Newsletter

Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History

May 2019 

NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR: 

THE ASC AT THIRTY (1988–2018)

By William Fitzhugh

The Arctic Studies Center (ASC) turned 30 this 

year. 1988 does not seem that long ago, but the 

old adage, “time flies when you’re having fun!”, is 

certainly apt. The occasion of our “pearl” anniversary 

seems like a good moment to reflect on our past 

and to share thoughts about what lies ahead.

Our most important 

accomplishment is 

surely survival! As a 

component of the U.S. 

Government—although 

shielded by ‘Mother 

Smithsonian’—survival 

from one decade 

to the next is not a 

given by any means. 

The ASC began as a 

special program of 

the NMNH in 1988 

(shortly after passage 

of the 1984 US Arctic 

Policy Act) when, with 

Senator Ted Stevens’ 

help, the Smithsonian 

received a line item 

appropriation from 

Congress to establish 

an Arctic Anthropology 

and Biology program. For lack of funds, the biology 

part never materialized. A budget of $250,000 was 

granted the first year and in 1989 was increased 

to $350,000, allowing us to hire a small staff. The 

remaining funds gave us an operating budget which has 

since dwindled to zero, being only partially replaced in 

2012 by proceeds from the Tiger Burch endowment. 

In the years following 1988, Stephen Loring, Igor 

Krupnik, and a program assistant (Kim Wells) joined 

the ASC at a time when much of our energy was 

devoted to touring Crossroads of Continents: Cultures 

of Siberia and Alaska and laying the groundwork for 

a regional ASC office in Alaska. During the 1980s, the 

popularity of the ASC’s Inua and Crossroads exhibitions 

demonstrated the need for a permanent Smithsonian 

presence in Alaska to showcase its collections, engage 

researchers, and build educational programs. Anchorage 

won the competition over Fairbanks for our field site, 

and in 1993 we signed an MOU with the Municipality of 

Anchorage to partner with the Anchorage Museum, then 

under the direction of Patricia Wolf. Aron Crowell, 

who had been the cocurator of Crossroads, 

was appointed director of 

the ASC Alaska office in 

1994. Crowell launched 

his Gulf of Alaska 

archaeological research 

program and joined 

forces with the newlycreated Alutiiq Museum 

in Kodiak to produce 

ASC’s first communitypartnered exhibition, 

Looking Both Ways: 

Heritage and Identity of 

the Alutiiq People, which 

opened in 2001 and 

toured through 2003. The 

advantage of having an 

Alaska base was proven 

early by the extensive 

collaboration it allowed 

with Alutiiq elders and scholars, and ASC went 

on to cultivate a broader statewide network of 

Alaska Native, agency, and university partners. 

In 1998 Crowell began working with the Anchorage 

Museum on a grand exhibition of Smithsonian 

collections gathered during the heyday of early Alaska 

natural history and anthropology led by Spencer Baird

and Alaskan naturalists including William Healy 

Dall, Robert Kennicott, Lucien Turner, Edward 

Nelson, and John Murdoch. The Smithsonian gallery 

The new Rasmuson wing at the Anchorage Museum and SI 

Secretary Wayne Clough and ASC Anchorage Director Aron 

Crowell at the opening of the ASC exhibition Living Our 

Cultures: Sharing Our Knowledge in 2010

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/anthropology/programs/arctic-studies-center Number 26
2 ASC Newsletter

at the Anchorage Museum, and the new museum wing 

which houses it, took over a decade to plan and build. 

Funding for the museum expansion came from federal, 

state, and foundation sources, including a $50M gift 

from the late Elmer Rasmuson Sr., then President of 

the National Bank of Alaska. Crowell led a series of 

“reverse expeditions” to Washington with Alaska Native 

consultants to research and select over 600 NMNH and 

NMAI objects for the exhibition, and directed the project 

in consultation with Alaska Native cultural leaders and 

educators. Dawn Biddison, the Alaska exhibition cocurator and program manager, joined the office in 2003 

and has made important contributions in all areas. The 

completed exhibition, Living Our Cultures, Sharing 

Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska, opened 

in 2010 and has provided enjoyment and education 

for hundreds of thousands of visitors from Alaska and 

around the world. Living Our Cultures was designed 

so that the objects on display can be easily removed 

for study in collaborative arts, language, and heritage 

projects, which the ASC Alaska office organizes in 

collaboration with Alaska Native community partners.

The ASC Alaska office—through its research, 

exhibitions, and educational programs—has 

received wide acclaim as a model for innovative 

museum anthropology and community outreach, 

demonstrating the potential of cultural heritage as 

a sustaining and restorative force. Aron Crowell

has proposed a new Smithsonian exhibition for 

2022, when current loan agreements expire, that 

would explore diverse themes of Circumpolar 

Indigenous Knowledge from technology and 

design to ecological understanding and oral 

tradition. The new exhibit would bring renewed 

commitment to the Smithsonian-Alaska 

connection that has been the centerpiece of the 

Arctic Studies Center’s first thirty years.

Other than activities in Alaska, the ASC’s middle years, 

1998–2008, saw many developments on the mall. More 

completely discussed in our 2008 Newsletter #16, 

they included major exhibitions like Arctic: A Friend 

Acting Strangely (2006–2007) (the Smithsonian’s 

pioneering exposition of Arctic climate change); Ainu: 

Spirit of a Northern People (1999) developed with 

Japanese and Ainu colleagues, and the block-buster, 

Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga (2000), produced 

with Scandinavian scholars and funding. Along 

with exhibits and catalogues, we initiated studies of 

Bronze Age Mongolia, community archaeology in 

Labrador, environmental archaeology in Southeast 

Alaska, documentation of indigenous knowledge and 

observations of climate and sea ice change on St. 

Lawrence Island, and early Inuit-European contact 

archaeology on the Quebec Lower North Shore. A string 

of articles and books appeared on these and other topics.

Many of these activities have continued through the 

last decade as our programs (like ourselves!) matured. 

Aron Crowell and Dawn Biddison developed their 

museum-based education programs, and Crowell

collaborated with Tlingit communities investigating 

connections between oral history, climate, and 

archaeology. Stephen Loring continued archaeological 

work with the Labrador Innu and became the goto guy for knowledge about the Smithsonian Arctic 

collections, photographs, and films. The Quebec 

archaeological work successfully established the 

first definitive evidence for Inuit occupancy in the 

northeastern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Igor Krupnik

became a lead social science organizer for the 

International Polar Year 2007–08, and ASC hosted 

the largest-ever Inuit Studies Conference in 2012. A 

string of exhibitions appeared, including Genghis Khan 

and the Mongol Empire, Gifts from the Ancestors: 

Ancient Ivories from the Bering Strait (with Princeton 

Art Museum), Arctic Journeys—Ancient Memories 

(with the National Museum of American Indian), 

and Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend (now at 

NMNH)—all with illustrated catalogues. Prize-winning 

books like Early Inuit Studies (2016), Maine to 

Greenland (2013), and Yupik Transitions (2013) were 

published, and the Arctic Crashes: People and Animals 

in the Changing North research project was launched, 

completed, and its concluding book is in press. 

We inaugurated an annual Ernest S. Burch Lecture, 

conducted festivals of Greenland and of Alaska at 

NMNH, built a huge ASC website and maintain the ASC 

blog Magnetic North. The current Narwhal exhibition will 

be extended by a Smithsonian Traveling Exhibits Service 

(SITES) tour for several years, and ASC and SITES are 

developing an exhibition on the boreal forest to promote 

appreciation for the largest—yet little known—forest on 

Stephen Loring, Bill Fitzhugh, Dosia Laeyendecker, Kim 

Wells, Tori Oliver, and Igor Krupnik in 1992
 ASC Newsletter 3

earth. This Newsletter issue provides a window to our 

diverse activities conducted in the past year.

These highlights provide a glimpse of how the ASC 

has developed over the past thirty years. We owe much 

to our colleagues for our record. These activities could 

not have been carried out without a vast network of 

friends and researchers from NMNH, the Smithsonian, 

and the wider world. Our research collaborators and 

associates, our office staff (Nancy Shorey, Dawn 

Biddison, and Anthropology and Museum helpers), 

and a host of Research Associates, students, and 

interns have brought labor, life, and light to our work. 

