th century artifacts, including a nearly complete annular ware tea cup. St. John Island holds a strategic location at the eastern end of Lake Melville, but until this year it had never been surveyed. We found sites on both sides of the tickle separating St. John from Haines Island. St. John Island Tickle-1 has three site loci on the north side of the tickle. Structures 1 and 2 are located in two clusters of midden vegetation and produced clay pipe fragments. Structure 3 is a tent ring on a gravel patch at the high tide line that produced several large iron spikes. SJI Tickle-2, lying on a grassy tombolo beach extending into the tickle from the north side of Haines Island, has numerous tent structures, including a circular Inuit tent ring. The most important new site of the season, St. John Island-1, is located on a high, precipitous bank at the northern tip of the island. This exposed location has a rectangular Labrador Inuit winter sod-house dwelling with an entry passage, two lateral sleeping platforms, and a central work area. Tests produced birch bark, food bone, a white seed bead and a lead artifact resembling the figure of a human. The site is perfectly preserved. Its exposed location was a mystery until Charlie Tooktoshina of Rigolet told us that this location is a great place for netting seals under the ice during winter. This site fifteen miles west of the large Inuit site concentration on Eskimo Island make it the western-most Inuit winter settlement in Hamilton Inlet. Raised boulder beaches on the west side St. John Island were found to have six boulder features including tent rings, a possible Inuit grave cairn, and an Inuit fox trap. Some of these may be associated with the nearby winter settlement. We saw no sign of Paleoeskimo activity, and none of the high beaches had boulder pit or cache features. Two raised boulder beaches on the mainland north of English River had a few tent and cache features, but no cultural materials were present. Neveisik (Pelter), Bear, and Indian Islands lie north of St. John’s Island near the southern entrance to Valley Bight. These islands have protected coves and skerries and are popular hunting and summer and winter camp locations. This area has been a transitional zone for Innu and Inuit peoples. In 2016 we found Inuit sites on Neveisik, and this summer, Inuit sites on St. John’s. We also found two groups of tent rings on a small islet extension at the eastern end of Indian Island. Many were cannibalized, and none could be identified as Inuit, Innu, or settler because of vegetation growth. The nearby waters teem with bird life and seals. Lying south of Burnt Head at the southern entrance of Valley Bight, Andy Island is treeless with high knobs at its north and south ends connected by a low saddle. Three recent tent ring loci were identified, all appeared of recent origin, when it becomes difficult to determine cultural identity from tent rings and hearths due to culture blending and the common use of modern technology. Green Island is in the middle of Lake Melville’s eastern end and is made of a soft red-purple sandstone rather than granite-gneiss that dominates the surrounding lands. The soft sandstone has enabled the island to record a long history post-glacial uplift in its raised beaches, which extend from the shore to the island’s crest. Despite the ideal setting for beach-ridge chronology, we found only four small recent features. None of the higher beaches showed any sign of cultural activity. Early travelers and hunters seem to have avoided Green Island until the advent of outboards and snowmobiles made it safely accessible to goose and seal hunters. Located midway along the south shore of Lake Melville, Etagaulet Point is known to Rigolet people as “Deer Point.” Charlie Tooktoshina says this site used to be an important spring seal hunting camp as well as a place to hunt young caribou in the nearby Mealy Mountains. I visited Etagaulet briefly in 1968 and in 1986 and saw tent rings, komatik parts, seal skin stretcher frames and other materials. Today none of this evidence remains visible. We recorded three tent rings containing 19/20th century artifacts. Organic deterioration and robust forest and shrub encroachment partially account for the site’s transformation. As seen in other locations, Etagaulet Point has fallen out of use in the new era of rapid outboard and skidoo transportation. The 2017 Rigolet Project documented many new sites, especially in eastern Lake Melville. Snooks Cove offers good opportunity for studying 19th century Inuit-European interactions and should be developed for tourism. A similar opportunity exists for the site cluster at the eastern end of Lake Melville, of which the foremost prospect is the new Inuit winter site on the northern tip of St. John Island. This site probably served as the basecamp for Inuit sites we identified at the Haines Island Tickle, the boulder beach sites, and perhaps for the Inuit sites on Neveisik, Bear, and Indian Islands. Nearly all of the raised beaches and points between St. John Island and Etagaulet Point have evidence of Inuit activity in the 19th and early ASC Newsletter 29 20th century and were used for a variety of activities, especially spring sealing and caribou hunting. All are within range for future tourism development connected with the Mealy Mountains National Park. English River may still conceal Viking mysteries concerning the saga report of a Norse visit to a river flowing from east-to-west (very rare in Labrador!) where Thorvald Erikson was wounded and purportedly buried at a keel-shaped ness, perhaps on the Port Disappointment peninsula. Our survey demonstrates a major change in settlement patterns related to the traditional use of the eastern and southern shores of Lake Melville by the Inuit through the 19th and mid-20th century. The introduction of rapid outboard and skidoo transport has resulted in abandonment of these traditional locations and replacement by daily forays from Rigolet or the growing cottage community at English River. As usual, there is difficulty in assessing Innu settlements because Innu tend to utilize less visible site locations, some of which we may have found but could not identify as Innu. Finally, the Mason’s Island cache adds a useful marker for a type of excavated pit cache not known previously, dating ca. AD 1200s, and likely of Innu affiliation. As usual, our work could not have been possible without the assistance of our captain, Perry Colbourne, our crew (see photo), the fine people of Rigolet, and financial support of the Nunatsiavut government, Memorial University, and the Smithsonian. SOME ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATING CAN BE AS SIMPLE AS FLIPPING A COIN By William Fitzhugh Reprinted from Smithsonian Magazine October 20, 2017 “A coin? You found a coin in your square? Why didn’t you tell me?!” I asked Allie. Alexandra Castellanos, Halie Adams, and Jake Marchman had been excavating at the Hart Chalet site for a few days in early August while I was in Washington, D.C. opening the new exhibition, "Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend" at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Narwhals are neat animals. They live farther north than any mammal on earth and they have that mysterious tusk that inspired the medieval story of the unicorn. But, while I was in Washington, I really wanted to be back in coveralls and mud boots digging up a four hundred year old Eskimo site in subarctic Quebec. “It’s just a coin,” Allie said. “No big deal. We found a lot more interesting stuff while you were away in D.C.” “Like what?” I asked. “Well, we showed you the whalebone knife with an iron blade and that cool bear tooth with two holes drilled through it—like it was a charm to string around your neck. Maybe it protected an Inuit hunter from polar bears, or drowning in a storm, or something.” Allied replied. “Yeah. Those things are pretty neat and they show how the early Labrador Inuit used local products like whalebone together with iron knife blades obtained by trading with Basque fishermen from the Bay of Biscay in Europe. And the tooth—it looks like a black bear tooth, not polar bear—probably wasn’t a charm. It looks to me like a toggle handle—something used as a handle to drag a seal you’ve caught across the ice to camp. I’ve seen lots of drag handles like it from other Inuit sites in Arctic Alaska and Canada.” “So, what’s so neat about the coin?” Allie asked. “I found it in my excavation pit mixed in with lots of caribou bones—they were all broken up, so I think they were cooked to get the marrow and grease out, probably to make soup. It was right next to the hearth outside the door of the old Inuit sod house. They obviously didn’t care much about it if they threw it out with all that trash.” “Well, I guess you didn’t take that Archaeology 101 course at Notre Dame, did you?” I joked. “If you had—or if you’d been in my class at Dartmouth— you’d have learned how important coins are to an archaeologist. Even if they’re not worth much back when they were made, they can be invaluable to someone trying to reconstruct history.” Excavated at the Hart Chalet site, this double tournois copper coin minted for French King Louis XIII in 1634 (reverse side) helped Archaeologists determine when the Inuit occupied the site. Photo: Perry Colbourne 30 ASC Newsletter For forty years, I have been studying the migration of Inuit people (the proper name for the people we used to call “Eskimos”) from the Canadian Arctic into Labrador and the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence. I’ve dug up thousands of artifacts and written many papers about Inuit history and archaeology. I’ve always had to date these movements by the types and styles of artifacts found in their old dwelling sites. Harpoon heads are good because their shapes change over time. Pottery and clay tobacco pipes can be great time-markers too because they change like fashion-designers’ clothes. We also use radiocarbon dates—a chemical method based on the decay of radioactive Carbon-14 to Carbon-12. These dates always have a built-in error of plus or minus 40 years—so you can be 80 years off right from the start. And by AD 1600 you don’t get accurate results anyway; not enough C-14 has decayed to C-12 to give a statistically accurate age. Then, I gave Allie a bit of history. “When the Inuit, migrating south, reached central Labrador around 1550, they met European fishermen and whalers—many of them Basque whalers from northern Spain. For a couple hundred years the Inuit traded walrus ivory, whale baleen, eider duck down, and seal and walrus hides with Europeans to obtain boats, iron tools, cloth, tobacco, and ceramics. The Inuit carried these products back north to their settlements along the icy coasts where Europeans ships could not travel.” “The appearance of European artifacts in the arctic helps archaeologists in many ways,” I continued. “We learn how Inuit adapted to European culture and technology—replacing their stone tools with iron, their soapstone pots with copper, their ivory beads with more colorful glass beads, their skin boats with wooden whaleboats, and many other things. The introduction of European artifacts and technologies also helps us date Inuit sites: clay pipes and glass beads appear only after 1600; Spanish faience earthenware pottery is more present in the 1500s. But, none of these materials is as good as a coin with the name of a king and a date stamped into the metal.” We were lucky. Allie’s coin was not badly corroded. We could read a few of the letters by holding a tiny flashlight along the surface so that the raking light created shadow effects that revealed a few of the letters and what seemed like a 16-something date. But we couldn’t be sure. If we could identify it, we would have a certain date before which the Hart Chalet Inuit site could not have been occupied. Archaeologists call this a terminus post quem date. Meaning, the earliest possible date for something to happen. Our boat captain, Perry Colbourne, used a small flashlight and a Nikon cool-pix camera to get shots of both sides of the coin which we sent off to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to see if someone there could identify it. Twenty minutes later, I got an email response from my student intern Margaret Litten. ”You maybe didn’t know, but I have a hobby. I am a pretty good numismatist [coin expert],” she wrote. “I looked at the photos you sent and I think I found what coin it is but I left a message with the Collections Manager [of the National Numismatic Collection] at American [Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History] for an official ID. I think it’s a double tournois copper coin minted for French King Louis XIII between 1632 and 1634. About 100,000 were minted and it’s worth about 32 British Pounds.” Later, I had a confirmation from the Smithsonian’s Collections Manager of coins, Hillery York. Its inscription reads: “DOVBLE TOVRNOIS 1643.” The more abraded reverse reads: “LVD.XIIID.G.FRET.NAVRFEX.” “But, don’t we still have problems?” Allie asked. “Maybe it did not get to the site until many years later.” “You’re right there, Allie,” I replied. “A Louis XIII double tournois coin does not solve all of our dating problems at the Hart Chalet site, but it does give us important information we cannot get from other types of artifacts like beads or ceramics because they don’t come with a precise date stamped on them. Also, because it’s not perforated, it was probably not worn as an ornament for many years by the Inuit who obtained it. Chances are that it got into the site within a decade or two after the 1630s because it was not a valuable coin in those days—not something a European would have treasured. And, as for the Inuit, it was just found in a trash heap!” “Regardless, this little coin means a lot to us,” I continued. “As we try to piece together the Inuit and European history of the Quebec Lower North Shore, we know that Inuit were dealing with some French or French Basque people in the early 17th century as a result of this find. It’s the best date we have for the site and explains why we don’t have clay pipes, glass beads, and other European materials that we would have found if the site had been dated after 1700.” “Okay. I get it,” Allie said. “Next time I find a coin, I’ll let you know. And, by the way, wouldn’t this make a good story for International Archaeology Day?” ASC Newsletter 31 THE TOAD-MAN’S ESTATE: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECONNAISSANCE OF THE SHAPEIAU (SHAPIO) LAKE REGION, NITASSINAN (LABRADOR) By Stephen Loring Anikapeu –the Toad Man—lives in his house Petshishkapishkau, far to the west of Shapeiau (Shapio), yet his tenure, his estate, extends beyond the shores of Michikamau, throughout much of the forested regions of Nitassinan. The country is a web of stories and legends (atanukana), place names, Innu oral histories (tipatshimuna), traveler’s accounts and memories. Since 1998 the Tshikapisk Foundation-Smithsonian Institution collaboration has been centered in and about Kamestastin, a dramatic meteorite-impact crater situated near the height-of-land approximately 130 kilometers west of the coastal village of Natuashish. The Tshikapisk initiative seeks a concordance between archaeology, as practiced by the academy, and Innu history. Over the years systematic survey and excavation have documented over 260 sites that attest to the significance of the area during times of caribou abundance when large numbers of caribou could be speared while swimming across the lake narrows in the fall and ambushed in the spring when crossing on the ice. To date the archaeological work at Kamestastin reveals that ancient Innu hunters – the Tshiash Innu (“the old Innu from a long time ago”, equivalent to “Archaic”) arrived in the Kamestatin region around 7000 years ago. Surface collections of stone tools and excavations of a number of small camp sites attest to the presence of small Tshiash Innu groups hunting in the region over the next several millennia. Archaeology in Hamilton Inlet, Lake Melville, and along the central Labrador Coast reveals that sometime after 3800 B.P. Innu cultures exhibit a number of changes that evidence a retreat from northernmost Labrador coupled with an intensification of the exploitation of inshore and interior resources. These Shashish Innu sites (“old Innu”) are referred to in the archaeological literature as the “Intermediate Indian Period." Shashish Innu stone tool assemblages are quite distinct from the earlier Tshiash Innu: tools of Ramah chert and ground-slate are almost non-existent. Instead, a variety of multi-colored fine-grained opaque cherts and quartzites are favored; stemmed projectile points are replaced by a variety of broad side-notched forms, and new tools including lanceolate bifaces and large unifacial scrapers predominate. Very few Shashish Innu sites have been identified at Kamestastin and only a single diagnostic projectile point has been recovered. The apparent paucity of Shashish Innu sites in the Kamestastin region is in marked contrast to the numbers of earlier Tshiash Innu sites and the very prolific 19th-century Innu footprint that testify to times of caribou abundance. While not abandoning the region completely, it is apparent there is a major shift in Innu settlement and subsistence strategies that focuses more intently on forest and interior lacustrine resources. It has proven difficult to find sites along the river banks in central Labrador, as they are closely guarded by thick spruce forests and deep layers of moss and lichen. Aside from the occasional eroded site or isolated artifacts recovered from a sandy beach, it is only with intensive sampling (as has occurred with the Lower Churchill development) or urban expansion (as has occurred in Northwest River and Sheshatshiu) that the forest gives up its secrets. Even recent and contemporary Innu land-use can be difficult to document, especially for winter camps Typical Shashish Innu assemblage from the central coast of Labrador. Jim Saunder’s collection of Shashish Innu stone tools from Tunungayualok Island now at the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts. Recognition of Saunder’s contribution to Innu archaeology led to his name – the Saunders Complex of the Intermediate Indian Period—being applied to sites from this period (ca. 3500-2800 BP) along the Labrador coast. Photo: Stephen Loring 32 ASC Newsletter was made of the entire beach and the terrace edge looking out over the lake. According to Napes (Jean- Pierre Ashini) and Richard Nuna in Sheshatshit, Innu families had camped here as recently as 1990, but we were chagrined not to be able to find any traces of former tent sites beyond the suggestion of a few cut stumps. Innu campsites, especially winter- spring ones built atop snow, can disappear easily back into the forest they were shaped from. A few flakes of the distinctive opaque cherts favored by the Shashish Innu and several partially exposed hearths (sadly devoid of artifacts and debitage) were documented at the north and east ends of the lake. With the exception of the remarkable sand beach and terrace at the northeast end, Shapeiau Lake is nestled in low rocky hills whose steep slopes are covered with a dense stand of spruce and tamarack. Where streams enter the lake there is often a shallow sandy delta and beach built up and level enough to have provided suitable camping places if weather, or other contingencies, made them acceptable. However, these little beaches paled in comparison to the logistical advantages (adjacent travel routes) and amenities offered by the more expansive camping areas at both the north and south ends of the lake. Nevertheless, we stopped to investigate all the potential camping areas–basically defined as space enough for tents and canoes—as we worked down the east side of the lake. At the southwest corner of Shapeiau Lake is the outlet of the river that drains Mishtanipi Lake. On both sides of the outlet are broad sandy terraces that seemed to offer excellent prospects for camping (as indeed we did.) Several diagnostic Shashish Innu artifacts were exposed on the surface and we excavated a small cobble hearth. The conventional date obtained from the large mammal (presumably caribou but perhaps bear) calcined bone fragments from the hearth feature was 3320+30 B.P. (Beta 488082) –3632-3470 cal BP– very much in line with dates from Shashish Innu sites on the coast as reported by Christopher Nagle in his 1978 Arctic Anthropology paper. This site is adjacent the terminus of a well-known Innu travel route from Mishtanipi that cuts off a particularly difficult and treacherous river section. That this was indeed a significant Innu travel route is affirmed by Sylvester Rich, a Mushuauinnu man who traversed the route in the company of a large group of people travelling from Utshimassits to Sheshatshit in the mid 1960’s. A map of this portage route (now at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts) which was drawn by an Innu informant from Sheshatshit for William Brooks Cabot in 1921, and a similar one that was made for William Duncan Strong by Innu at Voisey’s Bay further confirms the significance of this travel route. We and travel routes situated back from the river’s edge, invisible but for the chopped and sawn stumps of trees cut for tent poles or harvested for firewood. William Duncan Strong was an anthropologist and archaeologist with the Rawson-MacMillan Sub- Arctic Expedition to Labrador in 1927-1928. Strong spent the winter with several Innu families trading out of Nain and Davis Inlet and accompanied them to their winter camps west of Vosiey’s Bay. During the summer of 1928 Strong conducted archaeological work at Inuit and Indian (“Old Stone Culture”) sites along the central coast and adjacent interior. In his diary for July 18, 1929 (kept at the National Anthropological Archives) Strong references a site on the Adlatok River south of Hopedale where Charlie Goudry [Goudie] had “located a lot of flint points in a sandy bank one day’s canoe trip up the Adlatuk [Adlatok] River, just beyond the forks and this side of Sapiou [Shapio].” It was this specter of a perhaps significant Sashish Innu site on the Adlatok that was the impetus behind our short 2017 field-season. The Shapeiau-Adlatok-Ugjoktok Survey, 2017 The 17th of September dawned clear and calm and, together with Tony Jenkinson, we were soon underway in Jim Burton’s taxi-yellow 65 year old De Haviland Beaver for the flight into Shapeiau Lake. Along the entire northeast end of Shapeiau there is a broad sandy beach—the eroded face of a glacial outwash delta—that forms a prominent landmark. We established a basecamp here from which to survey a portion of the lake basin. A close inspection Left: View to east overlooking the Shapeiau River oxbow with the Adlatok (Ashuapun-shipu) River in the middle background. A vast glacial outwash delta forms a broad level terrace to the north and east of Shapeiau and high steep sandy banks where the rivers have cut down through it. ASC Newsletter 33 suspect that all the cultural materials we observed are derived from Shashish Innu but whether from a single visit, or more likely several, is impossible to determine. Continuing with the survey, we proceeded up the narrow six kilometer-long lake south of Shapeiau to its terminus where the rapids-filled river draining Mishtanipi comes in from the south. We found much evidence, on both sides of the river, indicating that this was a favored Innu camping ground in former times. In several locations on the north side of the river we found Innu camping places revealed by cleared tent areas, caribou antlers placed in trees, discarded hunting tools, cut trees, and stove parts. While on the south-side, moss-covered stone fire-rings and a tin lard bucket around which a tree had grown appear to be from the early decades of the 20th century. Returning to Shapeiau, we continued our survey up along the lake’s west shore camping adjacent to a set of broad sandy terraces, an outwash delta, on the south side of the large stream entering from the west. All along the south side of the river were two recently-burned sandy terraces that were for the most part exposed. Given this delightful prospect, we expected to find evidence of early occupations. However, our exhaustive search of the terraces all along the lake shore up to the south bank of the river located only a single blocky flake of dark grey chert on the lower terrace and a small scattering of very small Ramah chert debitage on the upper terrace. The choice of raw material suggests that the isolated flake is from the same ephemeral Sashish Innu presence that we encountered elsewhere on Shapeiau; the Ramah chert debitage on the other hand is probably from a much later Ancestral Innu visit, given their preference for Ramah chert and conservative flaking practices. Having circumnavigated Shapeiau, we returned to our base camp and prepared for the trip out to the Adlatok River and down to the sea at Ugjuktuk Bay. We left Shapeiau on September 25, portaging the canoe and gear along the north side of the falls at the outlet of the lake. We followed the river around the dramatic ox-bow to the top of the beginning of a set of rapids and falls that plunge about 50 meters into the Adlatok River. We found Innu camps everywhere we stopped but no evidence of earlier occupations. Having portaged down to the broad Adlatok River (Labrador’s 4th largest) we reached the original inspiration for our survey trip, the vicinity of Goudie’s purported find of arrowheads around 1925: “in a sandy bank one day’s canoe trip up the Adlatuk [Adlatok] River, just beyond the forks and this side of Sapiou [Shapio].” A curious feature of the Adlatok River is that about 17 kilometers below Shapeiau Falls the river forks with the northern branch flowing an additional 21 kilometers into Adlatok Bay, while the southern branch flows 14 kilometers to reach saltwater in Ugjoktok Bay, the two mouths being about 14 kilometers apart. Between “The Forks” and Shapeiau Falls the river flows gently past high sandy banks. Back of the sand banks is a thick forest of spruce with an understory of lichen and moss. As noted earlier, the dense forest vegetation is very effective at hiding most traces of previous land-use and occupancy. We sought out animal trails and blowouts and occasionally tested attractive spots with a trenching shovel, but for the most part, we walked the river banks in the assumption that any significant sites would reveal themselves with eroded hearths, debitage or artifacts. In addition we made sorties to likely looking camping areas on lakes and streams north of the river. As luck would have it, we failed to identify any cultural Tin lard bucket found at an old Innu camp (GfCi- 03) overlooking the outlet of the river draining Mishtanipi Lake. The Hudson Bay Toad (Bufo americanus copei) at an abandoned Innu camp (GfCi-3) at the western-end of the 6 kilometer-long narrow lake that flows into the southwest corner of Shapeiau. Very near its northern limit, the toad called to mind Innu stories of Anikapeu–the Toad Man—and served as a poignant reminder of the intangible features of Innu land tenure and occupancy. 