Reindeer, Caribou and 'Fairy Stories' of State Power

David G. Anderson

Northern places are often spoken of in extreme, uncompromising terms. For many they are understood to be harsh, cold, remote and romantically challenging. These extreme metaphors are not innocent rhetorical flourishes. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have shown us, metaphors frame concepts in such a way as to shape the way people respond to them. The history of northern peoples is full of such misunderstandings. What is seen as the 'desolate' Arctic has become a dumping ground for the steaming artefacts of the Cold War (Osherenko and Young 1989). In the idiom of international law, northern territories are seen as terra nullius — empty frontiers wide open for settlement and appropriation of mineral wealth (Richardson 1993a). The anthropological canon, at times, has been no less innocent for its tradition of placing Arctic hunter-gatherers in test-case studies at what Harvey Feit (1994) has evocatively identified as 'the absolute zero of human culture'. In an ironic reversal of terms, the 'fragile' Arctic ecosystem spurs urban environmentalists to protect it with nature reserves and management regimes, often by forcibly evicting the people who use the land and thus impacting the environment in a different way (Lynge 1995b; Catton 1997; Spence 1999). Stefansson (1921) and Berger (1977) prominently employed concepts such as 'the Friendly Arctic' and 'Arctic Homeland' in order to fight these metaphors with words which force us to focus upon the people living in the North. However, even here the human element of the phrase stands in an unexpected and defiant contrast to the coldness of the geographic term.

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Uses and Abuses of 'Traditional Knowledge'

Perspectives from the Yukon Territory

Julie Cruikshank

Since the 1990s, discussions about indigenous knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge have become internationalised, both in scholarly debates such as those emerging from environmental anthropology, and as part of daily discussions in indigenous communities where anthropologists work. These discussions usually originate in local questions: for example, knowledge debates are entwined with issues of sustainable development in Asia (Agrawal 1995; Bruun and Kalland 1995; Huber and Pederson 1997) and with concerns about predation by pharmaceutical companies in South America (Posey 1990; Brush 1993; Rival 1998). They overlap with land claims struggles in Australia (Povinelli 1993, 1995), in New Zealand (Sissons 1993) and in Canada, where they also concern access to participation in scientific research in the Arctic and sub-Arctic (Ingold 1996; Scott 1996; Nadasdy 1999). Concepts like local knowledge are now in broad circulation and find new points of connection at international conferences, among organisations committed to achieving indigenous rights, and in small communities where access to communications technology is being achieved (see Descola and Palsson 1996; Ellen 1996; Sillitoe 1998; and Ingold 2000 for substantial overviews of this literature).

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Local Knowledge in Greenland

Arctic Perspectives and Contextual Differences

Frank Sejersen

As the discussions about the generalities and particularities of local knowledge pervade the academic and indigenous communities, one is increasingly struck by the question: Why has indigenous knowledge never become an issue in Europe and Greenland in the way that it has in North America? (Dybbroe 1999: 14). Although Greenland is an Arctic Inuit community, its history is closely related to Danish colonial policy which sets it distinctly apart from the North American Arctic. An analysis of institutional, cultural and social differences between Greenland and the North American Arctic may provide answers to the above question as well as broaden the discussion of local knowledge in general. The striking differences between Greenland and other Arctic communities with respect to political development, and the role of leaders and the perceptions of community integrity, complicate simple generalisations about local knowledge in the Arctic.

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Codifying Knowledge about Caribou

The History of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada

Natasha Thorpe

In the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut, Canada, the idea that one species could manage another was once unfamiliar to local Inuit. Traditionally, Inuit interrelated to caribou with respect and reciprocity, using the fundamental tenet that all species are equal and interconnected. For Inuit, whose identity, culture and survival were inextricably bound to caribou, the cultural beliefs, traditions and customs known as pitquhiit (plural) described their interrelation to caribou and other animals. This chapter considers the question of whether or not new practices used to codify pitquhiit truly reflect its nature. My main argument is that what hunters today in Kitikmeot term a 'caribou code' is indeed a different way of talking about caribou, but that it is a positive adaptation to two hundred years of intense change. I will argue that the current attempts to define 'traditional knowledge' and to build a system of 'co-management' for caribou are active and positive ways that elders can counteract the changes brought upon pitquhiit since the eighteenth century.

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A Story about a Muskox

Some Implications of Tetlit Gwich'in Human-Animal Relationships

Robert P. Wishart

There is a growing body of literature in anthropology concerned with state-aboriginal relations as they centre on issues of wildlife management. 1 These analyses coincide and refer to another, larger literature regarding aboriginal human-animal and human-land relationships.2 Rather than revisiting these arguments directly, this chapter makes use of the general messages from these bodies of literature while focusing on what I was told by one wildlife officer and some Gwich'in elders about the ramifications of one particular hunting incident, when a muskox was killed by a Tetlit Gwich'in elder from the community of Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada.

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'We did not want the muskox to increase'

Inuvialuit Knowledge about Muskox and Caribou Populations on Banks Island, Canada

Murielle Nagy

This chapter compares the knowledge of Inuvialuit and that of biologists about how muskoxen and caribou relate to one another. I focus upon one contrasting assumption: the assumption on the part of biologists that the two species are discrete, as opposed to that of Inuvialuit of the patterns of interrelation and avoidance between the two. This debate takes place in the context of one of the most dramatic and puzzling environmental shifts (some would say disaster) in the circumpolar North: the abandonment of Banks Island by Peary caribou in the years following a massive increase of muskoxen. I conclude in this chapter that indigenous knowledge provides us not only with hints as to the rich behaviour of Arctic mammals, but also with wisdom on how to arrange wildlife so as to suit local needs. In this case, Inuvialuit speak in polite admonishment of the policies of wildlife agencies, which made muskox increase without taking into account the Inuvialuit knowledge that this would only lead to emptying the land of caribou. In this chapter the application of knowledge of animals implies certain choices of what the landscape will look like, which is in the end a political issue.