Looking forward, our next decade will no doubt bring 

many changes, not least in administration, new research 

areas, and staff. Igor Krupnik has become Chair of 

Anthropology (as of 2018), and Ian Owens—hailing 

from the Natural History Museum in London—has 

become Deputy Director of Natural History, assisting 

museum management with Director Kirk Johnson. John 

Davis, art historian from Smith College has become 

Smithsonian Provost, and our current Secretary, David 

Skorton, will step down in June 2019, and we lost 

Dennis Stanford, a colleague and a friend in April 2019.

Meanwhile, ASC has a plate-full of new programs, 

like the centennial celebration of Knud Rasmussen’s 

1921–24 Fifth Thule Expedition (FTE), the Danish 

research enterprise that began in Greenland and 

ended in Chukotka and established the field 

of Inuit Studies then known as “Eskimology”. 

Recently we launched Fith Thule Expedition with 

an ASC-organized symposium at the 2019 Alaska 

Anthropological Association meetings in Nome, 

Alaska. Akin to our seminal Crossroads endeavor 

that launched the ASC’s “thousand ships,” we 

expect FTE will provide an exciting new field of 

opportunities for research, exhibition, collection 

evaluation, and interaction with colleagues and 

indigenous partners from—in Rasmussen’s memorable 

phrase—“across Arctic America.” Stay tuned!

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

Arctic Studies Center homepage

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/

anthropology/programs/arctic-studies-center

For ASC publications visit: https://repository.

si.edu/handle/10088/36085/browse

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

ASC Anchorage Sharing Knowledge website:

http://alaska.si.edu

DENNIS STANFORD (1943–2019) 
4 ASC Newsletter

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Notes from the Directror: the ASC at Thirty (1988–

2018) .............................................................................1

ASC Anchorage, Alaska Office ...................................6

Artifacts to Living Art at Quinhagak 

Earthquake Repairs to the Living Our Cultures 

Exhibition

Returning Research: New NSF Funding for a Yakutat 

Community Report and Video Archive

Athabascan Moosehide Tanning: Project Update

Polar lab: Collective

Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska YouTube 

Channel

News ...........................................................................14

Narwhal Exhibit to Travel

Stearns A. Morse Receives Peacock Medal

Basque and Mi’kmaq: Reviving Ancient Connections

Reclaiming a Past

“Polar 2018” Meeting In Davos Celebrates IPY 

Anniversary

A Japanese International Forum on “Memory and the 

Museum”

Research .....................................................................25

Homage to Anna Kerttula de Echave

Archaeological Surveys in Rigolet in 2018

Jesup-2 Tree Keeps Bearing Fruits: New Publications 

on Siberian Ethnography

Burch Endowment Support for ASC Activities in 2018

Ghosts of Caribou Herds Past: Evaluating Historical 

Herd Crashes Using Genetics and Indigenous 

Knowledge

Ties That Bind: Submarine Cables and Smithsonian 

Research

A Boreal Forest Interlude

Fifth Thule Expedition Centennial Marches on 

Quebec Lower North Shore Archaeology in 2018

SIWO Observers Document Shrinking Sea Ice and 

Unpredictable Walrus in the Bering Sea

A Hokkaido Sabbatical

Collections ..................................................................52

Swiss Curators Inaugurate Network for Arctic Museum 

Collections

Ersersaaneq—Creating Knowledge through Images

Curators’ Tour: Indigenous Art

Darkhad Textile Recovery and Conservation Project

Treasures off the Beaten Track: a Visit to the Cranbrook 

Institute of Science (CIS)

Two NMNH ‘Totem Poles’ Find a New Home, New 

Names and New Stories

Outreach ....................................................................67

Vikings, Basques, and Whalers: Activities at Mystic 

Seaport Museum

Narwhals and Unicorns Meet at the Met Cloisters

Boreal Forest Exhibit Update

Research Associates, Fellows and Interns ...............71

Time of My Life

Launching a Career

Archaeology-Forensics and Pacific Northwest Coast 

Art

Thoughts on a Year with the ASC 

Thoughts on the Archaeology of Sustainable 

Development 

Interning at Arctic Studies

An Orangutan Researcher in Labrador

From Puffins to Soapstone Pots: A Summer up North 

with Bill Fitzhugh

My ASC Internship

Book Reviews .............................................................77

Between Sea and Glacier: Greenland in Changing 

World, by Wilfred E. Richard

I Dreamed the Animals. Kaniuekutat: the Life of an 

Innu Hunter, by Georg Henriksen 

Ceremony in Stone: the Biluut Petroglyph Complex. 

Prehistoric Rock Art in the Mongolian Altai, by 

Richard D. Kortum

A Grand Adventure: the Lives of Helge and Anne 

Stine Ingstad and their Discovery of a Viking 

Settlement in North America, by Benedicte 

Ingstad

Narwhal Receives William Mills Book Prize

TRANSITIONS .........................................................80

Dana Levy (1937–2017) 

Remembering Donald W. Clark (1932–2018)

Bob Bryan (1931–2018): Tracking Bert and I into 

Subarctic Quebec

Dennis Stanford (1943–2019) 

2018 ASC Staff Publications .....................................83
 ASC Newsletter 5

ERNEST “TIGER” BURCH ENDOWMENT

JAMES VANSTONE ENDOWMENT 

Alaska Anthropological Association

Alaska State Council on the Arts

Alliance de Industrie Touristique du Quebec

Anchorage Museum Foundation

Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated

Carlson Family Trust

Central Council of the Tlingit and 

Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska

CIRI Foundation

Dartmouth College Goodman Fund

Peggy and Greg Favretto

Susan M. Ferguson

First National Bank Alaska

William W. and Lynne D. Fitzhugh

Haayk Foundation

Stephen W. Haycox

Donald Holly

Labrador Nunatsiavut Inuit Government

John Levy

Margaret A. Cargill Foundation

Memorial University

Metlakatla Indian Community

National Science Foundation

National Park Foundation

National Park Service

National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

NMNH Q?rius Education Center

Notre Dame University 

Nunavik Parks

Nunavik Tourism

Robert Paulus

Sealaska Heritage Foundation

Smithsonian Recovering Voices Program

The Center for Circumpolar Studies

The Provincial Archaeology Office, 

Government of Newfoundland-Labrador

Douglas W. and Kathie Veltre

Windland 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:

Betsy Baker

Cook Inlet Tribal Council

Perry and Arden Eaton

Heather Flynn

Betsy and David Lawer

Lynden Incorporated

Jo and Peter Michalski

Rika and John Mouw

Rasmuson Foundation

The Frances & David Rose Foundation

Gail Sieberts

Morgan, Christen, and James Torgerson

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

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: tukilik@icloud.com

Noel Broadbent, Archaeologist: broadben@si.edu

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

The Smithsonian Arctic Center (ASC) is sustained 

through a public-private partnership. Philanthropic 

donations provide funding for essential communitybased collaborations, impactful educational 

programming for the public, and continuous 

research in the ever-changing Arctic region.

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 

2018/2019 PARTNERS AND DONORS
6 ASC Newsletter

ASC ANCHORAGE, ALASKA OFFICE

ARTIFACTS TO LIVING ART 

AT QUINHAGAK 

By Aron L. Crowell

Artifacts are coming to life at Quinhagak (properly 

Kuinerraq, “new river channel”), a coastal Yup’ik 

village of 694 residents just south of Kuskokwim 

Bay on the Bering Sea. The village has a long and 

storied history and is today the scene of a cultural 

revival inspired by discoveries from the past. 

The story begins with archaeological excavations at 

the nearby site of Nunalleq (“old village”), undertaken 

since 2009 by archaeologist Richard Knecht and the 

University of Aberdeen in partnership with the local 

Alaska Native village corporation Qanirtuuq Inc. It 

continues through heritage education projects at the 

Quinhagak School inspired by the dig, the opening of 

the village’s own cultural and archaeological research 

center in August 2018, and the launch in May 2019 

of the Arctic Studies Center’s Yup’ik Twined Baskets: 

Renewing an Ancestral Art, a community-partnered 

arts documentation and teaching project inspired by 

centuries-old basketry found at the Nunalleq site. 

Nunalleq may be the original location of Quinhagak 

and was founded around 1500 AD alongside an old 

channel of the Arolik River. Its frozen soils preserve 

a fabulous abundance of organic artifacts made of 

grass (baskets, mats, ropes), wood (bentwood boxes, 

dolls, arrows, animal carvings, dance masks), and bone 

as well as stone tools and pottery. Human remains 

and a burned and collapsed sod house riddled with 

arrow points give evidence of a massacre by raiders 

from another village in about 1650 AD, an episode 

that has been carried forward in oral traditions 

about the pre-contact Bow and Arrow Wars. 