34 ASC Newsletter famous Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen (1872–1928), was part of this colonial tradition when he took responsibility for two Chukchi girls aged five and eleven from Chukotka, Russia, while on his expedition north of Siberia in 1921. This happened at the very end of Amundsen’s «Northeast Passage Expedition» of 1918–1921, when his small ship, Maud, travelled along the northern shores of Eurasia, from Oslo and Vardoe, Norway, to the Bering Strait, with two winterings, first off the Taymyr Peninsula, and then south of Wrangel Island, in between. The older of the two girls was Camilla Carpendale, daughter of Australian-born trader Charlie (Clarendon Coulson) Carpendale who lived in the Chukchi community of Enmytaghin, south of Cape Dezhnev (also known as Dezhnev, Emmatown, or Kengiskun) and his Chukchi wife, Pung-I Tonanik. The younger girl’s precise origins and Chukchi name are not known; she may have been taken from the community of Neshkan, where her father Kakot was from. Her mother’s early death may have prompted Kakot to seek out Amundsen’s ship at Cape Serdze-Kamen (Cape Serdze) on the Arctic coast, where Maud spent the winter of 1920–1921. The girl was called Kakonita or Nita by the Norwegian expedition crew. Researching the displacement and return of these two Native girls from Chukotka reveals the extraordinary life they led, as well as the connections between displacement, media exposure, and historical memory. The Trip East In early 1921, when Roald Amundsen took responsibility for the girls, he was at the tail end of an unsuccessful three-year expedition that aspired to have Maud frozen in the Arctic ice so it would drift towards the North Pole. Blocked by ice, Amundsen and his crew features or recover any artifacts on the Adlatok aside from portions of the old portage trail that led around the falls to Ugjoktok Bay, which we reached on October 4th, 2017 just ahead of the first snow of the season. While we had hoped to conduct an archaeological survey of the islands at the head of Ugjoktok Bay—a similar canoe survey of Adlatok Bay in 1976 had discovered an important early Maritime Archaic site)—our dwindling supplies and the lateness of the season precluded such, and we proceeded on into Hopedale, dodging weather, and arriving late in the evening of the 10th simultaneously with The Northern Ranger, our transportation south. Some Final Thoughts From an archaeological/cultural heritage perspective our traverse of a small portion of Anikapeu’s estate had only modest results. The hoped-for discovery of a large Shashish Innu site proved a chimera. It is possible that some sites may have disappeared over the years from erosion or having been picked over by Innu, by geologists, prospectors, or other visitors. But the absence of hearths and debitage has us puzzled over the lack of more conspicuous traces. Still, our observations and collections contribute to the incremental accretion of knowledge that moves us ineluctably towards greater awareness and appreciation of Innu history as it played out through the forested interior of Nitassinan The few cultural traces we did recover are indicative of a central tenet of the Innu way of life: extraordinary mobility—mobility that leaves only a very faint, almost ephemeral, trace. Mobility as a key tenet of Innu adaptations past and present informs the practice of an Innu archaeology that has archaeologists moving through the land with canoe and tent in the course of procuring their needed resources, both material and immaterial. It is a profound experience to follow the trails that generations of Innu ancestors pioneered and to contribute to a revelation and appreciation of Innu cultural heritage. FROM SIBERIA TO NORWAY AND BACK: THE JOURNEYS OF NITA KAKOT AMUNDSEN AND CAMILLA CARPENDALE By Espen Ytreberg The history of colonialization not only involved the West conquering the so-called «rest», but also the displacement of indigenous people brought along by the Westerners when they returned from explorations in distant lands. Polar explorers, since the 1500s onward led the way in bringing Arctic indigenous people back home, after going North in the name of their sponsors and countries. The Nita Kakot (left) and Camilla Carpendale (right) upon their arrival to Oslo, 1922. ASC Newsletter 35 spent their second winter (1920–1921) off the north coast of Chukotka, where they had frequent contacts with coastal settled Chukchis and Western traders, such as Charlie Carpendale. It was via this network that the opportunity to become a caretaker presented itself. His biographers have claimed that the reasons were psychological; Amundsen was almost 50, had no family, was at odds with several of his crew members, and needed emotional support. He was also following a longstanding tradition of northern explorers displacing indigenous peoples. Amundsen’s book account of this expedition, Nordvestpassagen, reveals that he himself contemplated bringing some Inuit from the Central Arctic to Norway while traversing the Northwest passage, 15 years prior, when his small expedition boat Gjøa overwintered at King William Island, near what is today Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, in 1903–1905. The displacement of indigenous people to the West was done for a variety of reasons: early on in colonial history out of curiosity, a wish to display exotic people and as a means of recruiting servants; later in the name of science, education and welfare. All motives were present in Amundsen’s case, but that of exhibiting Nita and Camilla is worth extra attention. The late 19th and early 20th century was after all an age of exhibitions, great and small, as well as an age of popular mass media attention to the Arctic. When Amundsen arrived with the girls in Nome and then Seattle, media attention was considerable. While spending some days in New York before leaving for Norway in the fall of 1921, the girls were constantly photographed and filmed. Reports appeared about them almost daily in the New York Post and New York Herald. Amundsen used media actively to establish his public fame and hero-image, as did most of the explorers of the day, including the American, Robert Peary, who had brought Greenland Inuit south to New York in 1897, resulting in the sad story and tragic end of Minik. To these explorers, media coverage was the key to fame, which could be converted into financing from politicians and rich backers. At the same time, both newspaper reports and Amundsen’s personal letters and diaries testify that a strong emotional bond existed between him and the girls. In early 1922, Nita and Camilla arrived in Norway and lived in Amundsen’s house south of Oslo for two years. By most accounts they settled happily there, attending the local school and making friends. The girls led a bourgeois Norwegian life, attending relatively progressive schools; in this sense, their lives were privileged. Going east, Amundsen had cared for them daily and continued to do so intermittently, but for the most part, they were looked after by Amundsen’s family, friends, and servants while he himself pursued further polar explorations, including his several efforts to reach the North Pole using Maud and a small plane in 1922–1925. This arrangement fell apart when Amundsen went bankrupt in 1924. He also fell out with his brother- manager Leon Amundsen around this time, and with several others in his network of helpers. Amundsen came to feel that he no longer had the financial and logistical resources to retain responsibility for Nita and Camilla, and he sent them back to Chukotka, this time alone. Amundsen visited the girls once, briefly, near Seattle before his death in 1928; they never saw Norway again. Westward Bound In late 1924, after attending a Danish boarding school, the girls were put on a ship bound for San Francisco via the Suez Canal. Amundsen had made some arrangements with contacts in America for the girls to be helped in reaching Chukotka, but these plans failed to materialize. Provisional solutions resulted in the girls being placed improvisationally in orphanages and private homes as they slowly made their way to Seattle, then to Nome, and finally to the village of Wales at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. There they again relied on the kindness of strangers while contact was made with Camilla’s father, Charlie Carpendale, on the other side of the Bering Strait. The girls eventually crossed over and reached their destination after a journey that had taken them between nine and ten months. It was not merely Amundsen’s lack of planning that made their journey complicated and arduous. In the 1920s, Soviet-American relations rapidly worsened. Reaching Chukotka from the West in 1925 was risky, even more so when doing it without papers as was the case for Nita and Camilla. The family Nita Kakot (left) and Camilla Carpendale at Wales, Alaska on their return trip, fall 1925. Photo: UAF Collection 36 ASC Newsletter of Charlie Carpendale and Pung-I Tonanik took in Nita; her father Kakot at this time was a down-and- out labourer in Chukotka. Gradually, however, the Soviet authorities were forcing out Western traders like Charlie Carpendale. The family left Chukotka for good only one year after the girls returned from Norway. Back in Alaska, they applied for immigration to America, but isolationist policies prevented them. Camilla at least had a known origin and family background, while Nita lived in uncertainty for many years without statehood, a kind of global orphan. They eventually settled in southern British Columbia, after a period near Seattle. Both Camilla and Nita were married and had children. Nita took the name Nita Kakot Amundsen, preserving both her biological father and her caretaker as part of her identity. In the 1940s, Nita attended a teachers’ training college in Alberta. Following this training she made a series of lectures throughout Canada on the traditions of northern indigenous peoples, while also narrating the story of her life. Newspaper reports exist of one such talk in Winnipeg and another in Lethbridge, Alberta in 1945 (https://www.newspapers.com/ newspage/64057096/). In her Winnipeg talk, Nita painted a relatively idyllic picture of her time in Norway and made no mention of the return journey, other than to claim it was made of their own volition. From the available evidence this seems at best a partial account. At the same time, it is surely understandable if Nita Kakot Amundsen chose to emphasize the parts of her experience that were easier to live with as an adult. Displacement, Media, and Memory My ongoing research project on Nita Kakot Amundsen, Camilla Carpendale, and their displacement by Roald Amundsen combines polar and media history approaches. As for the former, it seeks to open the national, masculinist, and at times colonialist tradition of polar history to transnational, feminist, and postcolonial modes of thinking. As for its media history component, the project aims to find traces of marginalized indigenous people by using a wide range of source media. In Nita and Camilla’s case, traces are relatively few in written sources and secondary literature. They are more numerous in popular newspapers and photographs, as well as in popular film. Thus a media-historical approach can help to bring in a wider variety of sources. In a wider sense it can also sensitize us to the ways Nita and Camilla’s travels across the globe were facilitated by a combination of new technologies, including transportation, telegraphs guiding the ships, newspapers informing about ship and train routes, and media coverage bringing the kind of fame and legitimacy to Amundsen that made his exploits possible. In a wider sense, this media spread a general consciousness about other parts of the world and their availability to those in the West with money and power. Nita’s and Camilla’s displacement by Amundsen and their exposure in public media was a prime example. At the same time, paradoxically, this exposure produced records that enable us to know their stories. The project’s aim is to utilize those traces in an account of their travels that respects the girls’ experience and attends to its broader historical framework. Planned publications from the project include English-language academic articles and a Norwegian-language literary nonfiction book, due in August 2018. I am grateful to John Bockstoce and Igor Krupnik for adding details on local history and geography to this account. MAPPING ALASKAN ETHNOGRAPHY By Daniel G. Cole and John Cloud In the ASC Newsletter, #23, we discussed “The Persistence of Native Alaskan Place Names on Maps.” Building on that paper, in 1787 (and revised in 1802), Alexander Vilbrecht published “Map Presenting the Discoveries of Russian Navigators in the Pacific Oceans, as Well as Those of Captain Cook”. Below is a portion of that map of western Alaska, with an inset of Kodiak Island, illustrating Native Alaskan place names in Cyrillic, administrative borders, impassable ice, Cook’s routes in 1778-9. Next is Grigorii Shelikhov’s 1796 map, the first ethnolinguistic map of Alaska. This map was compiled while he was a co-owner of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, a Russian fur-trading venture (endpaper map copied from Shelikhov, Grigorii I. 1981. A Voyage to America: 1783-1786. Trans. by Marina Ramsay, Kingston, Ontario: The Limestone Press). Nonetheless, according to Michael Krauss, (“A History of Eyak Language Documentation and Study: Frederica de Laguna in Memoriam,” Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2006), pp. 172-217), this map “includes on Seward Peninsula and Norton Sound (and beyond) “Map Presenting the Discoveries of Russian Navigators in the Pacific Oceans, as Well as Those of Captain Cook” ASC Newsletter 37 over 50 of the 80 Inupiaq place- names gathered by Kobelev from an elder on Diomede in 1779…” The map distinguishes five ethno-linguistic regions along the Pacific coast, dividing that clearly into five sectors labelled vertically as follows: KO-NIA-GI (Yup’ik / Alutiiq); KE-NAI-TSY (Dena’ina); CHU-GA-CHI (Sugpiaq); UGA-LAX-MIU-TY (Eyak); and KO-LIU-ZHI (Tlingit). Previously, Shelikhov was responsible for the Awa’uq massacre of hundreds of Alutiiqs and enslavement of survivors on Kodiak Island in 1784. About 70 years later, an elderly Alutiiq, Arsenti Aminak, gave his recollections to Heinrich Johan Holmberg, who, in turn, was the first European to report the massacre. The Geography Division of the Russian Admiralty mapped all of Alaska in 1844, and ASC’s Igor Krupnik verified that the map included Native toponyms along the Arctic, Bering Sea, and Gulf of Alaska coasts. This map can be download from the Library of Congress at https:// www.loc.gov/item/99447835/. In 1854, Holmberg, a Finnish geologist, naturalist, and ethnographer, created the next map that accompanied his report: Ethnographic Sketches about the People of Russian America. This report was “originally delivered to the Russian American Company [which succeeded the Shelikhov-Golikhov Company] in 1854 and later published in 1985 within the Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series: Volume I, by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Press.” (Drabek, Alisha Susana, 2012. Liitukut Sugpiat’stun (We are Learning How to be Real People): Exploring Kodiak Alutiiq Literature through Core Values, PhD Dissertation, University of Alaska, Fairbanks). This map covers four major groups including Thlinkithen (Tlingit), Konjagen (Koniag/Alutiiq), Thnaia (Dena'ina), and Aleuten (Aleut/Unangan), along with subgroups and Ansiedelungen der Eingebornen (Settlements of the Natives). Map downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Heinrich_Johan_ Holmberg,_Karte_des _ Russischen_Amerika_(1854).jpg In the transition from Russian- America to “Alaska”, the two most important people involved in early ethnographic mapping were William Dall and George Davidson. Dall came to Russian- America in 1865 as a member of the Scientific Corps of the Smithsonian’s Western Union Telegraph Expedition. The Expedition partners included the Russian-American Company (RAC), making this a prelude to the subsequent sale of the RAC holdings to the United States, and the Smithsonian Institution, and especially Spencer Baird, who received reports and letters from most of the Expedition members from the field and from ships. Through the Expedition, Dall traveled across the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska and acquired a broad familiarity with parts of what would become “Alaska” and its inhabitants. After the Expedition collapsed (because the just-completed North Atlantic telegraph cable made the project irrelevant), Dall continued on his own explorations along the lower and middle Yukon River. He returned to the United States with a vast set of Russian maps, and wrote up his research, in the Smithsonian castle, in a report titled Alaska and it Resources, published in 1870. By the end of the 1850s, George Davidson was the leader of the US Starting point for journey to Yukon T-2268, the tracing cloth version of the Kohklux map, from NARA II, RG 23 Records of the Coast & Geodetic Survey Map from “Ethnographic Sketches about the People of Russian America” 38 ASC Newsletter these visits yielded troves of Russian maps, and an ethnographic landmark in the Kohklux maps. The base map for Powell’s linguistic map was the Coast Survey’s 1869 map of Alaska and the adjoining regions. The Survey’s relationship with the lithographic specialist Julius Bien allowed the use of chromo-lithographic color to present areas inhabited by different language families, with captions for different cultural areas and their peoples. Despite the major changes in technologies, and the vast political changes, one can see the evident continuity between Alexander Vilbrecht’s 1778 map, and Dall/ Davidson/Powell’s map almost a century later, in 1875. ACROSS ARCTIC AMERICA: FIFTH THULE EXPEDITION (1921–1924) CENTENNIAL By Igor Krupnik The Arctic Studies Center is embarking on its next major venture, the centennial of the Fifth Thule Expedition (hereafter FTE) of 1921–1924. The expedition was led by Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933), a Danish folklorist with an Inghuit grandmother, and a team of several Danish scientists, assisted by West Greenlandic (Kalaalliit) and Polar Inuit (Inughuit) field companions who participated in a three-year trek “across Arctic America,” from Greenland to Chukotka, Russia. According to historian William Barr, the FTE under Rasmussen set a new standard of achievement by Coast Survey on the Pacific coast. Like most Survey scientists, he returned back to the east coast to fight the Civil War scientifically, returning to San Francisco in 1867. He then left almost immediately, on assignment to evaluate the plan to buy the holdings of the Russian- American Company. His party steamed to Kodiak Island, then to Sitka, where he received a great store of Russian maps and charts. Eventually Davidson finally touched North America by traveling up the Lynn Canal to the mouth of the Chilkat River, to meet the Tlingit wolf moiety clan leader he knew as Kohklux. He had reason to return there, in 1868, for a total solar eclipse. In 1869, Davidson and a small party returned to the Chilkat, to the village of Klukwan, for the eclipse. After the eclipse, which was suitably sublime to all, Kohklux and his wives, two raven moiety clan sisters, made a series of maps of the 400-500 miles of geography from Klukwan over the coast mountains and down tributaries of the Yukon. The Tlingit did the basic cartography, and then they talked over the map, for days, and Davidson annotated the map with more than a hundred place names, at the dictation of the Tlingit. In 1871, Dall joined the Coast Survey, and returned to Alaska, and also the Siberian coast, continuing his reconnaissance and amassing even more Russian and other charts. In 1875, John Wesley Powell, as a prelude to his establishment of the Bureau of American Ethnology, published the map “Distribution of Tribes of Alaska and Adjoining Territory,” by William Dall, “with astronomical positionings by Assistant Davidson himself.” The two men’s experiences were complementary: Dall had made extensive reconnaissance of the region, with much interaction with native speakers, while Davidson had made two short, intense visits, but The NAA’s copy of the map of the Distribution of Tribes of Alaska and Adjoining Territory, 1875 The great Beringian convergence zone on the 1875 map ASC Newsletter 39 which all later contributions to Arctic ethnology and archaeology would be measured. Rasmussen and his companions covered almost 20,000 miles by dog teams, small boats, and sailing ships, crossing the boundaries of four countries: Greenland, Canada, USA (Alaska), and Russia (then, the Soviet Union.) In over three years of fieldwork, the FTE collected over 20,000 ethnographic, archaeological, and natural history specimens, and compiled thousands of pages of diaries, notebooks, word lists, and manuscripts, containing detailed characteristics of contemporary culture, language, folklore, and activities of the polar people they visited, as well as the natural environment and prehistory. The expedition results were presented in a 10-volume series, Reports of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921–1924, comprising 36 separate issues (or ‘parts’), some printed almost 30 years after the completion of fieldwork, not counting numerous scholarly and popular papers. Vol. 1 provided general summary of the expedition, as well as its research in topography and geology; Vol. 2 covered botany and zoology; Vol. 3 dealt with physical anthropology and linguistics; Vol. 4 summarized results of archaeology. The next five volumes were dedicated to ethnological studies of the Central Canadian Inuit (Eskimo) – the Kivallirmiut (Vol. 5, Caribou Inuit), Iglulingmiut (vols. 6–7; Iglulik), Natsilingmiut (Vol. 8, Netsilik), and Inuinnait (Vol. 9, Copper Inuit).) The last, Vol. 10, published almost twenty years after Rasmussen’s death, covered his research in the Mackenzie Delta and Alaska. The last issue focused on the masks of the Nunivak Island Yup’ik Eskimo and was published in 1988 (!) by Danish anthropologist Birgitte Sonne as “part 4” of Volume 10. Rasmussen also produced a popular summary of the expedition published in two volumes in Danish and as a single volume, Across Arctic America (1927), in English. The FTE materials have been reviewed numerous times, including in a special issue of the journal Etudes/Inuit/Studies (1988) co- edited by Inge Kleivan and Ernest S. (Tiger) Burch, a longstanding research associate of the ASC. ASC and the FTE The ASC is no stranger to big ‘centennial’ programs or to Knud Rasmussen’s legacy. In 1992–2002, we organized the international “Jesup-2” program to celebrate the centennial of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of 1897–1902, led by Franz Boas. That program engaged partners from the US, Canada, Russia, Germany, and Japan, and included ethnologists, archaeologists, museum and heritage specialists, linguists, folklorists, and indigenous knowledge holders (ASC Newsletters 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004.) We hosted several “Jesup-2” symposia; published three volumes of proceedings; initiated exhibits, collection tours, and international research exchanges. A special component was a ‘virtual’ sharing of the Jesup-era museum objects with their home communities in the North Pacific region, using the technologies of the day – CD-ROMs, photo prints, small traveling exhibits, and collection websites (see http://library.amnh. org/finding_aids_Jesup/biographical_notes/index. html; https://anthro.amnh.org/jesup_collection). We also consider the Smithsonian a legitimate player in a venture dedicated to Knud Rasmussen’s FTE legacy. Admittedly, our link is rather indirect and certainly not at the level of the Danish National Museum (that houses major FTE ethnographic and archaeological collections) or the Hundested Library in Hundested, Denmark, that holds most of Rasmussen’s personal archives. Yet on the final leg of his return Members of the FTE. Left to right: (front row) Captain Peder Pedersen, Knud Rasmussen, Peter Freuchen, Jacob Olsen; (back row) Kaj Birket-Smith, Therkel Mathiassen, and Helge Bangsted. Photo: Smithsonian Institution Archives 40 ASC Newsletter trip from Alaska to Denmark via New York, Knud Rasmussen, together FTE photographer, Leo Hansen, and two Inughuit collaborators, Arnarulunguaq and Qávigarssuaq (Miteq), made a short stopover in Washington, DC in November 1924 Rasmussen’s primarily goal was to visit the ‘Science Service’ news organization established in 1921 for the popularization of science, with the support of the leading U.S. science groups, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Science, the Smithsonian, and the National Research Council. He left the Science Service with a small collection of documents, clips from contemporary news papers, and some expedition photographs that were eventually transferred to the Smithsonian Archives where they were discovered decades later by Marcel LaFollette (ASC Newsletter 2005, no. 12.1.) The file included several photos of Rasmussen and his companions in Washington taken by Watson Davis of the Science Service. We used these pictures in several publications, including our recent book, Early Inuit Studies: Themes and Transitions, 1850s–1980s (Krupnik, ed. 2016). Early Inuit Studies featured two chapters dedicated to Rasmussen and two lead scientists of the FTE, Kaj Birket-Smith and Therkel Mathiassen (written by Kirsten Hastrup and Hans Christian Gulløv). The third chapter in the same volume, by Bill Fitzhugh, covers life of Smithsonian archaeologist Henry Collins, whose research in Alaska contested key hypotheses on the origin of Eskimo culture produced by the FTE participants. Thirty years after Burch’s co-editing of the Rasmussen’s memorial issue of Etudes/Inuit/Studies in 1988, we plan to use the funds from the ASC “Tiger Burch Endowment” to support activities of the FTE centennial. An Outline for a ‘Centennial’ The first time I heard of new plans to use the FTE materials in a contemporary context was in spring 2016 via my Danish colleagues, Daria Morgounova Schwalbe and Bent Nielsen. They reported briefly that they have been working with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, and some Canadian research partners to secure funding for a “prototype of the 5th Thule Expedition Atlas.” The message also included the first online links to the Fifth Thule Atlas project, barely two weeks after it went online, which I checked; one is still working, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/knud- rasmussen-fifth-thule-expedition-atlas-1.3547847. A brief opportunity to discuss a prospective celebration of the FTE legacy emerged in October 2016, on the last day of the 20th Inuit Studies Conference in St. Johns, Newfoundland. The conference program included a paper co-authored