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Political Ecology in Swedish Saamiland

Hugh Beach

In northern Sweden today (and indeed over the centuries albeit, in changing ways) two animal species, wolf and reindeer, in their relations to humankind and to each other hold key positions in a number of ongoing local debates. Both wolf and reindeer are major economic determinants of the livelihood of indigenous Saami pastoralists. Both are also powerful symbols, moving debates of resource conflict and compensation dramatically into larger discourses of principle concerning the relations between a native minority and the nation-state and between environmentalists and the Saami herders who have increasingly been cast in terms of 'eco-criminals'. Both Bjørklund and Wishart note similar processes of the criminalisation of indigenous livelihood traditions, in this volume.

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Saami Pastoral Society in Northern Norway

The National Integration of an Indigenous Management System

Ivar Bjørklund

In 1992 the Norwegian government delivered a report to Parliament, in which it concluded that 'the law (regarding reindeer husbandry) has not worked according to its intentions. [It] has not been able to secure balanced resource management and viable adaptation'.1 These are rather harsh words for a governmental report and they certainly beg some hard questions. In this chapter I will therefore take a closer look at why this policy has gone wrong and ask what the consequences of this failure are. The answers shed some light on the viability of indigenous management systems in ecological terms and the consequences of the economic and political integration of such systems into the national state.

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Chukotkan Reindeer Husbandry in the Twentieth Century

In the Image of the Soviet Economy

Patty A. Gray

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had far-reaching effects that precipitated social transformation throughout Russian society. Although most of the information that reaches the West concerns the more visible locales, such as Moscow, the most cataclysmic changes occurred in rural areas far from Moscow, about which little is generally heard. This paper concerns one particular region of the North that is located as far from Moscow as one can go in Russia — the far northeastern Chukotka Autonomous Region. It concerns, moreover, one of the key economies of the North, reindeer herding, which is also one of the economies most severely affected by the post-Soviet transformation.

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A Genealogy of the Concept of 'Wanton Slaughter' in Canadian Wildlife Biology

Craig Campbell

I think the natives must be told, 'the good old days' are gone forever. The continued unregulated killing of migratory barren-ground caribou will destroy the great herds within our life time. If the native peoples do not soon exercise restraint and limit their take of caribou; if they pursue in not accepting the facts that have been put before them; rebuilding of the caribou herds, if it is possible, will take decades. Future generations of Canadian natives may never know the pleasure of the caribou hunt! F.L. Miller 1983: 173

There is a common policy in most northern regions today, from Canada to Siberia, that local people and scientists must work together in order to manage Arctic landscapes. In the 1990s and the start of the twentyfirst century, 'co-management' has been a key word in the relationship between scientists and indigenous hunters of caribou. It is no secret that the political and in many cases the legal imperatives that encourage biologists and traditional hunters to work together makes an uneasy alliance. Several key articles (Bergerud 1988; Osherenko 1988; Freeman 1989) as well as chapters in this collection (Usher, Nagy, Sejersen) record difficulties in the purpose, paradigms and methods of this collaboration. To summarise an often-quoted critical reflection on the difference between scientific and traditional approaches to knowledge (Thomas and Schaefer 1991), scientific investigation is distinguished for being quantitative, predictable and based on verified information, while those using traditional knowledge favour qualitative, ethical or hearsay information.

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Caribou Crisis or Administrative Crisis?

Wildlife and Aboriginal Policies on the Barren Grounds of Canada, 1947–60

Peter J. Usher

The postwar years were a time of rapid change in the Canadian North. There was a growing view in government that the old fur trade economy was no longer sustainable, but what should or could be done about it was unclear. The problem seemed especially critical in the least accessible and least developed parts of the North, not least in the central Barren Grounds between the Mackenzie River and Hudson Bay. The defining event of that place and time was the so-called 'caribou crisis': the apparent confirmation by science of long-held suspicions of severe depletion of the great Barren Ground caribou herds, due to overhunting by the Inuit and Dene who, it was supposed, were unwittingly setting themselves up for disaster.

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Epilogue

Cultivating Arctic Landscapes

Mark Nuttall

The contributors to this volume have discussed the relationship of circumpolar peoples to the wild animals which support them, and the politics of regulation of Arctic landscapes, hunting and herding in a range of local cultural contexts. Although the ethnographic material ranges across a vast part of the northern reaches of the globe, the contributors point to the compelling similarities in the political and cultural settings of aboriginal peoples, together with their common experiences about how various capitalist and socialist states claimed control over their lands and animals. The majority of contributors describe how animals such as caribou and reindeer are the cultural, economic and often spiritual foundation for many northern peoples, including the Gwich'in of Alaska and northwestern Canada, the Saami of Fennoscandia and Russia's Kola Peninsula, and numerous peoples of Siberia and the Russian Far East, such as the Evenki and Chukchi. Inuit groups in Alaska, Canada and Greenland, while mainly hunters of marine mammals, often see caribou meat as an important subsistence food or an important source of income. Arctic peoples identify closely with the caribou they hunt and the reindeer they herd. They are dependent on them for much of their food, and they use their hides for clothing, for tents and other shelters. Yet these animals not only sustain indigenous peoples in an economic sense; they provide a fundamental basis for social identity, cultural survival and spiritual life, which is illustrated by rich mythologies, vivid oral histories, festivals and ceremonies.

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