Lance Anaver of Quinhagak with an issran harvesting 

basket, 2015. Photo by Erika Larsen for the University of 

Aberdeen, courtesy of Richard Knecht

A contemporary open-weave, twined grass basket from 

Quinhagak. Photo by: Erika Larsen for the University of 

Aberdeen, courtesy of Richard Knecht

The Quinhagak Dancers celebrate the culture center 

opening. 

Photo by Aron Crowell

Warren Jones, the president of Qanirtuuq, Inc., 

recognized the scientific significance of the Nunalleq 

site when it was first exposed a decade ago by coastal 

erosion. He also saw a unique opportunity to explore 

community history, engage Quinhagak youth with their 

Yup’ik heritage, and connect the artifacts to living arts. 
 ASC Newsletter 7

Jones invited Knecht and the University of Aberdeen 

team to begin scientific excavations and to involve 

community members and the school. The corporation 

funded the dig for several years until major grant 

funding could be obtained from the UK Government’s 

Arts and Humanities Research Council. Qanirtuuq Inc. 

also constructed the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology 

Center, which houses over 60,000 artifacts that were 

cataloged, conserved, and returned to the village by the 

University of Aberdeen in time for the Center’s grand 

opening in August. These include over 3,000 woven 

grass baskets, mats, and fragments that were treated 

at Aberdeen by conservator Julie Masson-MacLean. 

I attended the opening festivities for the new center 

and participated in a two-day advisory committee 

workshop to plan programming and management.

The Arctic Studies Center’s upcoming twined grass 

basketry project in Quinhagak, hosted by Qanirtuuq 

Inc. and funded by a $32,000 Journey to What Matters

grant from The CIRI Foundation, will produce a 

weaving workshop taught by two distinguished artists 

from the community—Grace Anaver and Pauline 

Beebe—who have retained the knowledge of how 

to weave open-twine issran harvesting baskets. This 

older style of weaving, which was used exclusively 

by ancestral Yupiit at Nunalleq, was surpassed 

in popularity a century ago by the newer coiling 

method, which involves stitching bundles of grass 

in a spiral to form a stiff, rounded basket. Weaving 

styles changed under the influence of Moravian 

missionaries who encouraged coiled basketry as 

more suitable for the commercial curio market. 

Now Quinhagak basket makers are inspired to revive 

the softer, twined style of weaving for its beauty and 

adaptability, its heritage value, and its potential to 

capture new interest in the Alaska Native arts market, 

where such bags are currently not available. They will 

have the opportunity to learn the style from Grace 

and Pauline during the workshop in August and to 

study archaeological examples in the Nunalleq culture 

center collections. These examples are beautifully 

preserved and mounted, and demonstrate various types 

of knots, spacing, and twisting of the grass strands.

Arctic Studies Center assistant curator Dawn Biddison

will video-document the workshop and the artists’ 

weaving process for production of an instructional video 

that will be distributed in the Yup’ik region on DVD and 

Eva Malvich, former director of the Yup'ik cultural center in 

Bethel, picking beach grass for basket weaving on the shore 

of the Bering Sea at Quinhagak. Taken on opening day of the 

Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center in Quinhagak. 

Photo by Aron Crowell

Chuna McIntyre leads the dancers at the opening of the 

Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center. 

Photo by Aron Crowell
8 ASC Newsletter

posted on the Arctic Studies Center’s YouTube channel. 

The class will be bilingual in Yup’ik and English, 

providing the opportunity for linguistic documentation 

of the basketry lexicon, assisted by Yup’ik translator 

and community liaison Jacqueline Cleveland. 

In late July, Dawn will return to Quinhagak to document 

grass harvesting and preparation. Grass picking was 

traditionally undertaken in the fall after the first frost 

when the blades would dry and turn a clean tan color, 

but with present climate warming and prolonged autumn 

rains the grass becomes discolored with dark spots. An 

emerging practice is to harvest grass in mid-summer 

when it is still bright green, then to carefully hang and 

dry it for a prolonged period indoors to make it ready 

for weaving. Grace looks forward to sharing her art 

and extensive cultural knowledge with members of the 

Smithsonian National Board when they visit the Alaska 

office of the Arctic Studies Center on July 22, 2019.

EARTHQUAKE REPAIRS TO THE 

LIVING OUR CULTURES EXHIBITION

By Aron L. Crowell

The Anchorage Museum and the Arctic Studies 

Center recently hosted an expert “earthquake relief” 

team of collections and conservation staff from the 

National Museum of Natural History and National 

Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), who came 

to Anchorage on February 24, 2019 to prepare for 

repairs to the Smithsonian exhibition Living Our 

Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples 

of Alaska. Glass end-panels on three of the large 

exhibition cases cracked during the major earthquake 

that struck Anchorage on November 30, 2018, and 

the objects they contained needed to be carefully 

removed and placed in temporary storage before case 

repairs could begin. Kelly McHugh and Adrien 

Mooney from NMAI, along with Dave Rosenthal, 

Kim Cullen Cobb, and Allison Butler from NMNH, 

worked with the Anchorage Museum’s Monica Shah

and her staff to deinstall 211 objects from the Yup’ik, 

St. Lawrence Island/Siberian, and Sugpiaq/Unangax 

cases and to assess all 600 objects in the exhibition 

for any evidence of earthquake damage. Anthropology 

Department chair Igor Krupnik visited to review 

the work in progress and to plan additional NMNH 

staffing commitments needed to complete the project. 

The Smithsonian team flew back to Washington DC 

on March 3, 2019 at the end of a very productive week 

and will return to Anchorage in early April to reinstall 

the objects. In the interim, exhibition fabricators 

KubikMaltbie will remove and replace the broken 

glass panels—each weighing about 1500 lbs—using 

specialized tools and lift equipment. The gallery, which 

has been closed since November 30, 2018, is expected 

to reopen on April 13, 2019 in time for the first spring 

visitors and to welcome the Smithsonian National Board 

when it meets in Alaska during July 21–26, 2019.

The magnitude (Mw) 7.1 earthquake on November 

30 was an unsettling event, even for Alaskans used to 

frequent earth tremors, and caused great concern for 

the safety of the irreplaceable Alaska Native heritage 

art that is displayed in Living Our Cultures. Anchorage 

and surrounding areas experienced 30 to 60 seconds 

of severe ground shaking followed minutes later by 

a strong Mw 5.7 aftershock. The strength, proximity 

of the epicenter (about 10 miles north of the city) and 

relatively shallow depth of the earthquake accounted for 

A child looking at artifacts in the Nunalleq Culture and 

Archaeology Center on opening day. Photo by Aron Crowell

Kelly McHugh (NMAI), Kim Cullen Cobb (NMNH), and 

Monica Shah (Anchorage Museum) (left to right) inspect a 

Yup'ik hunting visor for damage after removing it from its 

exhibition case. Photo by Aron Crowell
 ASC Newsletter 9

the nearly $100M in damages it caused to local roads, 

the Anchorage airport, schools, public buildings, and 

homes. Fortunately, no buildings collapsed, no lives 

were lost, and there were surprisingly few injuries. 

Post-quake settling will continue for months and 

has caused swarms of aftershocks. From December 

2018 through February 2019 the U.S. Geological 

Survey’s Alaska Earthquake Center recorded over 

350 perceptible tremors in the Mw 3.0–5.0 range. 

The Anchorage Museum 

escaped significant structural 

damage, although in older parts 

of the structure there were 

dropped ceiling tiles, tumbled 

offices, a sprinkler release, 

damaged exhibit cases, and 

several fallen artworks. Newer 

additions to the building, 

including the 2010 wing that 

houses the Arctic Studies Center, 

stood up exceptionally well 

due to modern seismic building 

codes that were adopted after 

the devastating Mw 9.2 Alaska 

earthquake of 1964 (152 times 

stronger than the November 

2018 event). Nonetheless, 

swaying of the building caused 

the exhibition cases in Living 

Our Cultures to torque slightly 

in an east-west direction which 

caused the glass breakage. 