by Brendan Griebel, Pamela Gross, and Darren Keith, titled “Fifth Thule Expedition Atlas and The Digital Return of Inuit Knowledge.” Though I missed hearing the paper, I had a chance to discuss the matters with one of the co- authors, Darren Keith, who worked on this project for the Kitikmeot Heritage Society. Another person present was Amos Hayes, a former collaborator on the SIKU project of 2007–2010, from the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre at Carleton University, Ottawa. Together they explained the concept and demonstrated a working prototype of the online “atlas” produced by the Geomatics and Cartographic team at Carleton, based on a set of interactive maps for the Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) and Caribou culture areas (see https://thuleatlas.org/index.html). By fall 2016, the prototype version of the atlas covered the portion of the Central Canadian Arctic between the Coronation Gulf and King William Island. The online “atlas” allows users to connect to FTE ethnographic collections at the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen, with the addition of stories and explanation by Inuit knowledge experts from the communities of Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk, Nunavut. In these first talks with Darren and Amos and in follow-up correspondence we discussed the possibility of a larger program that might eventually involve other partners from Canada, Greenland, Alaska/US, Denmark, and perhaps Russia, to feature the entire area explored by the FTE. The correspondence continued intermittently, and in December 2017, a five-member Rasmussen on his departure from Barrow, Alaska, June 1924. Photo: Smithsonian Institution Archives ASC Newsletter 41 team from Cambridge Bay including Pam Gross, Kitikmeot Heritage Society executive director, elders Bessie Omilgoetok and Joseph Tikhak, interpreter Eva Ayalik, and Darren visited the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. Their goal was to study the FTE ethnographic collections from the Central Arctic in order to prepare for future postings on the Thule Atlas website. At the Smithsonian, a major breakthrough occurred in January 2018, when the ASC hosted a high-level Greenlandic delegation made of Greenland’s Minister of Independence, Foreign Affairs, and Agriculture, Ms. Suka K. Frederiksen, Deputy Minister Kenneth Hoeegh, Head of Department Jacob Isbosethsen, and Ms. Rebecca Lynge, First Secretary of the Greenland Representation in Washington, DC. We discussed the forthcoming FTE centennial and found our guests excited about a prospective international FTE program, with an active Greenlandic component. This meeting encouraged us to move forward in thinking about the goals and the contours for the 2021–2024 events. We quickly organized a small ‘planning team’, including Stephen Loring, Bill Fitzhugh, Bernadette Engelstad Driscoll, and myself. The emerging consensus was that we should use our international networks to engage partners in knowledge and data sharing, research, exhibits, and public programs. The primary goal would be to assist scientists, local educators, media, and particularly the Arctic communities in the areas visited by FTE, to reconnect with the records of their cultures and heritage created by the expedition members and other actors of the same era. As recently published biographies of Knud Rasmussen by Kirsten Hastrup (2010) and Knud Michelsen, Rasmussen’s grandnephew (2011, 2014) illustrate, a lot can be achieved by new research about Knud Rasmussen’s scientific ventures, writings, scholarly and political views, and particularly about his vision of the connectedness of the Inuit/Eskimo people. Stories of other players of the same era, such as Roald Amundsen (see this issue), as well as less-known local traders and adventurers (see this issue, review of John Bockstoce’s book) could help shed light on Native cultures along the expedition’s routes in 1921–1924. In addition, there remain some poorly analyzed segments of the FTE like Rasmussen’s unsuccessful journey to Chukotka and his connection to explorers and mediators in Alaska and the Bering Strait region. With the exception of the work undertaken by the Kitikmeot Heritage Society, little was done to document how FTE research and publications influenced contemporary heritage and language/knowledge preservation work across the FTE study area. Whereas FTE ethnographic collections at the Danish National Museum may be soon available online, the photographic and archaeological collections require major documentation and online accessibility. The archaeological component of the FTE legacy is of special value because of the approaching centennial of Mathiassen’s 1922 excavations at the Naujan site in the Central Canadian Arctic that marked the beginning of professional archaeology in the North American Arctic and led to Mathiassen’s discovery of the ‘Thule culture.’ The ‘Thule centennial’ will be a major milestone in the history of Arctic archaeology that is certain to encourage new research, public symposia, and publications. In terms of public knowledge, it is clear that the impact of the FTE contribution is still underestimated in Alaska, despite the publication of Birgitte Sonne’s book, Agayut (1988), and it is practically non-existent in Russia, even though Rasmussen’s name is quite popular, thanks to an abridged Russian translation of Across Arctic America (1958). Even less known is the fate of the Native communities that Rasmussen visited in Chukotka – Dezhnev or Emmatown (closed by the authorities in 1952) and Uelen, as well as his ultimate destination, the Yupik community of Nuvuqaq (Naukan), also closed in 1958. To the Yupik and Chukchi people, Rasmussen was once in their homeland, but few know when and what he did there. March 2018: Copenhagen and Moscow In March 2018, on visits to Moscow and Copenhagen, I discussed with colleagues and partners in earlier joint ASC ventures how we may lay the groundwork for the FTE centennial. In Moscow, the response was unanimously enthusiastic, since the area around Cape Dezhnev visited by Rasmussen in 1924 is currently the focus of major effort in research and heritage documentation being led by a team at the Russian Museum of Oriental Arts (Michael Bronshtein, Kiril Dneprovsky, and Sergei Shokarev), with the support of the Chukotka Area administration. Knud Rasmussen (left) and his Polar Inuit companions, Arnarulunguak and Qavigarssuaq (Miteq) in Washington DC, November 1924 42 ASC Newsletter Aleksei Vakhrushev, a Moscow-based filmmaker who has produced several films of Chukotka Native people and has longstanding interest in Rasmussen, will be a great partner, as will be area’s Native activists and cultural organizations, like the ICC-Chukotka branch. In Copenhagen, the response was equally enthusiastic. In my meetings with Kirsten Hastrup (Copenhagen University), Daria Morgounova Schwalbe (representing Danish Arctic Insitute and its director, Bent Nielsen), Bjarne Gronnøw and Martin Appelt (Danish National Museum), and Knud Michelsen (Rasmussen’s grandnephew), we agreed to share plans and join forces. Danish scholars and institutions are certain to step up efforts to commemorate Rasmussen and the FTE centennial; they also offered to provide connections to their partners in Greenland to build a larger international coalition. Steps Forward The first opportunity to present new materials and discuss plans for the FTE centennial program will come in February 2019, at the 46th annual meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association (AkAA.) This meeting, to be held in Nome at the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum, will be chaired by its energetic director and the ASC alumna, Amy Phillips-Chan. Nome is an ideal place for a meeting dedicated to FTE history, since Rasmussen and his small party visited Nome in September–October 1924 and gathered a large ethnographic collection. The official theme of the AkAA 2019 meeting, Alaska Anthropology in the Age of Engagement: Communities, Collections and Collaboration, is perfectly suited to inaugurate our program. We have already applied for a full-day session during the 2019 annual meeting on the FTE legacy and its implications for the people of the Arctic, and we hope that several of our Alaskan colleagues and collaborators will join us for the session. The main focus will be on Rasmussen’s work in Alaska in 1924 and the Alaska–Chukotka connections across Bering Strait. We plan to publish the proceedings as a special journal issue (a book?) to be released in 2021, during the first year of the FTE centennial program. We expect to brainstorm on other activities for the FTE centennial during 2018–2019 during meetings in Nome, Washington, Copenhagen, Ottawa, and hopefully other places. As the scope of the FTE centennial venture takes shape, we will update our readers on progress. Stay tuned for further news on the FTE program, beginning in earnest, and soon. THEY LIVE ON THE ICE AND THEY’RE HUNTERS LIKE WE ARE: CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN-POLAR BEAR RELATIONSHIPS IN ALASKA By Hannah Voorhees and Rhonda Sparks In the course of his long Arctic career, Ernest ‘Tiger’ Burch gathered oral histories from Alaska Native Elders, which he used to recreate the deep past of both human societies and polar animal populations. Burch valued oral histories not least because they provided a historical depth not otherwise available to anthropologists and Greenlandic delegation at ASC, January 2018. Left to right: Deputy Minister Kenneth Hoeegh, Head of Department Jacob Isbosethsen, Rebecca Lynge, and Foreign Minister Suka K. Frederiksen Polar bear on shore in Point Hope, 2011. Photo: Rose Sjolander ASC Newsletter 43 biologists. At its heart, Burch’s oral history work was to salvage a different version of the Arctic environment, one that preceded the full impact of white settler society and which had remained largely invisible to the relatively new field of wildlife biology. In doing so, he resisted the “flattening” of our understanding of ecosystems that occurs when we project present-day, historically impoverished conditions into the past. Arguably, in a time of rapid climate change, the problem of forgetting what the Arctic once looked like is more important than ever. At the same time, the knowledge and observations of people living through climate change is not static, but of necessity adapts to accelerating changes. Therefore, in collecting and recording what is now called “Traditional Ecological Knowledge” (TEK), we find some of the most current, fine-grained data available on ice-dependent animal species, including polar bears. TEK helps us understand what large-scale climate change looks like on the ground. Beginning in 2011, working with the Alaska Nanuuq (Polar Bear) Commission, an organization formed to protect both polar bears and traditional subsistence polar bear hunting practices, we recorded numerous interviews with subsistence hunters in the Bering Strait region of Alaska. Here, nanuuq (polar bear) act as a “cultural keystone species,” in that they both “provide material sustenance…and orient symbolic practice” for Inupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik communities. Scientists divide circum-Arctic polar bears into 19 populations. Polar bears in the Bering Strait region fall within the Chukchi Sea population. Their low population density and large territory (which also includes northeastern parts of Russia) has made study through conventional field biology logistically challenging. Indeed, scientists currently list the status of Chukchi Sea polar bears as “data deficient.” Although in the U.S. the status of polar bears has been a heightened focus of scientific research and management since they were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2008, efforts to document indigenous knowledge about polar bears have not been commensurate. Prior to our study, the last time such knowledge was formally documented was in the early 1990s. Our work arose out of requests by Alaska Native communities that TEK receive greater consideration within polar bear management. For two years, our two-person team by an anthropologist (Voorhees) and a Native environmentalist and hunter (Sparks), with roots in Nome and Savoonga, traveled to Native Alaskan villages of Gambell, Savoonga, Wales, Shishmaref, Point Hope, and Point Lay. We also spent time in Nome with Elders from King Island who were relocated to the mainland in 1959. We interviewed approximately fifty Elders and younger active subsistence hunters with first-hand and inherited knowledge about polar bears. Using maps and the classic anthropological method of “semi-structured” interviews, we listened as hunters told stories about their encounters with polar bears and how the nature of these encounters changed over time. What we learned from hunters both reinforced and complicated current scientific accounts of polar bear ecology and endangerment. The individuals we interviewed suggested that a full understanding of the condition of polar bears in their region must consider local human-polar bear interactions and animal group histories in addition to human action writ large through Left: The authors interview a local polar bear expert in Point Hope, Alaska in 2011. Photo: Rose Sjolander Right: Rhonda Sparks during fieldwork in 2011. Photo: Hannah Voorhees 44 ASC Newsletter climate change. Indeed, Burch absorbed and reflected this indigenous perspective in his own work, arguing that even large-scale environmental changes affect animal groups differently, depending on how this change intersects with each group’s territory, lineage, and survival strategy. In short, we must consider groups as “animal tribes” rather than homogenous populations. Both wildlife managers and Alaska Native communities have become alarmed when polar bears started to come into coastal villages and camps, where they scavenge for food around people’s houses. Hunters recalled this phenomenon occurring since at least the 1980s. Why are polar bears coming into villages, and why has their behavior towards people possibly changed? One factor is certainly reduced sea- ice habitat, which forces bears onto shore. With less access to ice seals, their preferred food, bears are attracted to food in human settlements. As sea ice loss continues, wildlife biologists anticipate that greater numbers of bears will follow this course, potentially increasing dangerous human-polar bear interactions. Indigenous observers are the first to recognize that disappearing sea ice has profoundly influenced both human and animal life in the Arctic. Yet in explaining the problem of bears coming into their villages, the knowledge-holders we interviewed offered a narrative that runs parallel with, yet complicates, explanations based on climate change alone. Their narrative highlights the legacy of sport- hunting for polar bears prior to their protection by the federal government, and the surprising ways in which this hunting impacted subsequent polar bear generations. Until the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, trophy hunting for polar bears by small plane was legal, unregulated, and only loosely documented. Although some Alaska Natives participated as guides, this was largely a pursuit of moneyed outsiders. We will probably never know exactly how many polar bears were killed during this period. However, from our interviews we know that there was enough of a population crash, at least locally, that subsistence hunters began to have trouble finding polar bears. The Marine Mammal Protection Act put an end to sport hunting, while protecting the small-scale subsistence hunt. As climate change is recognized as the main threat to polar bear survival, the impact of non-indigenous hunting has largely been forgotten outside of rural Alaska. However, the indigenous experts we interviewed kept coming back to this time as a point after which local polar bear populations were never the same. This is, they told us, because sport-hunters failed to follow the traditional hunting rule that pregnant females and family groups should never be targeted. Indigenous experts say that this resulted in a cohort of “orphaned” cubs that failed to learn how to behave like normal polar bears. Instead of learning how to hunt skillfully for seals, these bears were more likely to scavenge for human trash. Although the sport hunting era ended over 40 years ago, the individuals we interviewed said that polar bear behavior continues to be affected by this historical rupture. Once knowledge of how to hunt and survive was interrupted, it was lost to subsequent polar bear generations as well. Rather than emphasizing instinct and genetics, Alaska Native perspectives highlight the role of social learning in shaping animal behavior. Polar bears are not the only beings for whom orphaning has long- lived consequences in Alaska Native thinking. Walruses, which are normally bottom-feeders, sometimes display bizarre behavior in which they actively hunt other marine mammals. In this case, they are called “seal- eaters,” a term that denotes deviation. Talking about the strange behavior of orphaned animals reproduces local hunting norms: that one should not kill an animal with young, and that doing so is destructive in a way that cannot be measured through population counts alone. Thus, when skinny, young, curious bears come into villages today looking for food, it may be because there is no sea ice, but it may at the same time be because some bears no longer know how to fully survive in a sea ice habitat. Certainly, there is likely to be a feedback relationship between the two. Inupiaq and Siberian Yupik perspectives do not chalenge dominant explanations linking climate change and polar bears so much as re-route them through more intimate and complicated relational webs. For many of the observers we interviewed, human-polar bear relationships are not simply a medium through which knowledge about polar bears is generated. Rather, such knowledge includes human-bear relationships as a subject of ecology. For some (though not all) biologists, this is a fairly radical proposal, but one that we believe must be taken seriously. After all, climate change is merely an example of human-polar bear relationships writ large. Hannah Voorhees, during fieldwork in Shishmaref, 2011. Photo: Rhonda Sparks ASC Newsletter 45 ARCTIC DIGITAL LIBRARY By William W. Fitzhugh and David Nordlander Last year’s ASC Newsletter described a series of NSF- sponsored workshops and subsequent discussions about creating an Arctic digital library or information network. The ADL would be a virtual resource, a vast integrated inter-institutional library whose collections would consist of the Arctic holdings (collections, archives, photographs, scientific data files, etc.) of institutional members or participants that would be made available through a portal-like network. The original concept for the ADL was developed by Dr. David Nordlander based on his experience curating international collections for the Library of Congress. During the past year Nordlander and the ASC explored ways to advance this concept beyond the theoretical discussions held in the workshops of 2016 and 2017. What was needed was a pilot study using real sets of digital Arctic data that could be married to a technological apparatus that searched for desired sets of data (for instance climatological records) and connected users to other data sets that users might not know about but that are relevant to a user’s research interest. In short, the ADL proposes to create curated sets of data that could be connected in useful ways for research, education, or other purposes. For instance, a climatologist might be aware of data from the 1882 IPY field station at Point Barrow, Alaska, but not know of similar data sets from the Greeley Expedition to Ellesmere Island, Canada, or the contemporary records from the Russian Station at Tiksi on the Lena River Delta. An ADL search for Barrow would indicate the availability of records from these other IPY stations. During the winter of 2018 the ADL concept was introduced to Dartmouth College, whose Rauner Archives and Hood Museum collections contain a large amount of well-curated Arctic materials, much of which is found in the voluminous Vilhjalmur Stefansson Collection, arguably the largest collection of Arctic-related unpublished material in the world. Dartmouth’s Hood Museum has a large collection of artifacts and artworks from the Arctic. The idea of enhancing digital library systems using Arctic data appealed to Dartmouth librarian Susan Mehrer, and discussions with Rauner Archive Director Jay Satterfield and Arctic Institute director Ross Virginia led to the idea of utilizing Dartmouth collections as the raw material for a pilot study. In order to bring an inter-institutional element to the project Dartmouth proposed teaming up with the ASC at the Smithsonian COLLECTIONS in order to broaden Arctic curatorial expertise and draw upon the large Smithsonian collections and archives. In addition to technology, the project needed a thematic focus. Ross Virginia proposed the International Polar Year enterprises might serve this purpose, since it was international, multi-disciplinary, and its records and collections are well-represented in the Dartmouth and Smithsonian collections. The IPY-1 of 1882-83 was the first coordinated international effort to study the Arctic as a single global system from different vantage points around the Arctic Circle. Studies of magnetism. Aurora, natural history, oceanography, and climate were among the array of disciplines investigated. Despite initial grandiose plans for integrating regional data, very little synthesis occurred. As later IPYs were implemented in 1932-33, 1957- 58, and 2007-08 Arctic research advances in many directions, but all could be researched collectively to reveal trends and progress. An ADL that compiled data on component studies of these major waypoints could provide an instructive experiment that would produce excellent synthetic, integrated science at the same time it would test the viability of the ADL concept as a research and educational tool. The Dartmouth discussions are on-going and are soon to include the missing technological search wizardry to come from Dartmouth’s computer engineers. We are hoping that a full-blown proposal will be ready for submission to potential funders in the fall of 2018. In the meantime curators at Rauner and the Smithsonian are canvassing their collections for appropriate materials to be made available for the first ADL experiment. A NEW NATIONAL MUSEUM FOR THE AINU By William Fitzhugh and Stephen Loring The Japanese government is building a National Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, Japan scheduled to open in April 2020. Curators planning the exhibition have proposed installing an exhibition of artifacts from the Smithsonian’s Romyn Hitchcock Collection gathered in Hokkaido from the Ainu people in 1886. The Hitchcock collection includes 180 artifacts and many ethnographic photographs; it is one of the largest and earliest of the Ainu collections in North America and was accompanied by an extensive monograph written by Hitchcock and published by the Smithsonian in 1890. A curatorial team from Hokkaido including Shiro Sasaki (director of the preparation office for National Ainu Museum), Masahiro Nomoto (director of the 46 ASC Newsletter existing "Ainu Museum"), Kazuyoshi Sasaki (research fellow of the Preparation Office), and Kenji Suzuki (research fellow of the preparation office) visited the Smithsonian in December 2017. The Ainu project team met with Anthropology Chairman Torrey Rick and Bill Fitzhugh. Stephen Loring facilitated their work at the Anthropological Archives and in the ethnographic collections. They hope to borrow about 150 objects for their opening exhibition. While in DC, the group was surprised to discover the Ainu boat model that Nomoto built for the ASC/NMNH exhibition “Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People” in 1999 in a case in a section of the museum’s Ocean Hall devoted to human travels and migration in the Pacific Ocean. During their visit, Nomoto visited with John Zastrow, whom he knew from his work building the Ainu boat model at the Office of Exhibit Central, SI. CHARLES FRANCIS HALL: SEARCHING FOR FRANKLIN AND DISCOVERING THE ARCTIC [This article by Sarah Kaplan appeared in The Washington Post on August 16, 2018, as part of the publicity for the Narwhal exhibition opening. reprinted with permission.] In 1845, two of the best ships England could build set off on a quest to find the fabled Northwest Passage — then vanished without a trace. The mystery enthralled a generation of adventurers. No one could believe that the pride of the British Royal Navy, commanded by the legendary Sir John Franklin, had fallen victim to nature's wild menace. Convinced that there must be survivors, and tempted by the promise of a reward of 20,000 pounds from Franklin's wife, Jane, the best explorers of the era converged on the Arctic. But 15 years after Franklin went missing, nearly 20 rescue attempts had turned up only bones and wreckage, and more people had died searching for the missing men than had been lost on Franklin's original voyage. Charles Francis Hall, a 38-year-old newspaper publisher from Cincinnati, was obsessed. Although he'd never so much as sailed on a boat, he became convinced that he knew how to solve the mystery of the missing ship. He filled four scrapbooks with clippings about the lost expedition and dashed off dozens of letters to Arctic adventurers, who occasionally wrote back. “Perhaps many people would say … 'what have you to do with it?'" Hall later wrote — and many people did say that. But Hall was undeterred: “It seemed to me as if I had been called.” So, in February 1860, Hall talked his way on board a whaling vessel and set sail for the far north — a middle-aged nobody equipped with little more than a reporter's sense of curiosity, a hefty dose of Midwestern pluck and $27 borrowed from his wife. For such an unlikely adventurer, Hall was shockingly successful: He uncovered a centuries- old archaeological site of European explorers, became a pioneering ethnographer of Arctic people and made it closer to the North Pole than any non- Inuit explorer before him. He also faced hardship. Historians say they believe he was poisoned by a member of his own crew on his final expedition. Today, maps reflect discoveries Hall made (there's even a chilly stretch of water named Cincinnati Press Channel), and artifacts he collected are still used for research at the Smithsonian. “It's fascinating to me the fact that just some amateur jumps on a boat … and he survives and does it well,” said Joe Hursey, a reference archivist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where Hall's journals are stored. “Not just does it well, but makes discoveries. How did he do it?” Not the way Franklin did it, that's for sure. The British explorer's ships were powered by the latest steam engines and operated by a 130-person crew. He set sail for the Arctic with a 1,000-book library, two organs, 8,000 tins of canned food and a porcelain dining set on which to serve it. When their vessels became trapped in the ice north of Canada, the voyagers Charles Francis Hall, center, with Inuit guides Tookoolito, left and Ebierbing from the frontispiece of Hall's 1865 memoir, “Arctic researches, and life among the Esquimaux.” (Library of Congress) ASC Newsletter 47 cloistered themselves inside their ships, instead of seeking survival advice from the native Inuit. Many of Franklin's failed rescuers also ignored the local people who might have guided their search. “The pattern for interaction between white people and the Inuit in those early days was pretty disdainful,” said Bill Fitzhugh, director of the Center for Arctic studies at the National Museum of Natural History, which houses the other half of Hall's collection. “The Europeans thought that they came from this grand civilization of big cities and fancy technology and big boats and so forth, and they thought the Inuit were really living on the edge of survival.” Hall saw things differently. In the introduction to his memoir, he quoted the advice of a fellow Arctic explorer: “We experienced many severe trials; but … the major part of them emanated from our mode of living. When we lived as the Eskimeaux [an outdated, derogatory term for the Inuit people] we immediately recovered and enjoyed our usual health.” In other words, there was no reason to starve if you availed yourself of the generosity of the locals. (The memoir doesn't mention how Hall's Inuit companions felt about that.) Hall also believed that Inuit stories of their interactions with Europeans would lead him to the Franklin survivors. While following one such tale, he stumbled upon the ruins of an abandoned mining operation. It was clearly European, but it was much too old to have been used by Franklin or any of his contemporaries. Relying heavily on help from two Inuit guides, Tookoolito and Ebierbing, Hall mapped and excavated the area. Ultimately he realized that he had uncovered relics of a failed expedition led by Elizabethan privateer Martin Frobisher 300 years earlier. “Of course he didn’t know what he was doing with archaeology — we hadn’t even invented archaeology yet — but he was practicing it, recording where things came from,” said Fitzhugh, who in 1993 used Hall's records to write a book about Frobisher's voyages. Similarly, Hall, who had no navigational training, helped redraw maps of the Arctic by pointing out that a strait named for Frobisher was actually a bay and was not a path to the fabled Northwest Passage. “Maps worldwide were changed,” Hursey said. Except for a brief return to the United States to collect supplies and raise more funds, Hall spent all of the 1860s in the North. He filled thousands of pages with interviews with and detailed observations about his Inuit companions' lives. Standing in the vast warehouse that holds the National Museum of Natural History's anthropology collections, Fitzhugh opened three drawers containing artifacts that Hall had collected on his voyages: wooden goggles that protected the eyes from blinding light reflected off brilliant white snow; sinew-backed bows made from bone, which made archery possible in a land without trees; sophisticated harpoons tipped with spurs that spun and hooked into a seal's flesh to prevent the animal from pulling away. The tools are testament to Inuit people's ability to adapt to the Arctic, honed over 4,000 years of living amid the ice. “It really shows what life was like before Europeans started coming,” Fitzhugh said. For Fitzhugh, who spends his summers doing archaeological research in the same areas of the Arctic that Hall once explored, artifacts like these are “gold bullion.” And Hall is a model of field work done right. “I see myself a little in Hall's shoes,” he said. “He gave me a lot of ideas about how to pursue goals and to work with local people and to get to know them, to understand them and to adopt their ways.” But Hall was far from flawless. Hursey pointed out that in thousands of pages of notes, the explorer never mentioned the wife and two young children he'd left behind in Cincinnati. And even Bill Fitzhugh holds a pair of Inuit snow goggles worn by Hall. Photo: Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post 48 ASC Newsletter as he lived alongside the Inuit, he harbored the arrogance and prejudices of his era; Hall was quick to dismiss his companions as “uncivilized” even as he depended on their expertise for survival. He also had an ego, which inflated more when he was made commander of a U.S. Naval expedition to the North Pole in 1871. “Here's the problem with Hall, and why a lot of history has sort of forgotten him,” Hursey said. “All these people involved in all these searches and all this stuff were well known, were well educated. … And then you've got this guy here, a nobody, and he's going to lead us and tell us what to do, and say 'I am the greatest?'” Hall's swagger made him enemies on board the ship, particularly among the scientific staff. Soon, he was suffering from strange aches and unexplained fatigue. In late October, after the ship became trapped in ice for the winter, Hall fell violently ill. Convinced that he was being poisoned, he refused all food. But it was too late. Hall died on Nov. 8, 1871. The ship's doctor, Emil Bessels, attributed the explorer's death to apoplexy, and a Naval investigation concluded that Hall had died of natural causes. But later historians noted a suspicious passage in Hall's journal in which he wrote that his coffee tasted oddly sweet — a signature of arsenic. A century later, Hall biographer Chauncey Loomis—who had been Fitzhugh's professor at Dartmouth College—ventured to northern Greenland to exhume Hall's body, which had been well preserved by permafrost. Tissue samples revealed that Hall had indeed ingested alarming amounts of arsenic shortly before his death. The element was a common component of the quack medicines of the 19th century, so it's possible that Hall was trying to medicate himself. Neither Fitzhugh nor Hursey quite buys that argument: “Maybe the doctor dipped into his little chemistry kit,” Fitzhugh said. Hall's last act was an attempt to reach the North Pole by sledge. It was a hard journey, Hall wrote in his journals, made more punishing by the poison already coursing through his veins. Finally he reached a point at which he could go no further. It was an isolated spot on the northwest tip of Greenland hemmed in by impassable mountains and a channel packed with fast-moving ice. Judging by the stars, which had been visible since the long Arctic night began nearly a month before, Hall was within 600 miles of the North Pole. It was not the top of the world. But it was close enough. There, Hall sat down to write his last message to the secretary of the Navy, which he sealed inside a copper tube that he then buried in a small rock cairn. Years from now, the thinking went, when future explorers happened upon this site they would see the cairn and know what Hall had done. The tube was uncovered by Naval investigators a decade later and now sits in the National Museum of American History archives, alongside a report from the Navy's board of inquiry. Hursey opened the Navy's yellowed manuscript to one of its last pages and began to read the description of Hall's last venture: “The first step taken by Captain Hall fell upon land more northern than white man's foot had ever before touched.” “Look at that,” Hursey said. “He made it." Charles Francis Hall's funeral in northern Greenland from the U.S. Navy's “Narrative of the North Polar expedition. U.S. Ship Polaris.” ASC Newsletter 49 FURTHER ADVENTURES OF CHARLES FRANCIS HALL By Stephen Loring and Megan Gowen Charles Francis Hall (1821-1871), an American explorer, undertook several expeditions to the Arctic in search of possible survivors from Sir John Franklin’s Northwest Passage Expedition whose two ships, and 128 men, had disappeared in 1845. With the recent discovery of the Franklin expedition ships by Parks Canada personnel and renewed interest in the “Franklin Era” of Arctic exploration, Hall’s accomplishments and discoveries have received much attention. Two events, an exciting donation of Hall memorabilia and a detailed study of the ethnographic collections he acquired, came under ASC purview this year. In 1860, Hall arranged transportation to the Arctic with New England whalers who brought him to Baffin Island, where he had the exceptional good fortune to befriend an Inuit couple, Tookoolito and Ebierbing (Hannah and Eskimo Joe), with whom he traveled on all his subsequent arctic journeys. Unique among his peers Hall lived and traveled with his Inuit companions, learned their language, and adopted their customs. While living with the Inuit he heard their stories about Kablunat (white men) who visited Frobisher Bay in ancient times and discovered the 16th century remains of Martin Frobisher’s camps and “gold mines.” Upon his return to New York he published Arctic Researches and Life Amongst the Esquimaux (1865). Hall’s second expedition (1864-1869) took him, Tookoolito and Ebierbing, to the central Canadian Arctic, to Foxe Basin, Roe’s Welcome Sound, and King William Island, where they gathered Inuit accounts of the doomed Franklin sailors and acquired from the Inuit relics of that expedition. The third expedition aboard the Polaris in 1871 took Hall to extreme northwest Greenland, farther north than any previous explorers. With his ship safely iced-in for the winter Hall made reconnaissance sled-trips in anticipation of a North Pole attempt. However, returning from one outing he suddenly took sick and died. Hall’s decline and death raised suspicions he had been poisoned by crew members convinced he was leading them to an icy grave. The subsequent fate of the Polaris expedition crew is one of the more exceptional tales of Arctic struggle and survival. A portion of the crew, including Ebierbing and a Greenlander named Hans, were cast adrift on an ice-floe where they spent six months drifting south through Davis Strait before being rescued off southern Labrador. Meanwhile, the remainder of the crew abandoned the Polaris and eventually were rescued by Scottish whalers. Preparations for Hall’s North Pole Expedition brought him, Tookoolito and Ebierbing to the Smithsonian where they were in residence while negotiations for the expedition were taking place with the U.S. Navy. Tookoolito and Ebierbing were photographed in both traditional Inuit clothing (in which they also appeared during Hall’s fund-raising lectures) as well as contemporary western dress. Hall’s natural history and ethnology collections resulting from his first two expeditions, as well as the relics he recovered from the Martin Frobisher site and from the Franklin Expedition were entrusted to the Institution’s care for the duration of the Polar expedition, as were his correspondence, journals, notebooks and maps. Hall’s collections and archives were subsequently acquired by the Smithsonian from his widow. The collections were dispersed about the Institution and can today be found in both NMNH and the National Museum of American History (NMAH). All of Hall’s papers and archives—a historical treasure trove—are Charles Francis Hall. From a photograph courtesy the Estate of Chauncey Loomis 50 ASC Newsletter now housed at the NMAH’s Archive Center where they are gradually being transcribed and placed on line. A Lost Star Hall’s journals and notebooks languished in obscurity until 1965 when Dartmouth professor Chauncey Loomis consulted them for his biography of Hall, Weird and Tragic Shores (1971). Fascinated by Hall’s life and accomplishments and inspired by a desire to bring closure to the mystery surrounding Hall’s death, Loomis, in 1968, acquired permission from Denmark’s Ministry for Greenland to travel to Hall Basin and conduct an autopsy on Hall’s frozen body. His team recovered tissue samples (fingernail and hair clippings) which revealed he died from arsenic poisoning! Hall’s body and clothing were remarkably intact having been frozen since his interment 97 years earlier. His burial shroud was found to be an American flag from which Loomis snipped a single star as the grave was reassembled and Hall’s remains were laid to rest again. Chauncey Loomis passed away in 2009. As a friend of the family, Stephen Loring had on several occasions stayed at Chauncey’s modernist house on a bluff over the Housatonic River in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Chauncey’s separate study was an arctic aficionado’s dream retreat whose bookshelves were a veritable cornucopia of expedition, arctic, and alpine books and atlases, decorated with antique maps of the polar regions. On a shelf full of framed awards and knickknacks—not a few of which pertained to Hall researches—Stephen found the star that Chauncey had saved from Hall’s burial shroud. Concerned that such a unique object might be overlooked or lost in the passage of time, Stephen asked if Chauncey’s heirs would consider donating the star to the Smithsonian so it could be preserved along with his other collections and archives. The prospect of acquiring this “relic” was enthusiastically endorsed by Kathy Golden, a curator in the Division of Armed Forces History at the NMAH who oversees and cares for the Smithsonian collections from Arctic expeditions. Craig Loomis, Chauncey’s nephew and executor, graciously donated the star and also a small broken blue glass bottle embossed with the word POISON that Chauncey had recovered from about the ruins of the observatory that Hall’s men had erected near the expedition’s winter camp (see Chauncey’s discussion of this in Weird and Tragic Shores, p.340). These are modest items to be sure, but they bear witness to people and events and contribute to an appreciation of an extraordinary chapter of arctic history. Left: A star from the American flag found covering the body of Charles Francis Hall. Collected in 1968 by Chauncey Loomis, now in the collections at the NMAH Right: Coiled grass basket with beaded rim from Cumberland Inlet, ca. 1860. Hall Collection NMNH E.10203 A scrap of paper from a mineral sample wrapping reading, in Hall’s hand: “From island where I had snow observatory middle of F+Hecla Strait western outlet…” and includes a sketch of the small island. Henry Collins papers, National Anthropological Archives. ASC Newsletter 51 ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND YUPIK SKIN BOAT ARRIVES AT THE SMITHSONIAN By Igor Krupnik The remarkable story of an old St. Lawrence Island Yupik skin boat (Yupik angyaq, angyapik) and its journey from the island to a long-term stay in Oregon and finally to the NMNH ethnology collection storage at the Museum Support Center (MSC) in Suitland, MD took more than 55 years. Yet for us at the ASC this story began in early February 2017 with a short e-mail from Anthropology Department chair, Torrey Rick who had received a message from Jon Erlandson, archaeologist and director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH) at the University of Oregon. The museum had in its collections a skin boat (‘umiak’) from St. Lawrence Island “reportedly from the 1950s.” In the absence of a large enough collections space at the University of Oregon, it had been kept in temporary storage with the Oregon Historical Society in Portland OR, and, since the space agreement was expiring, the MNCH was looking for a new permanent home for the boat. They had approached, unsuccessfully, several museums on the West Coast and in Alaska (including the Anchorage Museum and the Katirvik Cultural Center in Nome), and were now inquiring whether the Smithsonian might be interested to take it. This was an unbelievably generous offer. The Smithsonian Natural History Museum has a large collection of indigenous Arctic watercraft made of almost two dozen smaller skin boats, kayaks, from Alaska and Labrador, but just one collapsed frame of larger open skin boat known by its Inupiaq/Inuktitut name, umiak. According to my colleague, Stephen Loring, the lack of a large open skin umiak at the Smithsonian is a striking lacuna brought about in part by the difficulty in transportation and logistics, but also because of its decline in use across much of the Arctic during the late 19th-century as wooden manufactured whaleboats began to replace the traditional watercraft. Only in portions of Alaska and Greenland did the large skin umiaks survive well into the 20th century. St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea and some Russian indigenous communities on the opposite side of Bering Strait were a few places where the use of large Yupik angyapiget (plural) have been documented until the very end of the 20th century. In the 1970s and 1980s, I travelled in these boats on the Russian side when they were still in active use. It looked as if we might have a chance to expand our collection, although the boat itself was still almost 3,000 miles away. The Boat’s History Our first call was to colleagues in Oregon with a simple question: “Does your boat have an intact frame and cover? From my past work in Chukotka, I knew that the wooden frames could last several decades if its broken or weakened parts were replaced. The skin covers, on the other hand, are made of split hides of female walruses and have a life-span of only 2–3 years before needing replacement, always a long and cumbersome operation. No skin cover could survive more than four years; in the old days, the old and stretched boat covers were re-used as flooring or roof covers in Native dwellings. The response from Pam Endzweig, Director of Collections of MNCH, was promising: the boat had an intact cover, in excellent shape, with its outer side painted white by the original owners for better preservation. Pam also sent some photos. It was readily apparent that we were indeed dealing with a true cultural treasure! My next step was to write Dr. Stephen R. Braund, an anthropologist in Anchorage, who authored the book, "The Skin Boats of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska" (1988), the most authoritative source on the subject. Braund responded immediately: “That boat and especially the skin are in very good condition... A very nice, well maintained angyapik… This is an opportunity for the Smithsonian to capture a unique episode in indigenous watercraft development…which will likely, over time due to non-use, disappear.” Russian Yupik hunters carry a skin boat, angyapik to the surf area for launch. Photo: Nikolai Perov, 1980, Sireniki (published in Bogoslovskaya et al. 2007) 52 ASC Newsletter From our colleagues in Oregon and through further search we learned the story of the boat. It was originally collected by Paul H. Jensen, a retired professor at Western Oregon University and a collector, who travelled to Alaska and St. Lawrence Island several times in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1985, he organized the Paul Jensen Arctic Museum in Monmouth, OR, containing more than 3,000 objects from his personal Alaskan collection. A special feature of the Jensen Museum was a 27-foot (8.2 m) Alaskan umiak, a boat with a wooden frame and covered with walrus skins. Jensen acquired the boat so he could take part in “a native hunt” around the entire island. Jensen passed away in 1994 and, almost 20 years later, his museum closed and its collections, including the boat, were transferred to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon. While at the Jensen Museum, the boat was prominently displayed and was cared for by museum curator Roben Jack Itchoak, who had grown up in Nome, Alaska. A more detailed story of the boat was presented in a short self-published memoir by Arlene Jensen, Paul Jensen’s wife: “Adventures of a Collector: The Jensen Arctic Museum” (1995). Arlene Jensen notes that when her husband began visiting St. Lawrence Island in the 1960s, he expressed a desire to travel around the island in a Yupik boat. He began by purchasing an old wooden boat frame that had been equipped with a well for an outboard motor. He commissioned two Gambell women to split two new walrus hides from a recent kill and to sew them into a boat cover. He loaded the boat with food, tents, ammunition, and hired a local boat crew led by John Apangalook. At some point during their journey from Gambell, they stopped at the Air National Guard Station at the Northeast Cape, where Paul befriended a local military commander. That meeting later resulted in an offer to fly the boat to Oregon. (It is unclear when this was accomplished.) Once in Oregon, the boat was first kept in a warehouse of the Corvallis School District, and then at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, and finally, years later, it was transferred to the Paul Jensen Arctic Museum, where it became the object “most dear to his heart,” until his death. The booklet even features a photo of the boat being pushed into the water by scores of Yupik young men and boys–exactly the way I watched it being done so many times in Chukotka. This story confirmed many pieces of information and added some new ones. The boat was clearly old–its frame was considered “old” already in the 1960s, though its design was aimed for the installation of the outboard motor in the central well, that is, after the 1920s. The skin cover was from the early 1960s; at 55+ years of age, it may be the oldest intact walrus-hide cover in any collection. It had travelled around St. Lawrence Island with a crew led by the well-known John Apangalook (1911–1978), a Yupik teacher at local school, Gambell postmaster and storekeeper, and the head of a prominent island family that included four sons (see Paul Apangalook, this NSL) and two daughters. John Apangalook was also a junior brother of Paul Silook (1892–1948), who had been a partner to two Smithsonian researchers, Riley Moore in 1912 and Henry B. Collins in 1928–1930 (see this NSL.) If anything, the fact that the boat was once steered by Apangalook made it even more desirable to us as a symbol of the century-old connection. It also offered a window to learn more of its history from Apangalook’s descendants living in Gambell. Bringing the Boat East In March 2017, I submitted a memo to the NMNH administration (director Kirk Johnson and assistant director for collections, Carol Butler) arguing for the addition of the Yupik angyapik to the museum’s Anthropology collection. That request was supported by Torrey Rick, Anthropology Department chair, and Bill Fitzhugh, the ASC director. The Director’s office and the ASC eventually split the costs for transporting the boat from Oregon. Our share came from the Ernest ‘Tiger’ Burch Endowment funds, another example of how the Burch Endowment support has helped propel our programs. We also enjoyed generous assistance of the Anthropology collection manager, Dave Rosenthal and our new registrar, Allison Butler. The request to find space for the boat in the Museum Support Center (MSC) in Suitland, MD was eventually granted. Skin boat in the storage area of the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, after its move from the Jensen Arctic Museum, 2014. Photo courtesy Pam Endzweig ASC Newsletter 53 Bringing a bulky, fragile skin boat across the continent required complex planning. In the early days of the Smithsonian, Native boats, totem poles, and large statues were routinely loaded onto steamers and into rail cars and shipped over long distances, with little if any concern about climate control and condition reports. Today, a 27-ft 55-year old skin boat could not be put on a rental truck and just carted 3,000 miles. As the final decision and paperwork dragged on, summer was approaching and with it would come scorching 100+° heat across most of the route. We could not risk subjecting the boat to the elements; we wanted it intact and safe. After several bids solicited by Dave Rosenthal, we settled on U.S. Art, a renowned fine art handling and moving company with over 60 years of experience. At every step, we consulted with, and were assisted by, our partners in Oregon–Pam Endzweig and Roben Itchoak at the UOregon MNCH, and Nicole Yasuhara, collection manager, and Lisa Noah, chief operation officer at the Oregon Historical Society. As negotiations on the logistics continued throughout the summer, an unexpected factor emerged, the full solar eclipse of August 21. Though Portland itself was north of the total eclipse path across northern Oregon, huge crowds were expected to converge on Portland, creating massive traffic jams, so the move was rescheduled for early September. Stephen Loring travelled to Portland to inspect the boat and help prepare it for the trip East. He was accompanied by Claudine Scoville, former head registrar at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. She documented the boat as remarkably stable in her condition report and gave it a clean bill of health for its final trip. On September 5, a dozen volunteers summoned by the University of Oregon and the Oregon Historical Society carefully loaded the boat into a climate-conditioned truck supplied by the U.S. Art. Two professional drivers were to drive it in less than 50 hours to Suitland, Maryland. Whereas loading went without a hitch, the departure was delayed because of the massive wild fires in the hills around Portland that clogged Interstate 84 and blanketed the area with smoke and ash. The truck finally departed using a route that safely by-passed the fire zone. To the boat’s encounter with water, ice, air, and eclipse, were added fire and smoke (Pam Endzweig). On the morning of September 8, the truck arrived at the MSC loading dock. I had asked Bill Fitzhugh to bring his Yupik drum, so I greeted the boat with a song to make it comfortable in its new home. Unpacking processed smoothly, and in less than two hours the boat was resting at home in special ‘bubble-wrap’ storage, there for 30 days before further conservation inspection and, later, a shift to the Anthropology storage space. The boat finally reached its new ‘dock’ in Pod 4, where it would live next to the Alaskan kayaks, Canadian birch-bark canoes, and other Native watercraft from around the world. Returning to Gambell, October 2017 In May 2017, as we were negotiating the boat’s delivery, Stephen Braund shared his impressions after visiting two St. Lawrence Island villages, Gambell and Savoonga. “I walked the beaches and boat storage areas in both communities,” he wrote to me, “and I believe more firmly than before that the Smithsonian is making a wise decision… Neither Gambell nor Savoonga have used skin boats for several years, and although there are boat frames on racks, several are succumbing to the elements … There are a few boats in Gambell that appear to have their walrus skins on (I saw three), but two are covered by a synthetic material over the walrus hide. I did not inspect the third one that closely. Hunters reported that they have had difficulty for several years harvesting female walrus skins of the right size and quality to cover their skin boat frames…To me, the future of split-walrus, skin boat usage on Saint Lawrence Island is