Most importantly, no 

Smithsonian objects were 

damaged, which is a great 

tribute to the extensive seismic 

engineering that went into 

design of both the cases and the 

pole-and-bracket support system on which the objects 

are mounted. Recognizing that Anchorage is an area of 

“high seismic vulnerability” with over 40,000 detectable 

earthquakes per year and occasional very large ones, 

exhibition designers Ralph Appelbaum, Inc., case 

builders ClickNetherfield, and KubikMaltbie produced 

cases that are suspended from steel beams in the ceiling 

of the gallery and only partially anchored to the floor, 

allowing all but the glass panels on the ends of the cases 

to move independently and thus to not be damaged by 

opposing motions of the two levels. Inside the suspended 

cases, which weigh several tons each, the vertical 

support rods are tensioned and cross-braced to dampen 

out vibrations and to minimize shaking of the fragile 

objects. Extra-strong steel, brass, and plexiglass mounts 

were crafted to securely but softly grip and support 

each item. Very heavy objects such as stone lamps or 

large pieces like fur parkas required special attention 

to the strength and stability of the mounting system.

The system has been “tested” periodically by 

earthquakes since it was installed in 2010, including 

three local temblors greater than Mw 5.0 and a relatively 

distant Mw 7.1 in January 2016 (epicenter 165 miles SW 

of Anchorage). None of these events caused any damage 

to the Living Our Cultures objects or cases. During the 

November 30, 2018 quake, 

peak ground acceleration at the 

museum was measured at .27 g 

(g = gravitational acceleration) 

by the USGS, higher than 

in previous events but still 

well below the 1.0 g design 

specification used in designing 

the cases. Other than a Yup’ik 

hunting visor that partially 

escaped its mount but did not 

fall, and a Haida mask that shed 

an easily replaced feather, the 

entire exhibit collection came 

through unscathed. We may 

conclude that the Living Our 

Cultures exhibition has passed 

its most severe seismic test to 

date with flying colors, and 

that it could in fact withstand 

much more. Fortunately, the 

outlook for recurrence of a truly 

massive “great earthquake” like 

the one in 1964 is six to eight 

centuries in the future, according 

to paleo-seismological 

studies of earthquake cycles 

in southern Alaska.

Following the great work 

accomplished by the Smithsonian conservation 

team, members of the Smithsonian Council for 

Arctic Studies (SCAS) toured the gallery with 

ASC-Alaska Director Aron Crowell and Monica 

Shah to learn more about the restoration project. 

The SCAS is a dedicated friends circle that has 

contributed substantially to Arctic Studies Center 

public programs and educational outreach. Peter 

Michalski, Morgan Christen, and Douglas Veltre

joined the tour along with visiting ethnologist 

Koji Deriha (Hokkai-Gakuen University) who 

has comparative experience of earthquake impacts 

to museums in Japan. All were pleased to see the 

great care that the Smithsonian and Anchorage 

Museum have taken to prepare for natural disasters 

and to preserve their precious cultural collections.

NMAI registrar Adrien Mooney points out cracked 

glass at the top of the Yup'ik exhibition case in 

Living Our Cultures. Photo by Aron Crowell
10 ASC Newsletter

THESE MOUNTS ARE MADE FOR QUAKING: A SEISMIC SUCCESS STORY

NMNH and NMAI

Sponsored by:

National Collections Program and

Smithsonian Collections Advisory Committee

Living Our Cultures, 

Sharing Our Heritage:

The First Peoples of 

Alaska

This exhibit of over 600 indigenous 

Alaska artifacts from the NMNH 

and NMAI collections is on loan to 

the Smithsonian Arctic Studies 

Center in the Anchorage Museum. 

The exhibit was conceived as an 

accessible collection, allowing for 

hands-on study by Alaska Native 

elders, artists, and scholars. 

Collaboration between exhibit designers, curators, conservators, and 

mountmakers resulted in the creation of a seismic mounting system that 

allows easy and safe handling for study but does not interfere with the 

aesthetics or intention of the objects. 

Seismic mitigation efforts were recently put to the test during the magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Anchorage

in November 2018. Although several glass panels in the exhibit were broken, no objects were damaged—

and only two objects rotated on their mounts.

The success of designing a seismic 

mitigation system from the building to the 

object mount, and close collaboration 

from the project’s inception resulted in no 

damage to Smithsonian collections even 

through a major seismic event.
 ASC Newsletter 11

RETURNING RESEARCH: NEW NSF 

FUNDING FOR A YAKUTAT COMMUNITY 

REPORT AND VIDEO ARCHIVE

By Aron Crowell

The National Science Foundation’s Arctic Social 

Sciences program awarded a 2018 supplemental grant 

of $52,794 to the Arctic Studies Center project Glacial 

Retreat and the Cultural Landscape of Ice Floe Sealing 

at Yakutat Bay, Alaska (Principal Investigator, Aron 

Crowell). At Yakutat, research combining archaeology, 

oral traditions, place names documentation, and 

palaeoenvironmental studies has provided insight 

into Eyak, Ahtna, and Tlingit cultural and subsistence 

patterns in a highly productive fiord ecosystem that 

emerged from under glacial ice only within the last 900 

years (Crowell 2015, 2017, n.d.; Ramos n.d.; also see 

ASC Newsletters for 2013, 2014, and 2017). Indigenous 

hunting of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) among 

glacial ice floes at the head of the fiord, historically 

of primary importance for the provision of meat, 

skins, and oil, has been a central focus of the study.

The purpose of the supplemental grant is to ensure the 

full return of project results to the Yakutat community 

and the southeast Alaska region in the form of a 

Smithsonian book publication and as an extensive video 

archive of traditional knowledge interviews filmed 

at Yakutat during 2011–2014. These grant products 

will also fulfill technical data recovery provisions of 

a Memorandum of Agreement (MOU) signed by the 

Yakutat Tlingit Tribe, Sealaska Corporation, National 

Science Foundation, National Park Service, U.S. Forest 

Service, and State of Alaska under Section 106 of the 

National Historic Preservation Act. The multiparty 

agreement arose from the need for cooperation 

among both traditional and government owners of 

the lands around Yakutat Bay where archaeological 

sites representing various stages of Yakutat human 

and environmental history were investigated.

The book will present data and conclusions from the 

project in a format designed for use as a sourcebook 

for community history. It will build on and 

supplement Frederica de Laguna’s masterful Under 

Mount St. Elias: History and Culture of the Yakutat 

Tlingit (Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology

Vol. 7, 1972) and will be distributed at no cost to 

Yakutat households, the school, and tribe. Chapters 

on the fiord environment, glacial history, archaeology, 

oral traditions, and traditional ecological knowledge 

will be accompanied by maps, photographs, and 

scientific illustrations. The volume will include a 

posthumously-edited introduction by the late Elaine 

Abraham who was a prominent Gineix Kwáan clan 

leader, senior researcher on the Yakutat project, and 

chair of the Alaska Native Science Commission (see 

“Elaine Elizabeth Abraham, Chuu Shaa (1929–2016)” 

in the 2017 ASC Newsletter). Elaine’s daughter 

Judith Ramos (Department of Alaska Native Studies 

and Rural Development, University of Alaska 

Fairbanks) will contribute a chapter on traditional 

subsistence practices based on the oral interviews.

The video archive, consisting of more than 70 

interviews filmed with Yakutat elders, hunters, and 

adults and covering a wide range of cultural and 

historical topics, represents a major compilation 

of community knowledge. Scenes of seal hunting 

in the ice, seal butchering and food preparation, 

and a Gineix Kwáan memorial potlatch are also to 

be included. Hard-drive copies of the archive will 

be provided to the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe, Sealaska 

Heritage Institute in Juneau, and the Smithsonian’s 

National Anthropological Archives (NAA). To facilitate 

browsing and topical searches all interviews will 

be paired with full text transcriptions that include 

time codes so that the corresponding footage can be 

located and viewed. Linguist Jeff Leer (Professor 

Emeritus, Alaska Native Language Center, University 

of Alaska Fairbanks) will transcribe and translate 

spoken Tlingit portions, which are extensive in 

some interviews. Dawn Biddison (Arctic Studies 

Center, Alaska office) will edit and organize the 

video archive and prepare transcriptions, assisted by 

Heather McClain (Sealaska Heritage Institute). 

In November 2018, Judy Ramos and I presented 

a joint lecture about the project at the Sealaska 

Heritage Institute’s new and vibrantly beautiful 

An illustration for the Yakutat community report, “Raven's 

Flight over Tlákw.aan” by Emily Kearney-Williams, 2017. 