unknown, making it all the more important for the Smithsonian It’s finally here! The angyapik being unloaded at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center in September 2017. Anthropology collection manager, Dave Rosenthal is in the right 54 ASC Newsletter to acquire the boat from Oregon. This is a timely acquisition to capture a unique Bering Strait watercraft, and an opportunity that may not present itself in the future.” This was a powerful call for action. During my two visits to St. Lawrence Island in 2017, I also had a chance to examine the boats stored on wooden storage racks on the beach at both villages. In Savoonga, the wooden frames were numerous, but none had skin covers, and local hunters said they stopped hunting in skin boats a few years ago. Nonetheless, some people expressed a desire to prepare new covers, at least for the educational purpose, so that their grandchildren might have the pleasure of traveling in a skin boat. In Gambell, more than two dozen intact wooden boat frames are stored on the beach, and some also near people’s houses in town. Several more broken and disintegrating frames litter the beach area. Only a few boats preserve pieces of their old skin cover, also painted in white to protect the skin exterior from the elements. I found a couple of the boat frames covered in synthetic material mentioned by Braund; none looked as though they were ready for sea. No skin boat, reportedly, had sailed in Gambell for the past five years, as all hunting is now conducted with aluminum boats and high-powdered motors. As in Savoonga, many people lamented the loss of skin boats and expressed their wish that someone might yet cover his boat with a new skin so that Yupik youth could see a ‘real boat’ in use. The last skin-covered boat, a small 22- ft version was built by Leonard Apangalook Sr., John Apangalook’s eldest son, for the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage after he moved there from Gambell in 2008. That boat now sits on the floor inside the building, so its cover may last. While in Gambell, I also talked to senior hunters, including John Apangalook’s other son, Preston Apangalook and son-in-law, Anders Apassingok. Everyone remembered Paul Jensen and his many visits to Gambell in the 1960s; surprisingly, nobody could recall participating in a trip with Jensen and John Apangalook around St. Lawrence Island, including Preston and Anders, who were in Apangalook’s hunting crew at that time, being 18 and 32 years of age, respectively. Both denied any chance that Apangalook could have sold to Jensen his own hunting boat, since good frames were highly prized and well cared for and could live through many skin replacements. The boats were often colored with white paint on the outside so that they would look like ‘pieces of ice’ on the water. One former hunter called the Yupik system extremely wise, as skin covers were “bio-degradable” and they were left to the elements after three years of service–unlike the aluminum boats of today. Many people were truly surprised that the Smithsonian received a 55-year boat with an intact skin cover and claimed that they never heard of hides surviving that long. I collected numerous stories of individual boats (frames), including who built them, when, for whom, and how long they served. Each frame’s story is well remembered; most frames are of the same size as Left: A wooden boat frame with the remains of disintegrated skin cover on the beach in Gambell. October 2017 Right: Boat frames without covers on storage racks in Savoonga. February 2017 ASC Newsletter 55 our boat, 26–27-foot long, though some were slightly larger, up to 28, even 30 ft. The emerging consensus was that John Apangalook purchased someone else’s old frame using Jensen’s money and then commissioned local women to prepare a new skin cover. Months later, I realized that the boat crew for Jensen’s trip was perhaps made of Gambell schoolboys (based on Apangalook’s position as a teacher at school and one photo in Arlene Jensen’s booklet). So I was perhaps asking the wrong people if they remembered that trip. From several interviews and conversations, it was clear that the skin boat building tradition is fully alive on St. Lawrence Island, even if no boats are on the water and no skin covers have been made in the past 5-8 years. We can learn (and document!) invaluable information about boat construction, boat use, selection of wood and hides, patterns of inheritance, social and spiritual rules associated with the possession and transmission of the boats, and much more, by using ‘our’ boat as a study piece. Therefore, we hope that the angyapik’s journey will continue, even if the boat itself remains safely in MSC storage. Our next step is to organize a ‘reunion’ between the boat and its builders, perhaps by inviting Preston Apangalook to visit the Smithsonian to examine the boat that his late father once steered for Paul Jensen around St. Lawrence Island. We express our warmest gratitude to all the people who helped make the boat journey “across North America” possible: Pam Endzweig, Jon Erlandson, Elizabeth Kallenbach, and Roben Itchoak at the University of Oregon; Nicole Yasuhara, Lisa Noah, and Janet Wisdom at the Oregon Historical Society; Torrey Rick, Dave Rosenthal, Carol Butler, Allison Butler, Kirk Johnson at NMNH; J.R. Smith and the Collections Support Services staff at the Museum Support Center; Stephen Braund in Anchorage; Claudine Scoville; Phyllis Cottrell and the two truck drivers from U.S. Art Co, who delivered it to the East Coast despite all odds. Pam Endzweig, Bill Fitzhugh, Stephen Loring, and Dave Rosenthal offered useful details to this record of the boat’s remarkable story. Thank you ALL! THE GENERAL THOMAS GAGE BIRCH- BARK CANOE AT FIRLE, U.K. By Stephen Loring On ancient North American birch- bark canoes discovered in England In the fall of 2010 a remarkable discovery was made public: in a barn on the Enys estate in Cornwall, UK, was found preserved the remains of a six-meter long birch-bark canoe that appears to have been brought to England by Lieutenant John Enys (1757-1818) from Quebec in 1788 (or perhaps earlier). Enys had a distinguished military career during the American Revolution, seeing action during the siege of Quebec City and later in military campaigns in Quebec, and along Lake Champlain and Lake George. He was back in England in 1782 but returned to Canada in 1784 with his regiment, spending three years in western Ontario and the Great Lakes. The exact provenance of the canoe has yet to be determined but no less an authority than Henri Vaillancourt–who viewed the canoe along with staff from the Peterborough Canoe Museum—thought it might have been made by Malecite or Abenaki–or perhaps by Mohawk or Huron craftsmen. It may have been presented to Enys as a parting gift from his regiment on his return to England. Despite having suffered some egregious damages over the past 235 years (plus or minus), the Enys canoe is one of only a handful of surviving mid-late 18th century birch-bark canoes from North America. The Enys family arranged to have the canoe displayed at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth in 2011 prior to its being “repatriated” to Canada, to the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario where it is now being conserved and curated. Re-discovery of the Enys canoe caught the attention of Lady Diana Beatty, the former wife of Lord Nicolas Gage (the 8th Viscount Gage) who remembered seeing an ancient birch-bark canoe high in the rafters of an out-building at the 5000-acre Gage estate–Firle—near Lewes in the Sussex Downs. Upon reflection, Diana thought that the only logical way a birch-bark canoe might end-up at Firle was through the family’s most significant connection to North America: General Thomas Gage (1758- 1787).) Gage, the 2nd son of the 1st Viscount Gage, was the commander of His Majesty’s Forces in North America from 1763 to 1774, Governor of Montreal, and the military governor of Massachusetts at the outbreak of hostilities in 1775. General Thomas Gage, 1788. Painting by John Singleton Copley. Yale Center for British Art. Photo credit: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. 56 ASC Newsletter Although his military prowess reputedly left something to be desired, he was a brilliant administrator. His military campaigns in Pennsylvania during the French and English War (1754) and in northern New England, Quebec and New York during the Revolution, brought him into contact with Native peoples throughout Lower Canada and the eastern Great Lakes. Gage had amble opportunity to see and use bark canoes. But when, where and how did the birch-bark canoe arrive at Firle? Alas, no family records or traditions pertaining to its history have passed down to the current generation. Diana contacted North Americanists at the British Museum who, in due course, sent out a pair of investigators who spent an hour or so clambering about and photographing it in its eyrie in the shed rafters. No one knows how long the canoe has been resting on the rafters but over the years the hull near the bow and stern gradually slumped over the two supports resulting in indentations in the otherwise smooth expanse of the hull. The lack of any specific provenance data and the fact that the canoe showed evidence of post-construction modifications and repairs, and the fact that it probably shouldn’t be moved except to a proper conservation facility apparently cooled any ardor the British Museum had for its accession. (One can’t help but imagine it would have received a more sustained reception had Jonathan King still been a Keeper at the Museum.) Not to be deterred, and convinced that Gage’s canoe might receive a better reception in its homeland, Diana reached out to the Smithsonian Institution in the spring of 2013. Twenty years ago her inquiry might have been directed to William Sturtevant, one of the premier museum anthropologists of his day with a vast knowledge of New World antiquities in British and European collections and an abiding interest in 18th century material culture. Her inquiry bounced around, eventually landing on the desk of archaeologist Bruce Smith of our Anthropology Department. Bruce’s professional interests were situated for the most-part in the southeastern United States, whose original inhabitants used dug- out log –not bark—canoes, and he was gracious enough to put Diana Beatty in contact with me. The significance of bark canoes in Eastern North America Mobility has always been a key factor in the successful adaptation to the challenging physical constraints facing Arctic and Subarctic boreal forest peoples. The ability to move far and fast to acquire seasonally available fish and game, transport people and resources (including stone for manufacturing tools, trading goods and supplies), and facilitate social interactions between small dispersed populations, was predicated on the development of watercraft during open-water seasons and snowshoes and sleds during frozen months. The origin(s) of bark-canoe construction are lost in antiquity but archaeologists in the Northeast and Maritime Provinces have uncovered evidence of bark- canoe production stretching back at least 2000 years. There is no other aspect of the material culture of northern Algonquin peoples that speaks as eloquently to their lives, skills and knowledge sets as do their bark canoes. Practical and easy-to-repair bark canoes were always of the moment; their longevity was more a matter of the knowledge of how to construct them—passed down from generation to generation— than to conserve them. Fragile and almost ethereal, few have withstood the test of time. Only a very few early 19th century bark canoes have survived: a Penobscot canoe made in 1826 at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem and the Grandfather Akwiten, a Maliseet canoe from New Brunswick built in 1824 that is in the collections of the National University of Ireland in Galway. In addition to the Enys canoe now at the Peterborough Canoe Museum, I know of only one other late-18th century bark canoe still extant: an old Penobscot(?) canoe at the Pejepscot Museum and Research Center in Brunswick, Maine. Clearly, the Gates canoe, perhaps the oldest extant birch bark canoe known, is in very select company. I had the opportunity to meet Diana Beatty during a trip she made to Washington in the spring of 2013. Over lunch we discussed the history of North American bark- canoes, their construction details and their regional functional and stylistic variation. We talked about potential conservation needs and the boat’s history The Thomas Gage canoe in the farm shed at Firle. View of the bottom of the canoe with the bow to the right. The canvas repair job to the bow is visible to the right. Photo by M. Schuyler Litten ASC Newsletter 57 and significance. Quite entranced by the prospects of documenting such a remarkable and unique 18th century bark canoe, I accepted Diana’s invitation to be her guest at Firle to examine the Gage canoe. Several years passed, and it was not until January, 2018, that I finally found time to accept her invitation. A visit to Firle On a cold, but bright January day we made our way to Lewes to rendezvous with Diana Beatty and her son Henry William Gage, who brought us out to Firle, an extraordinary English country house that has been the seat of the Gage family for over 500 years. I was accompanied by Claudine Scoville, the former head registrar at the Peabody Essex Museum, and later by M. Schuyler Litten, a.k.a. Skye, a former research assistant with the Arctic Studies Center currently enrolled in the museum studies program at Newcastle University in northern England. Together we hoped to systematically photograph and document the Gage canoe and assess its conservation needs. But first we were treated to an introductory tour of the great house and some of its incredible treasures, an experience of a lifetime. As might be expected, the bedroom featured an enormous canopied bed that looked out over the estate grounds. As I drifted off to sleep, I couldn’t but help reflect on the irony and the strange twists of fate that a boy from Concord, Massachusetts, might be a guest in the house where the General who commanded the British troops that attacked Concord and Lexington in 1775 was born. The Gage Canoe The next morning we were all eager to make a close inspection of the canoe. It had, for long, resided under the eaves of an open shed on the Firle estate. Placed against a brick and flint wall high up in under the rafters, it was protected from direct exposure to sun and rain but not from humidity (which had caused some ribs to warp) and from plaster dust. But all things considered, it appeared to be in remarkably good shape. While Claudine prepared a detailed condition report using an innovative program developed by Articheck (that enables one to transcribe notes directly on to photographs taken with a tablet), Skye and I—perched on ladders and rafters took detailed measurements and photographs. The canoe was relatively small, being 11’9” long and 42” wide in the center where it was 15” deep. It’s construction consisted of 27 ribs placed on top of long-thin planks that ran the length of the canoe. The ribs were attached to the gunwales with what appeared to be spruce-root lashings. The gores made in the birch-bark sheet, so that it could conform to the intended shape of the canoe, were sewn up with spruce-root lashing and covered with spruce gum to prevent any leaks. The canoe originally had neither seats nor thwarts but sometime after it’s arrival in England a wooden strip had been nailed on top of the original gunwale from which an iron bar had been attached at the canoe’s midpoint so that (I surmise) it might be suspended for display. The attachment of gunwale strips was not the only post-construction modification of the canoe. Sometime in its history—I suspect when it was originally shipped from Canada or America—both the bow and stern had been crushed and subsequently expertly repaired with canvas and tacks. Also, sometime in the more recent past, someone had a wooden seat and back-rest and some floor boards mounted in the canoe, a distraction to be sure, from the integrity of the old vessel. Firle, the ancestral home of the Gage family near Lewes in Sussex. Photo: http://www.countrylife.co.uk The farm shed on the Firle estate where the Gage canoe was stored. Photo: Stephen Loring 58 ASC Newsletter Adrienne Beatty, daughter of David Field Beatty, 2nd Earl Beatty and her son Hon. Henry Gage. After spending the night in the beautiful Firle Place, we headed out to the barn where we found the birch bark canoe high in the rafters. We spent the next few hours photographing and taking measurements while perched precariously on ladders. The boat appears to be too small to have been a typical Indian canoe, and it has had extensive repairs and additions. According to family stories, the canoe may have been used by generations of Gage family children to paddle around their artificial lake. This could account for the damage to the bow and stern which had been repaired with canvas. An additional thwart and back rest had been added for comfort of an elderly paddler. Dr. Loring is researching the canoe by comparing it to other bark canoes in North American museums and to archival materials pertaining to bark canoes and to Gage family history. One theory is that it was built as a scaled-down souvenir vessel, perhaps as a gift, and had never been used as a full-size working Native American canoe. Hopefully, Stephen’s work in the collections and archives will contribute to resolving something of the mystery and provide answers about this fascinating family heirloom! We thank both Lady Diana Betty and the Hon. Henry Gage for their hospitality and kindness during our visit. It was an incredible experience we will never forget! Gage canoe assessment team—mission accomplished! Left- to-right: the very cold Diana Beatty, Stephen Loring, Henry Gage, Skye Litten, missing is Claudine Scoville who is taking the picture There is little doubt that the Gage canoe is a remarkable artifact of considerable historical significance. While the damage, and the repairs, it has sustained somewhat compromises it’s integrity as an ethnographic specimen it is hoped that when it is professionally cleaned and conserved that perhaps some of it’s secrets may be revealed. The papers of General Thomas Gage are curated at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, and may hold clues or references to the canoe’s origins. Given the paucity of canoes of it’s vintage the Gage canoe warrants considerable attention. Hopefully, in the near future, it will be possible to secure conservation funds that will enable the canoe to be moved to a more hospitable situation and serve as a catalyst for more intensive research. We remain extremely appreciative of the many courtesies shown to our research team by Diana Beatty and Henry Gates and for their profound enthusiasm. Hopefully this is an exciting contribution to the study of indigenous North American watercraft. FIRLE PLACE: VISITING AN INDIAN CANOE IN BRITISH RAFTERS By M. Schuyler Litten The Gage family was faced with this strange problem. Bark and skin boats were some of the earliest types of boats ever made. Due to the family’s history, the question arose as to the origin and date of this peculiar family heirloom. Sir Thomas Gage served as commander in chief of the British Forces in North America between 1763-1773. Dr. Stephen Loring was asked by the family to do an assessment of the canoe in order to determine its origin and possible date of creation. I was lucky enough to join him on this project! Firle Place is the stunning ancestral seat of the Viscounts Gage located in the center of the South Downs National Park in East Sussex. The house has stayed in the family for the last 500 years, which has allowed the family to house its treasures all in one place. Driving onto the estate, we took a winding path through the town of Lewes and Firle. Upon entering the estate grounds, the full beauty of the English countryside unfolded before us. The high flint walls of the out buildings were a dark blue gray, reflecting the evening sun. Turning a corner, the house rose up suddenly from behind a small group of trees, its big windows glowing with light. Pulling around to the back of the house we were greeted by the friendly housekeeper and a large assortment of affectionate dogs. Moving into the main part of the house, we were greeted by the charming and vivacious Lady Diana ASC Newsletter 59 CAPTAIN GEORGE COMER AND THE INUIT OF HUDSON BAY EXHIBIT PREVIEW By Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad Opening on May 3, 2018 the Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C. will host the exhibition, Captain George Comer and the Inuit of Hudson Bay, through July 2018. Organized by Mystic Seaport Museum’s Senior Curator, the exhibit highlights the career of the New England whaling master, George Comer, and his interaction with Inuit at the whaling harbor of Qatiktalik (Cape Fullerton), located between the modern-day settlements of Naujaa (Repulse Bay) and Chesterfield Inlet (Igluligaarjuk), Nunavut. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, the presence of American and Scottish whaling ships in Hudson Bay drew Inuit hunting families to the region to work and trade. George Comer (1858-1937) of East Haddam, CT made his first whaling voyage on the Nile under Captain John O. Spicer, supplying American whaling stations at Cumberland Sound and Hudson Strait. After several years in the Antarctic sealing industry, Comer returned North, joining Captain Spicer’s crew on the schooner, Era. A successful season of rendering whale oil and gathering baleen brought a lucrative profit to New England whaling firms. With the whalers’ relentless pursuit, whale populations rapidly declined, so that by the late 19th century, crews began to overwinter to extend the hunting season in search of a more elusive prey. As Dorothy Eber recounts in the oral history memoir, When the Whalers Were Up North: Inuit Memories from the Eastern Arctic (1989), the practice of overwintering brought whaling crews into closer contact with Inuit families. Actively recruited by American and Scottish captains, hunters joined the whale hunt, proving far more successful than the often novice European crews of the time. In addition to whaling, Inuit hunters supplied fresh meat and fish (crucial for preventing scurvy) and augmented the ship’s income by trading furs. Women’s sewing skills were in high demand, producing fur clothing and sealskin kamiks for ill-clothed crew members and no doubt compromising women’s ability to provide more fully for the clothing needs of their families. Following Captain Spicer’s retirement, Comer assumed command of the Era, owned by the New Bedford whaling firm, Tom Luce & Sons. The Captain made five voyages to Hudson Bay before the Era went aground near the island of Petite Miquelon, off the coast of Newfoundland, while northbound in 1906. Throughout his career, Comer demonstrated a propensity for collecting, solidifying a collegial relationship with Franz Boas at the American Museum of Natural History that was invaluable for both. Comer’s fieldwork at Qatiktalik provided primary research for Boas’ two-volume publication, Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay (1901, 1907) and while museum payments provided a welcome income for the whaling captain, the recognition of his fieldwork efforts by museum curators was its own reward. The exhibit display of journals, photographs, camera, tripod, and graphophone—recording equipment pioneered by Alexander Graham Bell—focuses on Captain Comer’s dedication in documenting a textual, visual, and audio history of Inuit life in Hudson Bay. His work resulted in a major collection of photographs, journals, and artifacts for the Mystic Seaport Museum, a donation from the Comer family. Comer also assembled an unrivalled ethnographic representation of Inuit cultural history from the Kivalliq region of Nunavut at the American Museum of Natural History—over 2,200 artifacts collected by George Comer are registered on the Museum’s database (https://anthro.amnh.org/collections). Along with Frozen In: Captain Comer and the Inuit of Hudson Bay, the first exhibit to explore the Captain’s multi-faceted career (presented at Mystic Seaport Museum in 2008), the Embassy exhibit brings the whaling era into sharp focus in a deeply personal OUTREACH Comer photograph of Aivilik Inuit women 60 ASC Newsletter way. The Captain’s journals record close personal relationships with Inuit partners, particularly the Aivilingmiut camp leader, Tassiuq (Harry) and his wife, Tulugak (called “Pouty” by the whalers). His references to the skilled assistance of Inuit crew leaders, known by their whaling names, Gilbert, Paul, Ben, Sam, and Santa Anna, are recorded in his published 1903-1905 journal (W. G. Ross, ed. Arctic Whaling Diary: The Journal of Captain George Comer in Hudson Bay, 1903-1905). Through photography, Comer reveals a keen interest in Inuit social life, cultural practices, and the lives of individuals. The men, women, and children appearing in his photographs are seldom anonymous but are carefully identified by name (albeit often a whaling nickname). In addition to photographs and journal excerpts, the exhibit includes a selection of ivory cribbage boards, women’s combs, and carvings, some created by Tassiuq, from the Mystic Seaport collection, providing valuable insights into the historical foundation of contemporary Inuit art (https://www.historymuseum. ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/art_inuit/inart26e.shtml). A photo-portrait of Qingailisaq, the celebrated angakkuq from Igloolik dressed in his striking shamanistic vestments, is featured in the exhibit together with individual and group photographs of women wearing elaborately beaded parkas, illustrating the artistic tradition of Inuit women’s fashion design which continues to this day. An exquisite beaded belt from the Comer Family collection, created as a parting gift for the Captain by Siusarnaq (known also as Nivitsanaq or Shoofly) is a highlight of the exhibit. The desire to locate Siusarnaq’s beaded parka culminated in a landmark visit to the American Museum of Natural History by grand-daughter, Rhoda Karetak, and Bernadette Dean, laying the groundwork for the subsequent study visit by Inuit Elders and community scholars to review collections of Inuit cultural history in several North American museums – a visit documented in the film Inuit Piqutingit: What Belongs to Inuit (www.isuma.tv/ isuma-productions/inuit-piqutingit), co-produced by Zacharias Kunuk and Bernadette Dean. Plaster facial casts, intimate portraits of individuals, including Tassiuq (Harry), his wife, Tulugak, and the crew leader, Tuugaaq (Gilbert), represent a small segment of the extraordinary collection of facial and hand casts (over 300) produced by Captain Comer during his winters at Qatiktalik. Made at the initial request of Franz Boas, the majority of these casts are in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History; those included in the exhibit, on loan from the Canadian Museum of History, are part of a collection purchased by Edward Sapir, the founding director of the National Museum of Man (Ottawa), in 1913. At the Museum’s request, Bernadette Miqqusaaq Dean of the Kivalliq Inuit Association worked with Mystic Seaport Museum to identify descendants of those portrayed for permission to include the portrait images in the exhibit. A symposium accompanying the exhibit opening, moderated by Smithsonian curator, Stephen Loring, will include presentations by the curator, Fred Calabretta, and invited guests from Nunavu,, including Bernadette Miqqusaaq Dean, speaking on the Captain’s whaling career, the impact of the whaling era on Inuit life in Hudson Bay, and current issues and challenges facing Nunavut. A SWEET SAGA: BUILDING A CHOCOLATE VIKING SHIP By Eric Hollinger and Chelsi Slotten For the 2017 annual Anthropology Christmas holiday gathering I decided to make a chocolate Viking ship. This was the 14th year I’ve made a giant confectionary creation with an anthropological theme, and I was itching to try an Arctic subject. Coworkers encouraged me to recreate a Viking ship burial with flaming arrows at the end to make a funeral flambé, but museum safety policies against open flames quickly put that notion to rest. Nevertheless, the idea of creating a Viking ship made entirely out of chocolate, cake, candy, or other sweets (my self-imposed rule), was intriguing. I began researching on the internet and borrowed books from Bill Fitzhugh’s Viking library. These provided a bounty of images of ships, sleds, houses, tools and other items, which stirred the creative juices. Much of what is known about Viking Age material culture comes from ship burials containing the remains of Viking chieftains along with a wide array of funerary offerings. Among the most famous is Norway’s Oseberg ship burial dating to A.D. 834, famous for its exceptional preservation that included a fine ship built around 820 A.D., skeletal remains of Queen Osa and a female attendant, and a wealth of artifacts including small boats, a funerary cart, sleighs, animals, beds, and textiles. I decided to base the design of my chocolate ship on the Oseberg find. After closely studying the shape of the original ship I poured two pans of melted milk chocolate into an aluminum foil pan bent to the rough shape of the hull. When the chocolate cooled, I carved away the excess to give it a smooth form. The same was done for the bow and stern—pouring and carving and then pouring and carving again. Even the ornate ASC Newsletter 61 spiraling serpent heads on the bow and stern, carved by a master craftsman, were poured in chocolate and carved. The deck planks were made from thin Kit Kat bar wafers. The mast was made of two long pretzels covered with chocolate. Sixteen oars and a steering board were made of Pocky sticks with chocolate added to the ends. A sail, made of fondant, was furled because the ship, totaling 30 inches in length, was going to be shown as docked. Rather than depict the ship as it appeared when excavated, I elected to recreate it as it might have looked when still in use. To set the scene I placed it in a sea of blue Jell-O, alongside a dock made of pretzel logs, attached to a beach of brown sugar and an icing path leading to a Viking lodge on a hill. Reconstructions of settlements from Birka, L’Anse aux Meadows, and Hedeby appear remarkably similar to the confectionary version, although ours probably tastes better! The lodge was made of four layers of chocolate cake, faced with pretzels and cookies, and roofed with graham crackers shingled with cinnamon grahams cereal. The process of making such archaeological confections requires learning about the sites and their cultures. Oseberg is an excellent example. Its burial mound was one of three major ship burials discovered between 1867 and 1904 in Vestfold, south of Oslo. The Oseberg, Tune, and Gokstad ships provide evidence of a grand ship-building and mortuary tradition. These graves are evidence of a wealthy elite who could afford to remove vessels and valuable materials from circulation. The construction of a Viking ship would have taken months and a large quantity of natural resources, so the decision to bury it speaks to the social importance of the interred. Other interred items, such as remnants of silk textiles that likely originated in Central Asia, indicate far-reaching trade networks and details about clothing styles. The placement of decorative elements on the Oseberg ship are also revealing. The carvings extend below the waterline, suggesting the ship was constructed specifically for the afterlife, not for earthly use. These ships, in particular the incredibly well preserved Oseberg ship, have also been used to reconstruct ship-building techniques from the Viking Age. Our understanding of how these vessels were structured is constantly changing. In the last thirty years two full sized Oseberg reconstructions have been undertaken by researchers and craftsmen to examine how it would have sailed before it was interred. The original 1904 reconstruction utilized around 95% of the original wood. Unfortunately, the ship had been broken by the weight of the mound over 1,000 years so the wood was fragmented and deformed. When a replica was made in the 1980s it was discovered that the reconstructed ship would not have performed well on water. However, by making small changes to the hull shape, a very seaworthy vessel resulted. By this means, researchers discovered that the original reconstruction had been slightly incorrect due to the crushed original find. In order to create this delicious replica, I had to be aware of how the different pieces fit together and what the best edible materials would be. Part of the fun of these creations is the challenge of making something from edibles when you’re not quite sure it can be done. You have to visualize what the creation should look like and then figure out what treats look like its parts or can be shaped to complete the final product. Eric Hollinger's Christmas 2017 chocolate Viking trade ship, crafted to perfection. 62 ASC Newsletter FROM ONE POLE TO THE OTHER: AN INTERN’S SUMMER INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCTIC By Rebekah Albach Perhaps the most appropriate way to describe my journey to the Smithsonian for the summer of 2017 is this: the Antarctic picked me, and then I picked the Arctic. While still in high school in Austin, TX, I interned in a geophysics lab at the University of Texas where the day-to-day work was interpreting ice penetrating radar data from Antarctica. Ice sheets are layered, and these layers extend for thousands of kilometers, and I followed them with my dutiful line-drawing mouse for much of that distance. After three years, I was done and ready to tackle a new part of the world. During my first year at Wellesley College I only had a couple of geoscience courses under my belt when I began searching for summer internships. I scoured the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program website and found, beneath the Ocean Sciences category (of all places) the Natural History Research Experience (NHRE) program. The Internet revealed that the NNHM also held the Arctic Studies Center, and, in my Wellesley dormitory, I theorized that one pole couldn’t be all that different from the other. I was wrong, but I am not opposed to being wrong. Thankfully, Dr. Igor Krupnik agreed to mentor me for the summer. We talked on the phone a few times before I arrived. Each time I walked away with a new list of readings, a trend that did not cease when I arrived at the museum, apart from the list becoming a physical piling of books on my desk. I had much to learn about the Arctic, and I still do. The Antarctic is a complicated system of ice sheets, subglacial lakes, and ice shelves. The Arctic has sea ice, permafrost, forests, tundra, whole ecosystems of creatures like caribou and walrus, and, most importantly, a significant and culturally rich population of indigenous peoples. My project was to help with the update of a 2006 ASC RESEARCH ASSOCIATES, FELLOWS AND INTERNS exhibit, “Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely,” that was created when I was barely eight years of age. Changes in the Arctic have been significant since 2006, and I was fortunate to have a wealth of new publications to sink into during my time at the Smithsonian. Often, while researching topics like coastal erosion or rain-on-snow events, I referred to the experience as falling down a rabbit hole (although it may be more appropriate to say “falling into a polynya”). I borrowed Igor’s tendency to print everything and had pleasing piles of papers to read on my desk. By the end of my 10-week internship, I completed a document containing suggestions for changes to the exhibit. In addition, I prepared a poster that I presented alongside the other NHRE interns at the final symposium. The scope of research in the Arctic is so broad that I found myself having to switch gears frequently between geoscientist and anthropologist, a role I was new to but am increasingly interested in. When I applied to this internship, I stressed that I wanted to learn how people are involved with and affected by climate change. Since coming here I have learned how indigenous people in the Arctic observe and have their own rich terminology for the world around them. I was lucky enough to attend a conference at the Wilson Center, in cooperation with the Arctic Circle, called “The United States and Russia in the Arctic.” Igor referred to my two days of rapt-note-taking an “intellectual ball.” Following the conference, and after an entire summer of sitting in the Arctic Studies office, I have come to realize how dynamic, diverse, and complicated a region the Arctic is. Looking to the future, I plan to take more social science classes at Wellesley. I think that by incorporating social science into my study of geoscience I can understand and help more of the world. As long as my Texan genes don’t kick in after a few more Boston winters (nothing compared to the Arctic, I know!) I would like to continue studying the poles and someday visit them. I would be remiss if I did not mention the kind community that is the Arctic Studies Center, and, indeed, the entire museum. Nancy Shorey welcomed me into the book-filled office with open arms while Igor was away. Skye Litten took pictures of Zack Youcha, another summer intern of 2017, and I as we rode the National Mall Carousel, and the both of them contributed to office merriment on the whole. The three of us journeyed to the Museum Support Center with Stephen Loring for a day of looking – opening cabinets in the cultural anthropology collections and enjoying the baskets, masks, and fans, amongst other things. I am thankful for the advice and company of everyone in the Arctic Studies Center, and hope to enjoy more charming office parties at some point in the future. ASC Newsletter 63 AFTER 68 YEARS MC BRIDES' RETURN TO HOKKAIDO, JAPAN By Michael McBride The long reach of the Smithsonian Exhibits and publications is well known and reaches not only across international boundaries, but across family generations as well. Inspired by the exhibit “Kamui – Spirit of the Ainu” (the indigenous people of Japan and its northern islands) dysplayed at the American Museum of Natural History, my 15-year-old granddaughter and I began our “mini-expedition” from a roadless estuary we call home in Alaska to a similar area, Lake Akan in the mountains of eastern Hokkaido Japan. As a child growing up in Japan in the l950s, my thoughtful mother put me in contact with these good people and those impressions linger still. In late May of 2017, pushing away from the shore in a sea kayak, we headed across Kachemak Bay to Homer Alaska for a distant and unknown destination. Like other expeditions across history, this transition from shore to sea and back to land was just like the Ainu had done for centuries as they crossed ocean passages between their far-flung islands. In our case, we must launch from the shore by small sea-kayak to reach our boat which lives on an offshore mooring. In our part of the world the tide rises and falls 20 vertical feet in 6 hours. Our small craft was not so unlike the ones used by the Ainu “people-of-the-bear”, whose sea-centric culture held sway for centuries over much of Japan and the Kurile and Sakhalin Islands just to the north. Indeed, our cliff-side front yard is regularly crossed by bears and our home is surrounded by long- abandoned semi-subterranean dwellings not unlike the reconstructed Ainu homes we would find in Hokkaido. The trip was for me, a reconnection with a people I had not seen since my youth and for my grand-daughter, an educational reach across a vast ocean, across cultures and language. My parents in the l940s realized and passed to me, the value that can be added to good education with travel to distant lands and one-on-one interaction with cultures different from our own. As the first Alaskan elected to the Smithsonian National Board, I compared our adventure to a visit some make to the Institution on the Mall. I considered the countless thousands of grandparents and parents over the decades, who have brought their grand-children and children to the Smithsonian’s Museums in Washington DC as well as to the many other Smithsonian outreach programs around the country like our own Smithsonian Arctic Sciences Center in Anchorage Alaska. This is not to mention interacting with these venues electronically wherein most of the Smithsonian’s collections can be accessed from home or school and by computer. One need not travel to Washington to be educated about them. Communications with my old friend Bill Fitzhugh at the Museum of Natural History, the Exhibit curator, in turn put me in contact with his collaborator Chisato Dubreuil, an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure Univ. in New York who is of Ainu descent. The book they published for the Smithsonian, Ainu, Spirit of a Northern People, is a genuine treasure in my library and its pages greatly enhanced the educational opportunities ahead for both of us. The Ainu homelands around the mountain rimmed Lake Akan in eastern Hokkaido reminded us so much of Alaska. We rented kayaks and bicycles and hiked miles of little visited steep mountain trails where brown bears were not uncommon. We visited a cultural village, witnessed ancient dances and story- telling around wood fires. The adaptations of the ancient pre-Japanese people showed how an inventive mindset can prosper using what the land and sea are willing to give when treated respectfully. This respectful interaction with the land and sea typifies Alaskan Native and Ainu people alike. The value of educational travel to a young person comes alive with interaction between people where you have no common language. Smiles, graciousness, enthusiasm and body language that communicate louder than words. Watching my grand-daughter’s interactions with non-English speaking people like who were part of the Smithsonian Exhibit, was fascinating. A master carver, Takeke’s life-size carving of Ainu stood at the entrance of the Smithsonian Exhibit in Washington. We felt privileged to be welcomed into their home and workshop. The Smithsonian has always excelled in bringing opposite sides of the world together. Our triangle from the Mall in Washington to the rugged Alaskan coast to the mountains of Hokkaido was but another example of this proud history of stimulating cross-cultural adventure and education. Photo of Ainu taken during a trip to Hokkaido.Michael McBride is the boy with the billed cap 64 ASC Newsletter UNCOVERING F. W. STOKES By Hannah Fitch and Stephen Loring Frank Wilbert Stokes (1858-1955) was an American artist who, after studying under Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia and exhibiting in Paris, went to Northern Greenland in 1892 and 1893-94 as a member of two expeditions led by explorer Robert Peary. Stokes also went on subsequent expeditions to the Antarctic with Otto Nordenskjold and then finished his lengthy career in New York City. When he died, at the age of ninety-six, he had produced over five hundred works of art of both aesthetic and historical merit. Moreover, the works Stokes made in Greenland made him one of the most prolific artists of the Arctic. In addition to his numerous plein-air landscapes, produced in extreme weather conditions, Stokes created portraits of native Polar Eskimos— the Inughuit. Before he passed away, Stokes bequeathed over two hundred artworks to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (NMAA.) Included in the donation were a number of large finished works of high latitude landscapes (both Greenland and Antarctica) and historical moments such as Peary’s camp on the inland ice and Amundsen’s successful polar flight. The collection also contained a large number of oil sketches capturing moments of subtle light and beauty, a series of ethnographic paintings depicting Inughuit life and the aforementioned portraiture. In 1997, NMAA officials decided to deaccession many of the Stokes paintings. Recognizing their historical significance, Stephen Loring sought to have the collection transferred to the National Anthropological Archives (NAA). This request was somewhat awkward for NMAA administrators, who had previously arranged to have Stokes work placed at auction with Christie’s in London. One day, in the interest of intra-SI unit community, Loring was ushered into the NMNH’s Director’s office where Robert Fri encouraged him to make a representative selection of the Stokes oeuvre and allow the remainder to be sent to auction. As a consequence, 23 works of art were transferred from the NMAA to the NAA, including representative oil sketches of northern Greenland in the vicinity of Peary’s base-camp, finished paintings of Inughuit camps and all eleven pen and ink and charcoal Inughuit portraits. In addition to participating in several subsequent expeditions, Stokes painted the Eskimo-themed murals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Stokes initiative gestated in Loring’s research files until last year when he saw an announcement from the Smithsonian’s Office of Fellowships and Grants calling for proposals for the Katzenberger Art History Internship Program that supports student art history research throughout the Institution. Hannah Fitch, an Art History graduate student at American University became interested in Stokes and subsequently was awarded a summer fellowship to research his life and create biographies of the Inughuit he sketched. While researching in the Smithsonian archives, she discovered that a woman named Herdis B. Teilman, currently living in Oslo, grew up next door to Stokes in New York City and had studied his work extensively as both a graduate student and curator. With support from Dr. Carol Bird Ravenal, and grants from the American University (AU) Art History Department and AU College of Arts and Sciences, last November Hannah traveled to Oslo, where she met Herdis, who proved to be extraordinarily kind, open and generous. Herdis shared the Stokes diaries and her reminiscences and insights of Stokes and the New York City art scene of the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, we now have a greater understanding of Stokes, his artwork, and his impressions of the Arctic, which navigate the genre of expedition art and its often conflicting artistic and scientific demands. Based on his accounts, Stokes illustrated for his American viewers the tension between aesthetic realism and ethnographic empiricism, serving as a reflection both on the historical moment at the turn-of-the-century and his personal experiences in Greenland living and working with scientists and natives. Hanna has brought these insights into her 2018 American University Department of Art History Master’s Thesis: An American in Greenland: Turn-of- the-Century Arctic Visions by Frank Wilbert Stokes. Loring and Fitch plan to continue this research to further an appreciation and awareness of Frank Stokes as an Arctic visionary. Stokes’ Inughuit portraiture includes individuals who figured significantly in Peary’s subsequent Polar exploits and who appear again in the expedition accounts of Donald MacMillan and Knut Rasmussen. Portrait of Kachs-oo, Inughuit man - by Frank Stokes, 1894. NAA Collection, Smithsonian Institution ASC Newsletter 65 DISCOVERING UUMMANNAQ: AN ARCTIC GREENLAND COMMUNITY By Wilfred E. Richard The Arctic Studies Center has signed an agreement with IPI Press of Hanover, N.H., to publish Wilfred Richard’s book describing the town of Uummannaq in northwest Greenland. After exploring ever-farther—in Labrador and Baffin Island—Will settled seasonally into this beautiful and historic village, spending several years and becoming part of the local community. His book describes the geography of the region, the history of the town, and its role as the base for some of the earliest archaeological and geophysical studies conducted in Greenland by Therkel Mathiasen, Freddy DeLaguna, and Alfred Wegener. Both photographer and writer, Will tells the story of Uummannaq in vivid prose and with spectacular images. A charter member of Uummannaq’s Childrens’ Home, Will traveled widely with the children and with hunters and fishermen. He documents the impact of changing climate that has brought massive melting to the Greenland ice, forced hunters to become fishermen, decimated the sledge dog population, and brought scientists, cruise ships, artists, and ice-berg tourists to town. Uummannaq will be published by IPI and the Arctic Studies Center in 2019. ON THE ARCTIC FRONTIER: ERNEST LEFFINGWELL’S POLAR EXPLORATIONS AND LEGACY By Janet R. Collins. Washington State University Press. 2017 Review by William Fitzhugh While hiking in the Sadlerochit Mountains in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Janet Collins, a geographer and map librarian, became curious about the name “Camp 263” on her map. Upon returning home, she learned the name was from Ernest Leffingwell’s 1919 U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 109 titled The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska. Surprised at finding little published information on Leffingwell, Collins traced his papers to the Rauner Archives at Dartmouth College and immersed herself in his voluminous diaries, maps, and notes. This book is Collins’ biography of a pioneering scientist who from 1906-1914 explored and mapped the northeast coast of Alaska, traveling 4500 miles during three trips that included nine summers and six winters. Ernest Leffingwell came from a wealthy Illinois family. While studying geology at the University of Chicago he attended a lecture by Fridtjof Nansen describing BOOK REVIEWS his attempt to reach the North Pole in his ship, Fram. Four years later Leffingwell secured a position as scientific officer for the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition of 1901. The expedition’s goal—to be the first to reach the North Pole—was not fulfilled, but the voyage succeeded in mapping parts of Franz Josef Land and gave Leffingwell the training needed to take up exploration in another remote region, northern Alaska. Teaming up with Eijnar Mikkelsen, a Dane who was part of the Baldwin expedition, Leffingwell and Mikkelsen secured funding from their families to buy and outfit a small ship in Victoria, B.C. and set out for northern Alaska in 1906. After an arduous voyage, the Anglo-American Polar Expedition reached Flaxman Island, anchored in the lagoon and established a camp that Leffingwell would use until 1914. One of the expedition’s goals was to determine if islands existed north of the Alaska coast. To do this, Leffinwell and Mikkelsen travelled by dog sled north over the sea ice to determine the location of the continental shelf. They found the shelf much closer to land than expected, quashing theories about large off-shore land masses. While conducting their bathymetry, they discovered strong currents were setting them to the northwest, putting them in grave danger of being swept off into the Arctic Ocean, a fate that had claimed many a whaler and later, Stefansson’s Karluk expedition. Over the next several years, Leffingwell traveled widely along the north coast of Alaska from Barrow to Barter Island, mapping the coast, taking soundings, and establishing shore markers to aid in ship and land navigation. He also ventured inland, mapping the geography and geology of the Canning and other river valleys. In addition to his voluminous scientific records, he was the first to identify the oil seeps and oil-bearing formations that later became the U.S. Petroleum Reserve, and made important observations on the nature of permafrost. Like many explorers, Leffingwell’s work would not have been possible without the assistance and participation of the Inuit—in this case the Alaska Inupiat. In return for their knowledge of the land, their service as guides and hunters and suppliers of sledge dogs, Leffingwell provided equipment, payment, medical services, and friendship. Unlike the transient 66 ASC Newsletter white traders and explorers, his long residence at Flaxman Island made him a welcome and respected neighbor, and he developed many close Inuit friends. Collins’ book puts Leffingwell into the front ranks of Arctic explorers and scientists. His maps and geographical observations preceding the era of air- photo mapping are remarkable for their accuracy and comprehensive nature. After leaving Alaska in 1917 he never returned. His 1919 monograph is a monumental contribution, but he never produced other written works about his life or experiences in the north. Collins’ biography does fitting work to bring this quite scientific hero to life. Amidst the bravado and cacophony of others of his day and whom he knew, like Nansen, Peary, and Stefansson, his accomplishments are all the more remarkable and estimable. RAMAH CHERT: A LITHIC ODYSSEY Edited by Jenneth Curtis and Pierre Desrosiers; published by the Avataq Cultural Institute Reviewed by William Fitzhugh In 2014 the Government of Canada made an unusual National Historic Site designation: a rock quarry in northern Labrador with an extraordinary archaeological history. The clear-to-milky- white, nearly transparent Ramah chert was the principal raw material for making chipped stone tools by Labrador’s native people for thousands of years. Ramah chert outcrops for 30 miles, and can be collected easily from talus slopes along the shore or in places where glacial cirques have cut down into its horizontal strata, as in the principal quarry location, the Ramah Bay Quarry Bowl near Hilda’s Creek. Ramah Bay supplied chert to Dorset peoples as far away as Baffin Island and Ungava Bay. It was widely used by Labrador Maritime Archaic cultures from 8000-3500 years ago and became the preferred raw material for Dorset and Indian (Innu) cultures of the past 2000 years. As an exotic trade good, it appeared in Moorehead Archaic and Middle Woodland cultures in the Canadian Maritimes and New England and sporadically as far south as Virginia and Maryland. 