Tlákw.aan, the first village built by people of the Gineix 

Kwáan clan after their migration to Yakutat Bay, is depicted 

on the basis of archaeological evidence as it might have 

appeared in about A.D. 1575. In oral tradition Raven once 

tried to fly over the settlement but was overcome by smoke 

from its many hearth fires
12 ASC Newsletter

Walter Soboleff cultural center in Juneau. We 

showed selections from the video archive including 

George Ramos, Sr. (Judy’s father) discussing seal 

hunting and essential hunters’ knowledge of ice 

and current conditions. A second selection was of 

Yakutat elders visiting a 19th century sealing camp 

where we excavated in 2014. The camp is a highly 

significant site of community remembrance, and the 

visit was formally conducted with ceremonies to 

name and honor ancestors and to give thanks to the 

land, ocean, and glaciers. At the conclusion Elaine 

Abraham said, “All the sprits are awake and with 

us”—a reminder that Yakutat, like many indigenous 

communities, has deep and sacred connections to its 

past and its place, and that being invited to conduct 

research there is a special privilege and responsibility.

Crowell, Aron L.

2015 The Glacier’s Eternal Gift: Sealing, Science, 

and Indigenous Knowledge at Yakutat Bay, Alaska. 

In Keeping Our Traditions Alive: Compendium 

of Best Practices in Promoting the Traditional 

Ways of Life of Arctic Indigenous Peoples, pp. 

48–49. The Arctic Council Secretariat, Ottawa.

2017 Ice, Seals, and Guns: Late 19th Century 

Alaska Native Commercial Sealing in Southeast 

Alaska. Arctic Anthropology 52(2):11–32.

n.d. What “Really Happened”: A Migration 

Narrative from Southeast Alaska Compared to 

Archaeological and Geological Data. In Language, 

Memory, and Landscape, ed. K. Pratt and S. 

Heyes, University of Calgary Press. In press.

Ramos, Judy

n.d. Tlingit Hunting Along the Edge: Ice Floe Harbor 

Seal Hunting in Yakutat Alaska. In Arctic Crashes: 

People and Animals in the Changing North, ed. 

Igor Krupnik and Aron L. Crowell, Smithsonian 

Institution Scholarly Press, Washington, DC. In press

ATHABASCAN MOOSEHIDE 

TANNING: PROJECT UPDATE

By Dawn Biddison

In the last issue of the Newsletter, Tanning and Sewing 

Moosehide in the Dene Way provided an introduction to 

the latest project in the Material Traditions series at the 

Alaska office of the Arctic Studies Center and overview 

of work from September to December of 2017. This 

project continued through June 2018. Additional steps 

for hide tanning were video-documented by Dawn 

Biddison, working on and off around participants’ 

availability. Stopping and re-starting tanning steps was 

intentional: considered a necessary practice for making 

hide work plausible for busy, contemporary lives. 

In February, Helen Dick (Dena’ina Athabascan 

elder), Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart (Ahtna Athabascan 

regalia artist and linguist), Melissa Shaginoff

(Ahtna Athabascan artist) and Joel Isaak (Dena’ina 

Athabascan artist) worked at Sondra’s yard and garage 

in Kenai. Several methods were tried for wringing out 

a soaked hide, including unsuccessful techniques using 

modern implements and one successful technique: a 

traditional twisting and staking-out method that Helen’s 

family used. Next, the hide was scraped and stretched 

over a sawhorse—what was readily available instead 

of a scraping beam but lower and less effective—using 

slate scrapers and dull ulus, over a tarp (to keep it 

clean). The hide was also stretched out and lashed onto 

a frame for scraping, a technique that Joel prefers.

In May, Melissa and Joel collected punky wood 

along highway outside Sterling. Punky wood is at 

a specific stage of decay and is used for the final 

smoking of a tanned hide to provide color and water 

repellency. Work continued at the Isaak family yard in 

Soldotna, where we joined by Jeanie Maxim (Ahtna 

Athabascan elder) and Charlie Hubbard (Ahtna 

Athabascan elder). A cleaned, dry hide—one option 

for storing a hide for completing its tanning—was 

lightly smoked in a tent structure for a few hours, 

an Ahtna technique to better prepare it for the next 

stages of soaking, wringing and scraping. The hide 

was next soaked in a brain solution, then wrung 

out using the twisting and staking out method. 

Preliminary scraping began using a traditional 

scraping beam to support the hide. Also in May, 

Jeanie visited the Anchorage Museum for an in-depth 

interview about moosehide tanning with Melissa 

and Dawn, which included a review of archival 

photographs to facilitate discussion. At the end of 

May, Melissa and Dawn traveled to visit Jeanie at 

her home village of Gulkana, where Jeanie showed 

Melissa how to cut hair off of a fresh—or in this 

case freshly defrosted—moosehide. This technique 

of hair removal differs from the Dena’ina rotting 

technique (described in the last issue). Work started 

by cutting down a young spruce tree to shoulder 

level for a cutting post to support the hide. Three 

young Ahtna girls out on their bikes stopped by and 

stayed to watch the process and learn from Jeanie 

about moosehide tanning in their community. 

The video-documentation was completed in June with 

two additional segments. Outside of her Anchorage 

apartment, Melissa gave an overview of using a 

cutting post, scraping log and scraping beam, then 

she demonstrated how to use a scraping log—set 
 ASC Newsletter 13

up on her porch—for cleaning a moose hide with 

a draw knife. The last segment was an interview 

with Joel and Melissa recorded at the Anchorage 

Museum during which they assessed the experimental 

and varying elements of project processes. Video 

editing has been ongoing. The completed DVD 

set of twenty-one videos with over 300 minutes 

of tightly-edited footage will be available in April 

of 2019 and posted online to the Smithsonian 

Arctic Studies Center Alaska YouTube channel. 

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 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, artists 

are selected annually through open-call application 

and funded with an honorarium and travel costs. 

The program hosted four artists in 2018: BrittNee 

Brower, Susan Emery, Jenny Miller and Laura 

Revels. BrittNee is an Iñupiaq artist raised in Barrow. 

During her research visit, she focused on studying 

parka trims, other geometric patterns and graphic 

designs found in work from her home region to 

inform her growing experimentation with threedimensional work. Susan was raised by her Iñupiaq 

grandparents in Anchorage. She works primarily 

in mixed media acrylic painting, often featuring 

wildlife themes, and studied Iñupiaq objects in 

order to represent her material cultural heritage 

in her artwork. Jenny, another Iñupiaq artist, is a 

photographer and video/sound artist. Originally 

from Nome, she studied regalia and utilitarian 

objects to further her work in gender identity, 

gender roles and sexuality. Laura is a Kaagwaantaan 

Tlingit storytelling educator and is continuing her 

training as a bead artist. She founded an indigenous 

beading group in Anchorage to facilitate teaching 

traditional arts and her research focused on studying 

examples of traditional Tlingit beadwork, as well 

as compiling resources to benefit her group. 

Prior to their visit, 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).

“Kalukaq” by Iñupiaq artist BrittNee Brower, work 

submitted for her PLC application. Photo courtesy of 

the artist

Iñupiaq artist Susan Emery sketches a ceremonial bowl from 

Wales, part of the National Museum of the American Indian 

collection at the Living Our Cultures exhibition. 

Photo by Dawn Biddison
14 ASC Newsletter

SMITHSONIAN ARCTIC STUDIES 

CENTER ALASKA YOUTUBE CHANNEL

By Dawn Biddison

Due to changes online at NMNH, the Sharing 

Knowledge Alaska website was shuttered. In its 

place, Dawn Biddison created a YouTube channel

Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska presenting 

videos from the Center’s collaborative, communitybased research and education programs with Alaska 

Native elders, culture-bearers and artists. 

The videos on this channel provide instructional and 

educational information about Alaska Native languages, 

arts and lifeways: 

• Sewing Gut (13 videos)

• Sculpting Ivory (17 videos)

• Sharing the Dena’ina Language (3 videos)

• The Art of Aleutian Islands Bentwood Hats (9 

videos)

• Listen & Learn: St. Lawrence Island Yupik 

Language and Culture Video Lessons (12 videos)

• Twining Cedar (15 videos), Listen & Learn: Iñupiaq 

Language and Culture Video Lessons (6 videos)

• Creating Quillwork (8 videos)

• Sewing Salmon (10 videos). 

A limited number of DVD copies are still available by 

request, as well as full resolution HD files.

Living Our Cultures YouTube Playlist is https://www.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL33278BF298794573

Homepage for the “Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center 

Alaska" YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNpC1tXkqJaSU7ZSxUWAfA

NEWS

NARWHAL EXHIBIT TO TRAVEL

By William Fitzhugh

The Smithsonian Traveling Exhibits Service (SITES) 

has agreed to produce a traveling version of the 

National Museum of Natural History exhibition, 

Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend. The SITES 

exhibit will travel to 10–15 venues in North and 

possibly Central and South America in 2020–2021. 