20th century Labrador Inuit call the stone kitjigat (“sharp stone”) and this name has been enshrined in the heritage site designation: “Kitjigattalik: the Ramah Chert Quarries.” Ramah Chert: a Lithic Odyssey provides detailed documentation for the Parks Canada’s national historic site designation which originated as a 2011 Canadian Archaeological Association conference symposium. Following a brief introduction by editors Jenneth Curtis and Pierre Desrosiers, Derek Wilton (MUN) provides the geological context, noting its origin as a Precambrian silica precipitate, making it “a true chert” rather than a quartzite as has sometimes been argued. Building upon Smithsonian research by Michael Gramly and Colleen Lazenby in the mid 1970s, Jenneth Curtis, Pierre Desrosiers, Jamie Brake, and Adrian Burke describe and map the Ramah chert quarry locations, in particular the Ramah Quarry Bowl and its setting, workshops, quarrying processes, detritus, and artifacts. Adrian Burke and Gilles Gauthier present a chapter on geoarchaeology that maps the Ramah outcrops from Saglek to Delabarre Bay and provides petrographic and XRF chemical constituent data on chert samples from different quarry locations. Their work suggests the possibility that future studies might enable sourcing to specific quarry locations. Nevertheless, Ramah is so distinctive that it usually can be identified positively in hand specimens from similar materials like Mistassini quartzite or Arkansas novaculite from its visual characteristics. Several papers document the cultural dispersal of Ramah chert. John Erwin and Jenneth Curtis present a mammoth database of published Ramah chert finds from 1097 sites in eastern North America: Labrador (863), Quebec (99), Newfoundland (97), NE U.S. (23), Maritimes (7), Eastern Arctic (5), C. Atlantic States (2), and Ontario (1). They then categorize finds by culture period and site significance or size. Desrosiers follows with a detailed analytical discussion of Ramah chert use by Pre-Dorset, Groswater, and Dorset Palaeoeskimos. This discussion presents observations on cultural relationships, technology, and regional distributions that offer many opportunities for further research. Marianne Stopp writes about Ramah chert use, discard behavior, and ritual connections at the Eva Luther site, a 1500-year old Daniel’s Rattle complex site in St. Lewis Inlet, southern Labrador. Might Dorset people have had a role in the dispersal of Ramah chert to late Prehistoric Innu, she wonders? Darrin Lowry, a specialist in central Atlantic coast archaeology presents data on Ramah chert projectile points made in local Kipp Island and Jack’s Reef styles from Virginia and Maryland sites during the Middle Woodland period Ramah chert biface from Kegashka cache. (photo: Will Richard) ASC Newsletter 67 ca. 1500-1000 BP. These finds provide evidence for a specialized market in Ramah cache blades or blanks throughout the Northeast coastal regions. Further evidence for such widespread connections is indicated by a Groswater Palaeoeskimo microblade core and microblades from the Delmarva Peninsula. Stephen Loring—the widely-acknowledged doyen of Ramah chert studies—presents the book’s most comprehensive essay in a 3-act play replete with dramatis personae. He makes an elegant case for the special significance Ramah has held for many peoples and cultures over the past ten thousand years. Beginning with his description of a Ramah chert fluted point found on the shores of Lake Champlain, he describes its use by successive cultures, both Indian and Inuit, as both a vital technological material and a ritual, spiritual, and ceremonial anchor for these societies—a material that was accorded utmost respect and symbolic value. The final essay is a condensed version of the site evaluation Marianne Stopp prepared for consideration by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada as part of their deliberations. Stopp’s essay describes the quarry site, its use by thousands of years of Inuit and Innu cultures, the importance in the cultural and spiritual identities of these peoples, its role as a connector across cultural boundaries, and why it is worthy of national heritage designation. Her concluding sentence credits the Smithsonian for bringing attention to Ramah chert, the Ramah quarries, and their cultural importance to light. This is a remarkable volume, an important milestone in archaeology of the Far Northeast. Despite editorial glitches and insufficient proofing, the editors, authors, Parks Canada, Avataq, and the people of Labrador can be justly proud of this lithic odyssey and the historic designation it celebrates. NARWHAL: REVEALING AN ARCTIC LEGEND Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Martin T. Nweeia. Arctic Studies Center, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution, and IPI Press. Distributed by Oxbow Books. While the NMNH exhibits department was in final production for Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend, William Fitzhugh and Martin Nweeia became engaged in a crash program to publish a companion book. Selection of topics and authors began in December 2015. By the time manuscripts were ready for editing in April, we had forty-five authors/co- authors, a designer (Harp and Company Graphics), and a publisher (Peter Mittenthal of IPI Press). Layout and design was done by Douglas Harp and Susan Fisher, editing by Susan Salter Reynolds, and proof- reading by Letitia O’Connor and Nancy Shorey. Narwhal presents the story of one of the world’s most unusual creatures, whose tusk inspired legends and became known to Europe through tusks delivered by medieval Greenland Norse and White Sea hunters. The famous Danish narwhal throne commissioned by King Frederick III was installed in 1671. Following an introduction by Nweeia and Fitzhugh, the book proceeds in four parts. Part One (The Narwhal World) answers the question: “what is a whale”—a delightful exposition authored by Joy Reidenberg. This is followed by Barbara Boehm’s “The Universally Beloved Unicorn,” a story that takes us romping across the world where single- tusked or single-horned creatures are not all that rare historically. But only one—the unicorn—is beloved and instills peace throughout the animal kingdom. Narwhal tusk drinking cups—it turns out—ensured a king’s wine would be safe to drink. Part Two (Tooth to Tail) provides a full-blown biological description of the narwhal, beginning with an essay by Courtney Watt of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Here we discover how little we know of this elusive mammal. Watt’s discussion is enhanced by sidebars by Marianne Marcoux, who served as the exhibition’s narwhal zoologist and presents information on narwhal vocalizations and sonic emissions, and by Frank Fish who discusses the propulsion mechanics of narwhal flukes and perhaps why females dive deeper for prey than tusk- encumbered males. Chapter 4 by Frederick Eichmiller et al. presents the anatomy of the narwhal tusk, revealing that millions of neural fibers branch from the central nerve to the surface of the tooth, providing the animal with the ability to sense its environment unlike any other mammal. Other essays in this chapter describe the exciting capture and testing of live animals in their Arctic habitat by Jack Orr, Sandra Black, and Martin Nweeia. Chapter 5 describes studies on narwhal DNA by Kinston Kuo and associates, Daniel Distel, and Martin Nweeia. These reports tell of work in progress 68 ASC Newsletter that is likely to answer questions about narwhal evolution and the function of the tusk, why females rarely have one, and why the narwhal’s capability for a full set of teeth (like its closest genetic relative, the white whale), is genetically silenced during development. Narwhal paleontology is described by Ryan Paterson, Ewan Fordyce and others, revealing what is essentially an empty stage with few players and huge gaps in time. Did narwhals evolve in the Arctic, tropics, or temperate waters? No one knows! Part Three has chapters on Inuit knowledge by Henry Huntington and Kristin Westdal; a chapter by David Lee and George Wenzel on Inuit ethnography, narwhal hunting strategies, and how the narwhal is a sustaining part of Inuit life and community; and a chapter by Nweeia describing Inuit contributions to narwhal knowledge. Here we begin to see how the narwhal has sustained Inuit communities for thousands of years, becoming a focus for Inuit myth and spiritual life as well as a crucial subsistence resource. Part Four (The Narwhal Future) explores the narwhal world in a global context. Mark Serreze discusses climate history and how rising temperatures is altering the sea ice environment. As the pack ice recedes, narwhal populations (estimated at 180-200,000 animals today) are becoming concentrated in regions around northern Baffin Bay and northern Greenland. Rune Dietz, Christian Sonne, Luc Bas, and Christopher Clark document how their habitats are being subjected to industrial and noise pollution—the latter a result of hydrocarbon exploration using seismic blasting technology. In Chapter 11 Noor Johnson discusses how Inuit communities are adapting to the encroachment of the southern world by finding their voices and bringing their concerns to the wider world. These discussions conclude with sidebar essays by Pamela Peters, and by Melanie Lancaster and Brandon LaForest of the World Wildlife Fund. The final chapter provides a direct connection with the exhibition. Script-writer Laura Donnelly-Smith walks us through the production of the exhibition from project inception to installation. We meet deadlines, raise funds, select objects and illustrations, and work with a large cast of advisors who provided information and expert advice. The following end- matter provides snapshots and bios of our 45 authors, acknowledgments, references, credits, and an index. Narwhal—the book—was a challenge to produce, but it serves admirably as a companion to the exhibition and will live long after the exhibition’s closing in mid-2019. With luck, it will have an afterlife as a traveling exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibit Service. The book and the exhibit owe much to the energy, research, and generosity of Martin Nweeia, whose research and public-spirited nature has helped make the narwhal widely-recognized and revered. ON FRANKENSTEIN By John Cloud "Frankenstein: The 1818 Text" by Mary Shelley, 2018. How to Read "Frankenstein" by Charles E. Robinson. London: Penguin Classics. i-xxiii, 258 pp. For the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley's original version of "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus", Penguin Classics has republished the original version, with extensive commentaries and bibliographies. Why should that be of interest to the Arctic Studies Center? For more reasons than one might think. The world is divided into two major classes: those who have read Shelley's book, in either the original 1818 version, or the heavily revised 1831 version, and those who "think" they know the story quite well because they saw various movie versions. The latter class doesn't really know the story at all. There is a universal kernel: a troubled Swiss doctor, Victor Frankenstein, who has some issues, creates a Monster, a Daemon, a Fiend (the creature never receives a name) out of disgusting body parts and electricity and vague bits of alchemy. Frankenstein is horrified by his creation, and spurns it, and the Monster goes alone into the world and learns pretty much everything he needs to know. He pleads with Frankenstein to make another creature, female, a mate for him, so he won't be alone in this world. Frankenstein starts to do so, then bails out again. The monster seeks revenge, which involves gruesome murders in picturesque locations in Switzerland, France, the British Isles, and eventually the Arctic Ocean. There are three major long framing narratives in the book. It opens and closes on an ice-bound ship somewhere between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans, captained by a wealthy adventurer named Robert Walton, who wants to reach the North Pole for reasons about as vague as Frankenstein's reasons for making the Monster. His narrative is a set of letters written to his sister, Mrs. Margaret Saville, in England. Much subsequent cultural history begins with this paragraph: ASC Newsletter 69 "About two o'clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretching out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention, and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at a distance of half a mile: a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveler with our telescopes, until he was lost among the distant equalities of the ice." The next day, the ship's crew rescues a stranger, about to die, from another sledge. The stranger is Dr. Frankenstein, who spins his own narrative over many chapters of the book, which was originally published in three small volumes, each ending in a "cliff-hanger" situation. In the middle volume, back in time in Switzerland, the Monster relates his own narrative to Frankenstein, detailing why and how, once abandoned by Frankenstein, he had learned the essence of western civilization, starting with fire itself, which is how the Monster himself is in fact the modern Prometheus. Even two hundred years on, Mary Shelley's book reads quite well, apart from being endlessly influential in the realms of science fiction, fiction in general, studies of women in particular, and human society in general, plus lots of plays and movies. So I won't spoil the book for you with any more of the plot. But I will point out how eerily prophetic Shelley was about the subsequent history of Arctic exploration in the 19th and even 20th centuries. Shelley's masterpiece famously originated in a round of "ghost tales" invented by Shelley and her poet husband Percy Shelley and other luminaries, including Lord Byron, in the bitterly cold and wet summer of 1816, the infamous year of "Eighteen hundred and froze to death" due to intense short-term global cooling in the northern hemisphere from a volcanic eruption in 1815. In the preceding quarter century, there had been essentially no polar expeditions, because all the polar- exploring nations were in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815 with Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo. Then polar voyaging could resume. A small sideshow of the great conflict, but large for Americans, was the War of 1812. The British warships HMS Terror, a bomb ship, and HMS Erebus, equipped with Congreve rockets, besieged Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, later immortalized in the Star Spangled Banner: "the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air...". Later that HMS Erebus was scrapped, and another bomb ship was built and given the same name. These two ships, the Erebus and Terror, sailed to Antarctica (Mount Terror and Mount Erebus are named for them) and later on the same ships carried Sir John Franklin and all his crew to their doom seeking the Northwest Passage in the terrible zone of death, to them, that the Inuit of Nunavut call by another name, which translates as "home." WHITE FOX AND ICY SEAS IN THE WESTERN ARCTIC. THE FUR TRADE, TRANSPORTATION, AND CHANGE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY Reviewed by Igor Krupnik Our colleague, archaeologist-historian John R. Bockstoce, has produced another seminal book on the recent history of the Western Arctic. It is a sequel to his earlier masterpiece volume, Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade (2009), though with a slightly expanded geographic focus to include a portion of the Canadian Central Arctic. The new book published by Yale University Press and released in March 2018, also deals with a later era, roughly from the late 1890s to 1948. The new book focuses specifically on trade in Arctic fox pelts and to a much lesser extent on other northern fur-baring animals, until the introduction of farm-raised mink fur in the 1940s. It introduces a new set of colorful characters,key among them being local Native traders (Yupik, Chukchi, Inupiat, Inuvialuit, and Inuinnait/Copper Inuit), as well as non-Native adventurers of all stripes and nationalities who pioneered commercial fox-trapping and locally based fur-trade in the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas, and along the islands of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. These industrious people often preceded, but sometimes went hand-in-hand, with missionaries, teachers, US Coast Guard officers, and Canadian Mounties in introducing new life and modern economic relations to the most distant corners of the Arctic. Whereas their economic system aimed at trading pelts with Native hunters and setting them onto the path of commercial fur-trapping that eventually collapsed around the 1930s and 1940s, they succeeded in modernizing Native lives and in making local people a part of the global economy, particularly in North Alaska and Northwestern Arctic Canada. 70 ASC Newsletter Many of the characters described in Bosktoce’s new book who ventured to the most distant corners of the world had life stories quite out of the ordinary – even in the era of daring polar explorations, gold rush, and early forays in polar aviation. They met, supported, and cared for the greatest Arctic explorers of their time, such as Knud Rasmussen, Diamond Jenness, and Roald Amundsen. They created a functioning system of commercial operations, credit, record and book-keeping, and regular communication among local communities that rivaled and often surpassed the one built by government agencies. They also left behind large families; some, like the Browers in Barrow (now Utqiagvik), the Dobrievs in Chukotka, the Wolkis in Canadian Ulukhaktok and Sachs Harbor who became the leading force in their respective communities, often for several generations. Many also left diaries, even books, like Charles Brower’s Fifty Years Below Zero that remained the must-read source for cohorts of Arctic scholars. We commend John Bockstoce on producing yet another indispensable sourcebook on the history of the Western Arctic, one built on years of meticulous research, archival studies, and first-hand knowledge of many communities described in the text. As in any book of such broad geographic scope, some chapters are more informative and some characters look more colorful than others. Yet, this latest volume is a prized addition to the Arctic ethnohistory shelf and a great introduction to anyone interested in life in northern communities in the decades that preceded personal experience of today’s anthropology elders and their first monographs. Thank you, John! MENADELOOK: AN INUPIAT TEACHER’S PHOTOGRAPHS OF ALASKA VILLAGE LIFE, 1907–1932 Reviewed by Igor Krupnik This is a very unusual Arctic book – half photographic catalog and half family stories about the author’s late grandfather, Charles Menadelook (1892–1933), an Inupiat intellectual and modernizer who became one of the first trained Native teachers and by far the first accomplished Native Alaskan photographer. His life story crossing barely four decades and several communities in Alaska, from his native Wales to Kotzebue, Diomede, Unalaska, Gambell, Shishmaref, and, of course, Nome, where Menadelook died at the age of 41, coincided with the time of rapid transformation of Native Alaskan lifeways that he depicted in his images. Menadelook’s story was indeed remarkable in many aspects, but so is also the book written by his granddaughter, Eileen Norbert and published by the University of Washington Press in 2017 with the support of Sealaska Heritage Institute. I first met Eileen Norbert on one of my early trips to Nome in the 1990s, where she was working for Kawerak, Inc., a local Native Alaskan community foundation that provided educational and social development, and cultural resource preservation and health services to the people of the northern Bering Sea region. In one of the meetings, she told me that she had been researching family photographs taken many decades ago by her late grandfather, intending to publish them in a book or illustrated photo catalog. It took Eileen almost twenty years to complete her project and to see its results printed as a beautiful book. The images are stunning in their ‘non-staged’ reality of people’s everyday life; yet the text written by Eileen is even more remarkable. She tells the story of Menadelook and his family, of their many relocations following Menadelook’s short stints as a schoolteacher at various government-run village schools, from the Aleutians to interior North Alaska, as a true family narrative. It makes her book a very unusual reading – personal, warm, inviting, and respectful of details and voices of the many people who helped her reconstitute Menadelook’ life. The book’s narrative is structured around the communities in which Menadelook served from 1907 until his death in 1933, and so are the photographs, all supplied with extended captions, making the book a wonderful historical source, particularly for places like Diomede, Shaktoolik, and others for which there are few known photographs from that era. The book concludes with a useful appendix showing the results of modern restoration of dozens of old photographs and negatives that Eileen collected among Menadelook’s many descendants and attached for readers and future historians. We salute Eileen on her heroic work and on her invaluable addition to our knowledge about life in rural Alaska in the early 20th century. ASC Newsletter 71 FULL-CIRCLE: TAUGHT AND TEACHING AT DARTMOUTH By William Fitzhugh Dartmouth is in my blood. I guess that’s to be expected since my father—whose name I share apart from a postscript—spent his college years in Hanover (Class of ’35.) I arrived there with a cohort from Deerfield Academy, MA, moving a couple hundred miles upriver, so I stayed green and white, paddled the same river, and played in the Barbary Coast band with some of the same Deerfield gang. After I left Dartmouth with an anthropology degree I never would have guessed I’d return as a professor. When I graduated, my dad—a paper box manufacturer—wondered how I’d survive with that kind of training; and when my thesis describing 8000 years of environmental and cultural history in Labrador was published, he thought he’d end up bailing me out. Teaching at Dartmouth was the last thing he thought I’d do. And yet, that’s what happened. I went from Dartmouth into the Navy, ending up in the North Atlantic far from ‘Nam. Then to the Smithsonian as curator of North American archaeology. In 1963, the Dartmouth Anthropology Department had just been created; two of its profs, Elmer Harp and Robert McKennan (who we called ‘Nabesna Bob’ for the Alaska Indian band he studied) were Arctic experts. The third faculty was Al Whiting, the Wilson Hall museologist. He sat through our last class dressed as a Hopi Indian, in a breech-clout, smoking a stone pipe and offering us bowls of beans and squash. Eventually we realized we were supposed to ask about his kinship system. These were the profs who sent me off on my Arctic career. Like my father, I never thought I would end up teaching at Dartmouth. But over the years I had watched the department change as its focus shifted to equatorial and temperate regions. I nagged them about maintaining the Arctic legacy that included the residency of the great Arctic explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, whose papers at Dartmouth’s Rauner Archives make Dartmouth a renowned center for Arctic studies. Finally, as the Arctic began to heat up, they hired me. I’ve been teaching Circumpolar Environments and Archeology during winter term for the past four years. The Anthro Department is on the fourth floor of Silsby. Going up and down those flights several times a day was a challenge until my hip got replaced. My class sizes have ranged from six to twenty-five. The students are unbelievable. They do all the stuff we used to do— sports, road-tripping, hiking, canoeing, drinking—and yes—studying. They’re smart; I wouldn’t be admitted to Dartmouth today. They come trained and motivated. You nag them about getting their term papers done so they won’t get caught in the exam crunch. “OK,” I ask, “Any progress? Got your topic figured out?” Silence. And then, miraculously, a couple days before the exam, terrific papers tumble in. And the exams and final grades? I struggle to deliver a few C's to the deans who are always nagging the faculty about grade-creep. As for me, I no longer fear Dartmouth Hall. My major concern is the dreaded failure of the powerpoint projection. But even then, a shout brings a tech student in minutes. The musty smell of the Baker reading room is gone. Now renamed, Baker-Berry Library is crawling with kids of all backgrounds and origins. The stacks are still open. The halls hum with chatter and reek of coffee. King Arthur Flour dispenses cappachinos and veggie-burgers next to the circulation desk. The reading room (‘shhhh’!) with its lurid Orozco murals is too quiet for most students’ study habits; they hang out where noise, news, and food abounds. Instead of being a repository and the home of geeks, Baker-Berry is the heart-beat of the college, a learning and social center. You go there to get charged up and hang out. Across campus at Hopkins Center, the Black Arts Center, and a rebuilt Dartmouth Museum a vibrant arts sector of the College is developing. And fraternities? Yes, they are still there (mostly.) Just last weekend, with a nod to Dartmouth’s pioneering John Ledyard who famously abandoned college and paddled down the Connecticut River into a life of exploration, the students convened a meeting of Dartmouth’s former student explorers who climbed mountains and run rivers all around the world. Dartmouth spirit lives on. I think my father would be proud—and surprised—that I came back to roost and pontificate for a few chilly months each year, infecting young minds with Arctic fever. Some students join me for Labrador fieldwork. Maybe one or two will carry Dartmouth’s northern legacy forward. MEMORIES 72 ASC Newsletter ELAINE ELIZABETH ABRAHAM, CHUU SHAA (1929-2016) By Aron Crowell and Judith Ramos Elaine Abraham of Yakutat, Alaska, whose name in Tlingit was Chuu Shaa (Little Grandmother Returns), died on May 18, 2016 after a long life and distinguished career in professional nursing, academic teaching, student counseling, university administration, and collaborative research with anthropologists and linguists. Chuu Shaa was a revered elder of the Yéil Naa (Raven moiety), Kwaashk’i Kwáan (Copper River clan), and Tsisk’w Hit (Owl House), a child of the Teikweidí clan, and the mother of five children with her husband of many years, George Ramos of Yakutat. Her surviving children are George Ramos, Jr., Charmaine Ramos, David Ramos, and Judith Ramos. She was the daughter of Teikweidí clan leader Olaf Abraham and his wife Susie Bremner, who was the granddaughter of John Bremner, a Scottish prospector and guide who helped Lt. Henry Allen to explore the Copper River area for the U.S. government in the 1880s. Elaine grew up in her parents’ traditional household in Yakutat, immersed in the culture, languages, and lifeways of her people. She was a fluent speaker of Tlingit with considerable knowledge of Eyak, the “other Tlingit” as she called it in her youth. During her varied and energetic life Elaine served as a registered nurse on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona; helped to found the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks; directed the Alaska Native Studies program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and taught there as an Associate Professor; chaired the Alaska Native Science Commission; served as Associate Dean of Students at Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Alaska; developed Alaska Native student orientation services at the University of Alaska Anchorage; and was Vice President of Rural Education Affairs for the University of Alaska’s statewide system, a role in which she helped to establish community colleges TRANSITIONS in largely Alaska Native communities including Nome, Barrow, Tanana, Kotzebue, Sitka, and Ketchikan. She was a lifelong member of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, a delegate to the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Tribes of Alaska, a board member of the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe, and an elder of the Yakutat Presbyterian Church – and this is only a partial roll of her committed service to others. Elaine Abraham excelled academically and earned numerous degrees including a Master of Arts in Multiethnic Education (Alaska Pacific University), a Bachelor of Arts in Human Resource Development (Alaska Pacific University), an Associate of Arts in Anthropology (Sheldon Jackson College), a Registered Nurse certification from the School of Nursing at Sage Memorial Hospital in Arizona, and certification in Psychiatric Nursing from the State of Arizona. Among her many honors and awards Elaine Abraham received the nationwide American Indian Achievement Award (1973), the title of “Distinguished Alaskan” from the Alaska State Legislature (1974), and the University of Alaska’s Meritorious Service Award (1996). In 2011 she was inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame. Her early life story was featured in American Indian Women, by Marion Eleanor Gridley (1974). Elaine worked with a number of anthropologists including Frederica de Laguna, Michael Krauss, Sergei Kan, and Thomas Thornton and her own publications included “This is Kuxaankutaan’s (Dr. Frederica de Laguna’s) Song” in Arctic Anthropology (with Judith Ramos, 2006), which was reprinted in Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors, edited by Sergei Kan (2015). In 1996 Frederica de Laguna returned by invitation of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood to Yakutat where she had conducted anthropological research almost fifty years earlier for her monumental Under Mount Saint Elias: the History and Culture of the Yakutat Tlingit, which includes extensive information provided by Elaine’s parents, Olaf and Susie Abraham. Elaine narrated an excellent film about this occasion by Laura Bliss Span entitled “Reunion under Mount Saint Elias: The Return of Frederica de Laguna to Yakutat Alaska” (1997). In 2001, Elaine, George, and the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe hosted a visit to Yakutat by scientists, artists, and writers who were participating in Harriman Expedition Retraced, a voyage organized by Smith College to follow the path of the 1899 Edward Harriman expedition. During the first expedition’s visit to Yakutat a century before photographer Edward Curtis recorded images of the Yakutat people’s communal seal hunting camps at the head of the bay, including a shot of Elaine’s aunt Jennie Abraham engaged in cutting blubber from a seal skin. ASC Newsletter 73 Elaine was warm, wise, and droll, and an assiduous research colleague who made a tremendous contribution to oral historical and archaeological studies conducted by the Arctic Studies Center in Yakutat Bay from 2011 to 2014. She served as a Senior Researcher for the project’s National Science Foundation grant (Glacial Retreat and the Cultural Landscape of Ice Floe Sealing at Yakutat Bay, Alaska), advised on project design and tribal protocols, interviewed other elders in the community, and shared her own extensive knowledge of Yakutat’s complex cultural history. Her daughter Judith Ramos, also a Senior Researcher on the project, worked closely with her mother to record interviews and to facilitate community participation. Elaine was a principal source of information about Yakutat Bay place names in both Tlingit and Eyak for the Arctic Studies Center project and for Thomas Thornton’s encyclopedic regional compilation, Haa Léelk’w Hás Aaní Saax’ú: Our Grandparents’ Names on the Land (Sealaska Heritage Institute and the University of Washington Press, 2012). One of my (Aron’s) favorite moments from fieldwork in Yakutat was an impromptu celebration of Elaine’s 83rd birthday as we bobbed about in small boats among ice floes near the towering face of Sit’ Tlein (“big glacier” or Hubbard Glacier). Judy brought surprise cupcakes on the trip and there was singing and laughter and awe amid the beauty of our surroundings. Elaine spoke often of the sacred connection between the people of Yakutat, their lands, and the spirit of the glacier, who taught her Ahtna ancestors how to hunt seals and make a living from the sea after they migrated from the Copper River valley to Yakutat about 500 years ago. Elaine and George Ramos also made important contributions as cultural advisers to the Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska exhibition in Anchorage. She generously praised the exhibition catalog, writing “Likoodzi (fantastic) yaa x’úx’ (this book). Tlingit is my first language, so these were the words in my mind. Haa Shaagoon ayah aa eet x’eiwatán – it is if our Ancestors have spoken to us.” We mark Elaine’s passing with grief and sadness, but remember and thank her for her giving spirit, kindness, and the cultural knowledge she so generously shared. STANWYN SHETLER (1933-2017) By Larry Dorr [Following are exerpts from Dorr’s obituary of Stan Shetler. Stan was one of the few NMNH natural scientists (along with Robert Hoffman) with a long-term interest and expertise in Arctic regions. Stan played a role in the establishment of the Arctic Studies Center (called a ‘program’ then) and participated in many ASC activities. He was a splendid example of a Smithsonian curator with strong record and commitment to science, collections, and outreach. He and Hoffman took great interest in our Crossroads of Continents exhibitions and facilitated our subsequent collaborations with Soviet/Russian scholars. He was a force of optimism and stability in the NMNH administration for many years.—ed.] Stan was born on 11 October 1933 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He grew up in nearby rural Hollsopple and attended Johnstown Christian School. Stan’s interest in natural history began with bird watching, and ornithology became a lifelong avocation. Stan attended Eastern Mennonite College and earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in 1955 and 1958 from Cornell University. He came to the NMNH Department of Botany in 1962 from graduate school at the University of Michigan where he was a student of Rogers McVaugh, earning his PhD in 1979. He had responsibility for temperate and arctic North American plants, including the flora of the Washington, D.C. region. Stan also served as Associate Director and then Deputy Director of the Museum. As an administrator, he was highly regarded for his fairness and calm demeanor. He retired 1995 and continued to work in the U.S. National Herbarium until 2010. Stan published more than 100 scientific, technical, and popular titles, including three books. He also was one of several general scientific editors for the English translations of the last eight volumes of the 30-volume Flora of the USSR that appeared between 1997 and 2004. Stan served as executive secretary and then program director of the Flora North America Program, which pioneered the use of computers for taxonomic information. His research took him across North America and to parts of South and Central America, Europe, Asia (Caucasus, Siberia, Tuva,) and Australia. His visit to Tuva, a remote Russian republic in southern Siberia, resulted in a cameo appearance in Richard Leighton’s Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey (2000). Stan received a number of awards and honors for his research and service. In 1995, he received the Paul Bartsch Award, which is the Audubon Naturalist Society’s top award for contributions to natural history and conservation. In 1994, he was elected as fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his “contributions to the formation of electronic data banks and the computer registry of botanical specimens” and in 2002, he was elected a fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 74 ASC Newsletter WILLIS WALUNGA (1924–2017) – YUPIK HISTORIAN By Igor Krupnik Sad news that arrived from Gambell, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska in October 2017 followed in the footsteps of an obituary in the last-year issue of the ASC Newsletter (No.24, p.66). Willis Walunga known to his fellow community members and many friends under his Yupik name, Kepelgu passed away at his home in Gambell at the age of 92. Kepelgu was the prime keeper of St. Lawrence Island and Siberian Yupik historical and genealogical knowledge, and a trusted partner in several research and publication ventures of the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center (ASC.) Willis (Kepelgu) had an unusual life story for someone prized as his community’s best historian. He was born in an immigrant family of John and Dorothy Walunga (Walanga) that around 1922 moved from the Russian Yupik village of Avan in Chukotka to the American St. Lawrence Island. Many people who made that same transition remained “newcomers” among their Yupik neighbors, albeit speaking the same language and being of the same culture. Perhaps Kepelgu’s acceptance is explained by his decision to follow a military career that started in 1942 when he joined the Alaska Territorial Guard at age 17 and served for 42 years, until his full retirement in 1984. Beginning as a young rifleman to defend his new homeland in case of the Japanese and, later, Russian invasion, he was eventually promoted to the rank of Sergeant General Major and received scores of military decorations. He also married Nancy Walunga (Aghnaghaghniq) and raised a large family that, by his old years, included ten grown-up children, 36 grandchildren, and 28 great grandchildren. Retired from the military at the age of 60, Willis started a new career, first in Yupik language and heritage education. In the 1980s, he joined and eventually led a team of local educators mostly of his age cohort, who produced the first set of Yupik cultural materials for local schools, including the ‘St. Lawrence Island Curriculum Resource Manual,’ a 100-page compendium on Yupik culture and ecological knowledge, edited and compiled by Kepelgu. That same team also produced a three- volume bilingual (Yupik-English) heritage series, Sivuqam Nangaghnegha (Lore of St. Lawrence Island, 1985,1987, 1989) and, under Kepelgu’s leadership, a typed set of Yupik family genealogies for all island clans going back often five-six generations. Kepelgu was meticulous in his genealogical work and he did numerous interviews with island elders, as well as with the Yupik visitors from Chukotka, who started frequent St. Lawrence Island after the so-called “Friendship Flight” from Nome to Provideniya in 1988, in which Kepelgu and his wife Nancy participated. I first met Kepelgu in 1987 in Moscow and then, again, in the summer of 1990 in the Siberian Yupik village of New Chaplino in Chukotka. Together with local Yupik activists, we organized a tour for our island guests to Kepelgu parents’ home village of Avan, near Provideniya Bay, that was abandoned in 1942. We lit the fire and said the prayers for the ancestors, and then I walked Kepelgu through the ruins of the village telling him stories I recorded from his tribespeople who used to live here. Since the late 1990s, Kepelgu was the prime knowledge expert, a local team leader, and co-editor on three major scholarly knowledge documentation projects, Our Words Put to Paper/Akuzilleput Igaqulghet. Sourcebook on St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History (2002) that received American Book Award of the “Before Columbus Foundation’ in 2003; Faces We Remember/Neqamikegkaput. Leuman M. Waugh Photography from St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, 1929–1930 (2011), and St. Lawrence Island Yupik Walrus Dictionary/Ayveghem Yupigestun Aautqusluga. The first two were published as issues nos. 3 and 9 of the ASC Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology series; the third remains unpublished and will now be dedicated to Kepelgu’s memory. As a guardian of local history, Kepelgu held a special role in his native community and within the network of relations between the St. Lawrence Island and Chukotka Yupik. He was always seeking new knowledge: names of people who passed generations ago, old stories, and historical photographs that depicted people from years past. He worked through the lists of island residents of the U.S. censuses of 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, painstakingly reconstructing English and ASC Newsletter 75 Yupik names of people listed there. On every trip to Gambell, I tried to bring him copies of some newly recovered historical photos or documents from St. Lawrence Island that he loved to explore. Once it was a list of Yupik parishioners in the Provideniay Bay in Chukotka, compiled by a Russian Orthodox priest in 1910 and preserved at the Library of Congress. On that list, we found a certain Petr Kepelge, 48, after whom Willis was named 15 years later, and his son ‘Vassilii, 23, who was obviously Willis’ father Walanga. That brought a special joy to someone who dedicated his life to preserving the history of his people. It will be very hard to fill Kepelgu’s big knowledge ‘shoes’; but his legacy will stay with us – in wisdom he shared generously within and beyond his community, in books we published that every island family now keeps in its possession; and in the many of today’s Yupik people who carry the ‘old names’ bestowed on them by Kepelgu to celebrate his Avatmiitt ancestors of the past. PAUL APANGALOOK (1951–2018) By Igor Krupnik Paul Apangalook a gentle and gifted man, a strong leader in his native community of Gambell, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, and a partner in our effort to document the changing life of the Yupik people under the forces of modernization and global warming lost his battle with cancer in early March 2018. His Yupik name, Siluk, was given to him after his uncle Paul Silook (Siluk, ca. 1892–1948), a famous man and a pioneer in collaborative work with scores of visiting scientists. In 1912, 20-year old Paul Silook befriended doctor Riley Moore, who was sent to St. Lawrence Island by Smithsonian curator, Aleš Hrdlička to conduct physical observations and secure ethnological specimens. Silook introduced Moore to his father Uwetelen; that connection started partnership between the extended Uwetelen-Silook family and Smithsonian researchers that spanned over 100 years and six generations (see ASC NSL, 23, p. 41–42.) Silook later worked with Smithsonian archaeologist Henry Collins. Estelle Oozevoseuk, Yupik knowledge elder and a partner to Aron Crowell, was a daughter of Silook, and Leonard Apangalook Sr., my late collaborator on the SIKU observation project during the International Polar Year, was a nephew of Silook and an elder brother to Paul Apangalook. Paul Apangalook, “the second Siluk,” was a highly respected figure in his community and a model to his people. He represented Gambell at the Alaskan Eskimo Whaling Commission and served numerous terms as the village IRA head and the Sivuqaq Corp., president. He was a deeply spiritual person, with a big heart, “a true Yupik,” as people called him. Yet his own collaboration with scientists, unlike that of his namesake, Siluk-1, came relatively late in his life. When his late brother, Leonard Apangalook became gravely sick and was unable to serve as a Gambell observer for the SIKU (Sea Ice Knowledge and Use) project, Paul stepped in for him and kept the daily observation logs running for three more years, 2008/2009–2010/2011 and then continued his observations under another effort supported by Hajo Eicken at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He later served as observer/contributor for the Sea Ice for Walrus Outlook (SIWO), a web-based initiative to document hunters’ observations of sea ice and walrus spring migration run by ARCUS since 2010. Diaries filled by Leonard and Paul are now part of the major database of Native Alaskans’ observations at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, CO, and Paul’s, as well as Leonard’s name have been featured proudly on several scholarly papers that came out of this decade-long partnership. Paul’s last effort, together with his wife, Charlene Apangalook, was to assist with the identification of almost 40 photographs taken in Gambell in summer 1939 by archaeologist J. Louis Giddings (ASC NSL 24, 49–51). This work remains unfinished. Following the words of Vera Metcalf, another great Yupik leader and a partner on many ASC efforts, “the (St. Lawrence) island has lost so many lately, but we must continue on with their visions, hopes, and dreams. They continue to inspire us as we captured many of their words in some of our projects.” These words fully belong to the memory of Paul, who will forever remain our source of inspiration and a symbol of “going far” together. 76 ASC Newsletter Krupnik, Igor 2017 Waldemar Bogoras and The Chukchee: A Maestro and a Classical Ethnography. Pp. 9–45 In Waldemar Bogoras. The Chukchee. New edition, edited by Michael Dürr and Erich Kasten. Verlag der Kulturstiftung Sibirien. 2017 Living on a Changing Planet: Why Indigenous Voices Matter. Pp. 78-82 In Living in the Anthropocene: Earth in the Age of Humans. John Kress and Jeffrey Stine, eds. Washington DC: Smithsonian Books. 2017 Arctic/Siberian/Sakha Collections at the Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 404–421 In Siberian Collections in the U.S. Museums. Zinaida Ivanova, ed. Yakutsk (in English and in Russian). Krupnik, Igor and Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya 2017 “Our Ice, Snow and Winds”: from Knowledge Integration to Co-production in the Russian SIKU Project, 2007–2013. Pp. 65–82 In Oral History Meets Linguistics. Erich Kasten, Katja Roller and Joshua Wilbur, eds. Havel, Germany: Kulturstiftung Sibirien. Bogoslovskaya, Lyudmila and Igor Krupnik 2017 The Changing Cultural Scapes of Sea Mammal Hunters of the Bering Strait Area: based on field data of the 1970s-2000s. Bogoslovskaya, Lyudmila and Igor Krupnik. Pp. 359–381 In V fokuse naslediia (In the Heritage Focus). M. Kuleshova, ed. Moscow: Institute of Geography (in Russian). Loring, Stephen 2018 The Toad-Man’s Estate: an Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Shapeiau (Shapio) Lake Region, Nitassinan. (co-authored with Anthony Jenkinson). Provincial Archaeology Office 2017 Annual Review. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. Volume 16:168-183. 2017 To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth… Ramah Chert in Time and Space. In Ramah Chert: a Lithic Odyssey, edited by Jenneth E. Curtis and Pierre M. Desrosiers. Pp. 169-220. Nunavik Archaeological Monograph Series No.4. Avataq Cultural Institute: Inukjuak, Quebec. ARCTIC STUDIES ONLINE The Arctic Studies Center is on Twitter @ ArcticStudies, and is also posting the latest ASC news and events via Facebook in order to connect with the Arctic community. Check out our blog, Magnetic North and website http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/for more detailed information and links to additional resources. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter! Helser, Thomas, Craig Kastelle, Aron Crowell, Takayuki Ushikubo, Ian J. Orland, Reinhard Kozdon, and John W. Valley 2017 A 200-Year Archaeozoological Record of Pacific Cod (Gadus macrocephalus) Life History as Revealed through Ion Microprobe Oxygen Isotope Ratios in Otoliths. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Published online June 17, 2017. Crowell, Aron L. 2017 Archaeology and Pacific Cod Otoliths Provide Clues to Climate Cycles in the Gulf of Alaska. Witness Community Highlights, Arctic Research Consortium of the United States. Published online Sept. 29, 2017. Fitzhugh, William W. and Bernadette D. Engelstad 2017 Inuguat: Prehistoric Human Figurines of the North American Arctic. In The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Human Figurines, edited by Timothy Insoll, Pp. 367-390. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fitzhugh, William W. and J. Brake, and P. Jolicoeur 2017 The Rigolet Project 2016: Groswater Bay, Narrows, and Eastern Lake Melville. Provincial Archaeology Office 2016 Annual Review, pp. 48-54. Fitzhugh, William W. 2017 Mongolian Deer Stones, European Menhirs, and Canadian Arctic Inuksuit: Collective Memory and the Function of Northern Monument Traditions. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 24(1):149-187. 2017 The Gateways Project 2016: Surveys in Groswater Bay, Labrador, and St. Paul River, Quebec, and Excavations at Hart Chalet. 222 pp. Edited by William Fitzhugh. Produced by Patrick Jolicoeur, Cara Reeves, Skye Litten, Chelsi Slotten, and Igor Chechushkov. Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution. P. Jolicoeur and William W. Fitzhugh 2017 Excavation and survey along Quebec’s Lower North Shore. Provincial Archaeology Office 2016 Annual Review, pp. 123-135. Fitzhugh, William W. and Martin T. Nweeia 2017 Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend. (The Companion Book to the Smithsonian Institution exhibition). Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution and IPI Press. 233pp. Distributed by University Press of New England. Cole, Daniel and William W. Fitzhugh 2017 Exhibiting the Connections Between Inuit, Narwhal, and Climate Change. Cartouche 93/94: 29-33. 2017 ASC STAFF PUBLICATIONS ASC Newsletter 77 AFTERWORD By Stephen Loring Sometimes, as is this case this year, the newsletter’s page count does not come out in even “signatures” and there is an extra blank page. Since this was, in many ways, the Year of Boats for the Arctic Studies Center, we thought to close this issue in a literary vein as a tribute for all the vessels—Kilaluak, Tunuyak, Pitsiulak, Becky-1, and unnamed zodiacs and canoes, among others—that have carried us safely through the course of nearly fifty years of northern research. The following is from a letter I wrote to William Ritchie, an artist and sometimes crew-member, whom we befriended in Labrador in 1975: 18 November 1987 Bad Boats by Laura Jensen They are like women because they sway. They are like men because they swagger. They are like lions because they are king here. They walk on the sea. The drifting logs are good: they are taking their punishment. But the bad boats are ready to be bad, to overturn in water, to demolish the swagger and the sway. They are bad boats because they cannot wind their own rope or guide themselves neatly close to the wharf. In their egomania they are glad for the burden of the storm the men are shirking when they go for their coffee and yawn. They are bad boats and they hate their anchors. Bad boats. I remember how I used to worry about you and your speedboat. Fitzhugh and I thought it was too sporty for the likes of the wild man you were then. And then you let me use it during the summer of 1982 when I was off by myself knocking about the bays between Nain and Davis Inlet. Oh, it proved to be such a sweet boat. So sweet. Late in August, pinned down by the storm in Voisey’s Bay, the same storm that plagued you farther north. Finally, in the face of a freshening gale, I decided to make a break from my exposed harbor. In a sudden pell-mell of activity I collapsed the Black’s tent with pads and sleeping bag inside and just rolled the whole affair up in a big ball. The surf had begun to build but there was a steep rock face I could bring the boat, moored on an off- haul, alongside. I just pitched the tent, the Duluth bags, and myself in and hauled off away from the wash until I had everything in order. Then out into Voisey’s Bay, my old nemesis. Was there ever such a place for contrary tides and winds? Tide comes in, the demon of a west wind blowing out and hell is to pay. And byjeezus, son, what a ride! Steep, short-pitched waves, taller than I care to remember. Up, up, up we would go—your sweet boat and I—then down: deep down, bottom down, til I felt that the bow was going to pitch into the mud of the ocean floor. And then up smart again. What a ride! Why sometimes we would get pitched right out of the top of the wave, the prop would start whirling madly and we would fly. We would fly until we fell, and then BAM! The bottom would fall out and we would slam into the underbelly of the next wave. I mean we would hit hard. Wouldn’t want to do that sort of thing too, too often. So slowly we crossed the Bay, your buddy Stephen and your boat…your sweet boat. And that night, the boat safely moored in a sheltered bay, kept company by a flock of mergansers, I had a wonderful dream. I dreamt that I was crossing the bay again, but this time when we were flung up on a wave we just kept going, higher and higher into the sky, up to the stars, with never a fear of falling, never a fear of the journey’s end. A boat to dare the seas of heaven. Contact Information Arctic Studies Center Department of Anthropology Natural History Building, MRC 112 Smithsonian Institution P.O. Box 37012 10th and Constitution Ave. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20013-7012 (202) 633-1887 (phone) (202) 357-2684 (fax) ASC Anchorage Office Anchorage Museum 625 C Street Anchorage, AK 99501 (907) 929-9207 VISIT ASC’S WEBSITES, BLOG & PAGES Labrador Research: http://www.mnh.si.edu/ arctic/html/Labrador/index.html Magnetic North–ASC Blog: http://nmnh. typepad.com/arctic_studies/ ASC Twitter Account: @arcticstudies ASC Facebook Account: https://www.facebook.com/ pages/Arctic-Studies-Center/133066950060693 This newsletter was edited by William Fitzhugh, Igor Krupnik, Stephen Loring, Aron Crowell, Dawn Biddison, Nancy Shorey and Mary Maisel. Designed and produced by Mary Maisel, Nancy Shorey and Igor Chechushkov A rctic Studies Center D epartm ent of A nthropology N atural H istory Building, M RC 112 Sm ithsonian Institution P.O . Box 37012 10th and Constitution, N W W ashington, D C 20013-7012 O ffi cial B usiness P enalty for P rivate U se $300 Presorted Standard Postage & Fees Paid Sm ithsonian Institution G -94