Narwhal—one of the world’s most unusual mammals—

has been on exhibit at the Smithsonian since August 

2017 and has inspired visitors young and old.

The Smithsonian exhibition has been a timely reminder 

of the changing Arctic world—and of our planet as 

well. Narwhals—a medium-sized whale—are iceloving creatures that occupy polar regions around the 

Circumpolar North. Most of the ca. 180,000 narwhals 

live in the Canadian Arctic and around the northern 

coasts of Greenland. A few also are found along the 

northern coasts of Scandinavia, Russia, and Alaska. 

Narwhal evolutionary history is poorly-known, 

and until recently the function of the male’s unique 

spiraled tusk was a mystery. Theories abounded: for 

spearing fish? jousting with male rivals? attracting 

female admirers? Martin Nweeia, a dentist and 

visiting co-curator of the exhibit with William 

Fitzhugh, has come up with a new theory based on 

histological studies and experiments on narwhals 

in the wild. He and his colleagues believe the tusk 

serves as a sensory organ to detect changes in their 

icy environment, particularly water salinity and 

temperature. Predicting ice conditions, especially 

rapid freeze-ups that can trap narwhals and result in 

mass drownings, may be a likely function, because 

Exhibition Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend.

Model by Paul Brodie
 ASC Newsletter 15

STEARNS A. MORSE RECEIVES 

PEACOCK MEDAL

[The following 

notice from 

the Dept. of 

Geosciences, 

University of 

Massachusetts, 

Amherst, June 

18, 2018, reports 

a prestigious 

award presented 

to Tony Morse 

for a wide range 

of earth science 

accomplishments, 

as well as 

contributions to 

archeology as 

field assistant to 

Elmer Harp and 

early analyses 

of Ramah chert. 

He also built and 

was master of the R. V. Pitsiulak which enabled his 

research in northern Labrador, and later facilitated 

its transfer to the Arctic Studies Centers.—ed.]

Stearns A. “Tony” Morse, professor emeritus 

of Geosciences, has received the Mineralogical 

Association of Canada’s Peacock Medal, its highest 

award, for “outstanding contributions to the mineral 

sciences of Canada.” The award was presented 

at a lunch June 19, 2018 during the association’s 

annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The 1.5-inch diameter gold medal is intended 

to recognize the breadth and universality of the 

awardee’s contributions in mineralogy, applied 

mineralogy, petrology, crystallography, geochemistry 

or the study of mineral deposits, rather than in a 

narrow area of expertise, the association states. 

The Peacock Medal, formerly the Past-Presidents’ 

Medal, is not restricted to Canadian researchers.

Morse says he was “quite thunderstruck” to receive 

the letter informing him of the honor, and “if not 

for some of the fine details I might have supposed 

it a hoax.” He adds, “What a wonderful thing to be 

so honored. And especially pleased to have such 

a recognition from Canada, where all my realities 

in our splendid science have germinated.”

Morse still has an active research office in 

geosciences, says department head Julie BrighamGrette, who adds, “We are very excited for the 

its tusk nerves, unlike all other mammals, reach the 

surface of the tooth. Studies underway on the narwhal 

genome may answer many of the riddles of the narwhal 

tusk function, its evolution, and adaptive capacity. 

These studies have been conducted in collaboration 

with Inuit hunters whose extensive knowledge of 

the animal from thousands of years of hunting and 

observation have enriched scientific studies.

To date, the narwhal population, which is not 

endangered (it’s only predators are orcas, humans, 

polar bears, and ice), is not being affected much by the 

reduction in Arctic sea ice. Inuit hunters from Pond 

Inlet have not noticed much change in the numbers 

of narwhals visiting northern Baffin Island. But as the 

Arctic ice shrinks to a “last ice area” around northern 

Greenland, its population will probably decline. 

Learning about narwhals and the changing Arctic 

provides a vehicle for educating visitors about climate 

change, Native subsistence hunting, conservation 

of the Arctic environment and its animals, and the 

role of Native peoples as scientific colleagues. 

Narwhals have emerged from obscurity and along with 

Inuit and unicorns, are teaching the world much about 

a part of the world that is for the first time in human 

history, becoming a part of the wider world. The SITES 

tour, accompanied by our prize-winning Narwhal 

book and educational programming, will extend the 

Natural History Museum exhibit to new publics.

Tony Morse researching Labrador 

Oceanography on Blue Dolphin

This poster about plastic pollution and northern marine 

mammals is the work of Camilla Nymand Petersen, 

Greenland.

To obtain the poster, contact Camilla Nymand Petersen by 

e-mail trilla_cnp@yahoo.dk
16 ASC Newsletter

recognition of Tony Morse with the Peacock 

Medal for his wonderful and ongoing career in 

geology. Even I used one of his textbooks to learn 

phase diagrams when I was an undergraduate 

student. This award sheds a strong light on 

his contributions and legacy in the field.”

Morse earned his undergraduate degree in geology 

at Dartmouth College, where his father was an 

English professor. From 1949–1952, Morse was a 

field assistant in archaeology and then oceanography 

on the 100-foot schooner Blue Dolphin, studying 

Labrador fjords. After serving in the U.S. Army, he 

returned for further study in Labrador fjords in 1954.

Morse went on to earn an M.S. and Ph.D. degrees 

from McGill University and to be hired by British 

Newfoundland Exploration Ltd., to study the Kiglapait 

Layered Intrusion in Labrador. He also studied ice 

as a mineralogist at the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions 

Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, 

New Hampshire. Morse was a member of the geology 

faculty at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, 

Pennsylvania, for nine years before coming to the 

University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1971.

From 1971–1981, he and colleagues from Cornell 

and Syracuse universities led a large research 

group studying the Nain anorthosite from the 

research vessel Pitsiulak, supported by the 

National Science Foundation. Anorthosites, an 

enigmatic intrusive igneous rock also associated 

with many layered intrusions, occur only in 

special places and within a special time interval 

in the geologic record; in North America chiefly 

in a belt from Labrador to the Adirondacks. 

How they form is still not well understood.

Morse’s other research included experiments at 

the Carnegie Institution of Washington and at 

Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and 

studies related to the earliest crust on the Earth 

and Moon, the nature of the Earth’s core-mantle 

boundary, and the thermodynamics of rocks and 

melts. His other honors include life membership in 

Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, and election 

as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

At the awards lunch, Morse gave a 10-minute talk 

and later, a half-hour presentation about his scientific 

and personal history, in particular about his wife 

Dorothy Morse’s role in his career and research. 

She and their three daughters served as research 

assistants in Labrador for many years in the field 

and aboard ship, making the research possible. 

BASQUE AND MI’KMAQ: REVIVING 

ANCIENT CONNECTIONS

By William Fitzhugh

During the week of 24–29 September 2018, a 

remarkable gathering took place in Sydney, Nova 

Scotia. Titled The Atlantiar Conference: Indigenous 

People’ Roots in the North Atlantic. First Nation 

Connections Between Basques and Mi’kmaq engaged 

scholars, Native people, and others working on 

Basque and Mi’kmaq culture and history for several 

days of touring, dining, and sharing research. 

Organized by Stephen Augustine of Cape Breton 

University (CBU) and Unama’ki College and Xabi 

Otero of Jauzarrea, the outings and conference 

presentations highlighted past and growing current 

connections between Basques and Mi’kmaq 

peoples, a long-distance relationship that has been 

rekindled by new research and collaboration on 

both sides of the Atlantic. Among those attending 

were historians, archaeologists, musicians, linguists, 

artists, educators, and indigenous Basque and 

Mi’kmaq. Dennis Stanford, Pegi Jodry, and 

William Fitzhugh attended from the Smithsonian.

As described by the conference program, “Atlantiar 

Knekk [was] an international event bringing together 

ancient cultures of knowledge sharing and celebration 

of perseverance. The Atlantiar project started as an 

initiative of Jauzarrea (a Basque organization dedicated 

to research and preservation of Basque culture) 

with the launch of a yearly congress of international 

scholars, including Mi’kmaw, taking place in Arraiotz 

and Irun from 2012 to 2015. This year, Unama’ki 

College at CBU re-ignited this research by hosting 

the Atlantiar Congress on this side of the Atlantic...

In Mi’kmaw, ‘Knekk’ means ‘far away’ and ‘Tepaw’ 

is ‘very near’—far and near reflecting the distance of 

the Atlantic Ocean spanning from the Basque original 

home—Euskal Herria—and Mi’kmaki, rekindling 

ancient friendships, oceans apart, far yet near.” 

The week began with tours to nearby locations in 

northern Cape Breton, the island in northern Nova 

Scotia famed for beautiful Bras d’Or Lake and the 

18th century French fortress of Louisbourg that 

guarded French interests in the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

until it was taken and destroyed by the British in 

1758. The conference spent a day touring the town 

of Sydney, and others at Louisbourg, the Sydney 

coal mine and museum, and a nearby Mi’kmaq 

villages. Travelling by bus, attending receptions 

with local people and dignitaries, and eating meals 

together brought the group close and acquainted us 
 ASC Newsletter 17

with local history, Mi’kmaq people, and Unama’ki 

College officials. One of the evening highlights was 

a musical performance by Jeremy Dutcher, who 

had just received the Canadian Polaris Prize for his 

restorative renditions of Mi’kmaq songs discovered 

in the archives of the Canadian Museum of History.

The conference consisted of two days of papers 

and presentations covering a wide range of Basque 

and Mi’kmaq studies: archaeological perspectives 

(Stanford/Jodry, Fitzhugh, Bruce Bradley, Brad 

Loewen, Robert Grenier, Laurier Turgeon); 

linguistics (Peter Bakker, Stephanie Inglis, Theo 

Vennemann, John Koch); climate change (Richard 

Peltier, Stephen Oppenheimer); Paleolithic and 

Paleoindian rock art (Joëlle Darricau, Xabi Otero); 

historic Iroquois-Mi’kmaq trade connections (Ron 

Williamson, Louis Lesage); genetics (Maria Pala); 

culture revitalization (Stephen Augustine, Jeremy 

Dutcher); mythology (Lionel Sims, Kahenta HornMiller); Basque history (Peio Monteano Sorbet); 

comparative Basque and Iroquois religion (Idola 

Arana-Beobide); indigenous policy (Claude Picard); 

and indigenous architecture (Douglas Cardinal). 

Eloquent presentations on Basque and Mi’kmaq 

culture were delivered by Otero and Augustine, and 

our discussions were enlivened by “wood percussion” 

music. The conference program was presented 

with stunning graphics prepared by Xabi Otero and 

can be found at https://www.jauzarrea.com/en/

indigenous-peoples-roots-north-atlantic. Although 

there is no plan to publish the proceedings, the 

conference is certain to stimulate scholarly research 

and appreciation of the importance of 16–18th century 

Basque-Mi’kmaq interaction. This topic and time 

period will receive more attention in the future as a 

result of this remarkable international gathering.

RECLAIMING A PAST

By Shirley Tagalik

[The original effort related to this story was covered 

in an article by the ASC summer intern of 2006, 

Avital Friedman, “Recognizing the Reality of a 

People”—ASC Newsletter 14, 2006, pp.18–19. She 

has worked for two months under Igor Krupnik’s 

supervision to digitize and catalog some 300 

historical slides lend to the Smithsonian by Thomas 

Goreau with the prospect that the pictures taken 

by his grandfather, photographer Fritz Goro, 

would be eventually reunited with the people who 

hosted him in 1955. It took us 12 years and several 

unsuccessful tries to fulfill this pledge—I.K.]

In May 2018, I received an email message from 

my niece, Bernadette Miqqusaaq Dean, from 

Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. At that time, she had been 

visiting the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies 

Center in Washington DC to look at Inuit artifacts 

and photographs in their collection. Igor Krupnik, 

their Arctic curator, mentioned to her group a 

collection of some 200 historical photographs of 

the Ennadai Lake Ahiarmiut (formerly known 

as “Caribou Inuit”) and wondered who might be 

interested in this material. As the majority of the 

survivors of this Ahiarmiut group were eventually 

relocated to Arviat (formerly Eskimo Point), 

Bernadette brought the existence of the collection to 

my attention and helped connect me to Igor. From 

that point on, a new heritage project evolved.

As serendipitous as these things often are, the 

Aqqiumavvik Society in Arviat that operates the 

community library had just completed a family 

genealogy for the Aulatjut family, the largest family 

of the Ahiarmiut survivor group. The idea for this 

project also came at a time when the Canadian 

government had just announced that an apology and 

long-awaited settlement would be forthcoming for 

the Ennadai Ahiarmiut. Obviously the collection 

housed by the Smithsonian would be of great interest 

to our people. Igor very kindly informed us that the 

original slide collection held in Boston by Thomas 

Goreau, the grandson of the photographer Fritz 

Goro, who took the pictures of the Ahiarmiut, 

was much larger and put us all in touch. Igor also 

mailed to us a CD with Goro’s scanned photographs 

of the Ahiarmiut that had been processed at the 

Smithsonian more than a decade earlier. 

Fritz Goro was a professional photographer who 

worked for Life Magazine. As part of the magazine’s 

series, The Epic of Man, in 1955 Fritz was sent to 

document the lives of a small group of Inuit residing 

The Atlantiar conference presenters. 

Photo by Otero/Jauzarrea
18 ASC Newsletter

in the inland areas of Kivalliq around Ennadai Lake. 

The series was to focus on traditional ways of life 

and was to capture those ways before groups like the 

Ahiarmiut were lost to colonization. Government 

officials had already identified this group of the 

inland Inuit as amongst “the most primitive” in a 

1952 report. In the same year, writer Farley Mowat

published his book, People of the Deer, which 

sparked wide interest, especially in the U.S., and 

introduced this group of inland Inuit to the world.

In 1949–1950, another photographer, Richard 

Harrington visited the area and photographed the 

nearby Padlermiut people, many of whom were 

experiencing a period of starvation resulting 

from the less predictable caribou migrations. 

His very evocative photos would have been 

available to those interested in Inuit conditions 

in the early 1950s and may have prompted 

Life to consider the photo venture that Fritz Goro 

undertook, together with the journal writers.

The Ahiarmiut Tragic Saga

The Ahiarmiut people were originally a group of 

Caribou Inuit who were mainly located in the inland 

areas reaching from just north of the Manitoba border 

near Ennadai, northward through the big river and 

lake systems of the Kazan and Nueltin areas to Gary 

and Baker Lakes and on up to the Queen Maud Gulf 

area. There numbers were hugely reduced in the 1940–

1950s as both diseases introduced by the Qallunaat 

(Southerners) and changes to caribou migration 

patterns resulted in periods of starvation and death. 

The people around Ennadai Lake lived in small family 

camps and relied on a diet of caribou and fish. They 

were highly successful and for many years resisted 

the lure of trading their lifestyle for one of trapping 

Arctic fox, as did other Inuit people across the Arctic. 

In the 1940s there were some southern trappers who 

travelled through their territories because it was prime 

fox territory. These traders often provided access 

to southern foods and goods in exchange for warm 

caribou clothing, survival information and furs. Also, 

in the 1940s, the Canadian government built a weather 

station at the Ennadai Lake and the personnel staffing 

the station employed local Inuit for small manual jobs 

and had the women sew warm clothing for them. The 

Inuit traded labor for food, supplies and cast-off 

government issued clothing or canvas tents. The 

station staff was also tasked with providing supplies, 

when needed, to Inuit as part of the Canadian 

Family Allowance System. Unlike southern families 

who received these benefits as a matter of course, 

the benefits were withheld from Inuit to prevent their 

reliance on “handouts.” Unfortunately, Inuit were 

supposed to request this support when they were in 

need, but few were never told about this social benefit 

and were made to believe that the provisions they 

received were at the largess of the government officials. 

By 1950, government reports began to adopt this tone 

as well. The Ennadia Lake Inuit were believed to have 

problems living so close to the weather station. The 

decision was made to move the population to an area 

that would be more “accessible.” In 1952, with no 

consultation or planning, the entire group was relocated 

to Nueltin Lake with the expectation that they would 

assist the Sigurson and Martin Trading Company in 

creating a commercial fishing venture. There was 

no provision for boats, equipment, or supplies, and 

Fritz Goro’s photos of 1955 offered remarkable window 

to the Ahiarmiut past life

Ajaaq, the daughter Aulajjut, and her baby son. 

Ennadai Lake, Canada. Photo by Fritz Goro
 ASC Newsletter 19

the traders quickly pulled out of the venture. The 

Ahiarmiut, knowing that the area they had been sent 

to was poor in animals, simply walked the 52 miles 

back home to Ennadai Lake. It was here that Fritz 

Goro and the Life team encountered them in 1955.

The team arrived at the lake by float plane in the late 

summer/fall and spent two months collecting what was 

to become two series of photos—one captured the lives 

of the group of Ahiarmiut (about 60 people) as they 

were when the Life journalists encountered them. The 

second series was staged as if people had “returned” to 

their past. They were photographed wearing authentic 

caribou fur clothing and using only the tools and 

equipment that would have been pre-contact, like bows 

and arrows, even stone tools and spears. The latter 

photos were then used for the Life series about “Stone 

Age” people. Both sets of photos provide an invaluable 

record of what was very soon to become the end of 

this group’s life in their familiar cultural setting.

In another government experiment, the Ahairmiut were 

relocated again to Henik Lake about 45 miles from a 

Hudson Bay Post. There they experienced the most 

horrific conditions from 1957–1958 when extreme 

starvation decimated their camps. Their dogs starved 

first and then, without dogs or boats, they were barely 

capable of seeking assistance or of moving to other 

areas in search of food. This period was captured 

in Farley Mowat’s second book published in 1960 

and called The Desperate People. The few surviving 

members of this group were eventually relocated to 

Eskimo Point (now Arviat) in 1959–60. When asked, 

these devastated people consistently said, “We do not 

think about the future. We just listen now.” It would 

take until 2018 before the next generation of Ahiarmiut 

would successfully challenge the Canadian government 

about their mistreatment and finally win an apology 

and financial settlement. A detailed account of the 

Ennadai Lake Relocations can be found in a book by 

Frank Tester and Peter Kulchyski titled Tammarniit: 

Inuit Relocations in the Eastern Arctic 1939–63 (1994).

The New Life of Goro’s Photos

It was into this time of celebration that Thomas 

Goreau, grandson of Fritz Goro, arrived in Arviat in 

the fall of 2018 to reunite the few surviving Ennadai 

Ahiarmiut and their descendants with the original 

photographs taken in 1955. Returning exactly 63 

years after his grandfather’s visit to Ennadai, Thomas 

met with an excited group of about 30 people to 

share a series of photos that had been digitized and 

made available by the Smithsonian. He shared his 

dream that more of the vast photo and document 

archive that his grandfather left may one day be made 

available as well. He expressed his hope that access 

to these records would provide the few remaining 

memory keepers with the materials they could use 

to build a repository and a way of culture-keeping 

for the Ennadai Ahiarmiut. He said he believed it 

would help them remain strong in their culture and 

use the tools of the new culture, digital technology, 

to build on their cultural strengths of the past. 

Both Thomas Goreau’s message to the community 

and the photo collection he presented as a gift to the 

Ahiarmiut people were welcomed. The survivors 

remembered his grandfather and were able to share 

stories of his visit or the stories they had been told as 

children about his visit. The photos themselves were 

met with huge interest and emotional outpourings as 

the faces of then-young and vibrant ancestors crossed 

the large screen at the community meeting hall.

The Commissioner for Nunavut, Nellie Kusugak with Mary 

Anowtalik, the oldest surviving member of the Ahiarmiut 

from Ennadai Lake and Minister of Crown-Indigenous 

Relations, Hon. Carolyn Bennett posing in front of copies of 

Fritz Goro’s photos (courtesy of Shirley Tagalik)

Ahairmiut survivors and descendants, with photo collection 

as backdrop listening to the Federal government apology

(courtesy of Shirley Tagalik)
20 ASC Newsletter

This collection of some 200 photos, made available 

by the Smithsonian, is now being housed in the 

community library and can be accessed by all 

community members. The library has an ongoing 

project that is documenting extended family trees. 

The first family tree completed was that of the 

family of Aulajut, a key Ennadai group leader, and 

many of Fritz Goro’s photos include members of 

this family. The relevant photos will be added to 

the family tree and made available for download. 

The Aqquimavvik Society, a local wellness group, 

has volunteered to provide hard or digital copies 

of the photographs to families as requested. These 

are amazing keepsakes for families who would 

have had no photographs available to them from 

that period or from any time before the 1960s. 

The Aqquimavvik Society is committed to seeking 

new funds to assist with the digitization of additional 

archival material from this amazing collection. 

Another goal is to make the pictures available to all 

of the descendants, for whom it is a way of marking 

the strength and resiliency of their ancestors, once 

called a “stone age people.” They endured terrible 

conditions and unthinkable treatment in the past, 

but their smiling faces have been captured for 

eternity in this amazing collection of historical 

photographs. It is definitely a project about 

reclaiming the past for the children of the future.

An Apology to the Ahiarmiut Forced 

Relocatees of Ennadai Lake

On January 22, 2019 the Ahiarmiut Inuit who were 

forcibly relocated by the Canadian Federal Government 

in 1958–59, received an official apology from the 

Minister of Crown-Indigenous Affair, The Honorable 

Carolyn Bennett. The Minister and representative of 

all the Inuit organizations gathered in Arviat, Nunavut 

for this important event. The apology has been 

negotiated by the survivors of the Ennadai Ahiarmiut 

for many years. This apology marked a righting of 

past wrongs and provided the Ahiarmiut and their 

descendants with both financial compensation and an 

opportunity for reconciliation and healing from a very 

traumatic history.

A significant contributor to this healing is the 

amazing collection of photographs made available 

to the community by the Smithsonian Institution 

and Thomas Goreau. As a result of this event, it is 

hoped that new interest in the remaining collection of 

photographer Fritz Goro will support the addition of 

more digitalized material to this important archive.

“POLAR 2018” MEETING IN DAVOS 

CELEBRATES IPY ANNIVERSARY

By Igor Krupnik 

In summer 2018, the polar science community 

celebrated two important milestones associated with the 

recent International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008: the 

10th anniversary of the first “mega”-conference of Arctic 

and Antarctic scientists organized by IASC (International 

Arctic Science Committee) and SCAR (Scientific 

Committee on Antarctic Research) in St. Petersburg in 

August 2008 and the 15th anniversary of the beginning 

of planning for IPY in July 2003. To commemorate 

the former event, IASC and SCAR conveyed a similar 

mega-conference of polar scientists called Polar 2018. 

Where the Poles Come Together in Davos, Switzerland. 

For eleven days, June 15–26, 2018, the Congress Centre 

in Davos that famously hosts the World Economic 

Forum, annual winter gatherings of economic and 

political luminaries were occupied by hundreds of 

polar researchers from all disciplines and nations.

Logo of the Polar 2018 Conference
 ASC Newsletter 21

One short session during that multi-day event on June 

22, 2018 was dedicated to the anniversary of IPY under 

the title, Mini-Symposium IV: The Legacy and Future 

of the International Polar Year. The symposium was 

co-organized by Mike Sparrow, Paolo Ruti (both 

from the World Meteorological Organization, WMO), 

Volker Rachold (formerly IASC Secretary, now with 

the Alfred Wegener Institute), and Gerlis Fugmann

(Executive Director, Association of the Early Polar 

Career Scientists, APECS). The meeting was chaired 

by Peter Harrison (Queen’s University, Canada, ret.), 

who served previously as Deputy Minister of Natural 

Resources Canada and the Department of Fisheries and 

Oceans, and was the chair of the IPY From Knowledge 

to Action Conference in Montreal in April 2012. 

The symposium was actually a panel of six 

speakers, who presented 6–8-minute blitz talks 

on particular aspects or outcomes of IPY. They 

spoke in the following order: Igor Krupnik

(Smithsonian, “IPY: A Historical Introduction”); 

Kelly Falkner (NSF, Director of the Office of 

Polar Programs, “Observing Systems”), Peter 

Pulsifer (National Snow and Ice Data Center, 

University of Colorado—“IPY Data Access”), 

Karin Lochte (biological oceanographer, Bremen 

University—“Scientific Cooperation”), Hanne 

Nielsen (APECS current President, Australia—“The 

Next Generation”), and Louise Huffman (Dartmouth 

College—“Education and Communication”). Such 

a diverse roster of speakers offered a multi-focused 

projection on IPY 2007–2008 legacies in various fields, 

even if in a very condensed format. 

Below is a short summary of my talk presented at the 

session; it summarizes some key lessons and messages 

of IPY 2007–2008 to the next generation of polar 

researchers. 

IPY: A Retrospective

IPY 2007–2008, whose actual chronology spanned a 

full decade, from 2001 to 2010–2011 developed into 

what was called “the largest internationally coordinated 

planetary research effort of the past 50 years.” 

An estimated 50,000 researchers, local observers, 

educators, students, and support personnel from more 

than 60 nations and numerous indigenous organizations 

were involved in 228 international projects—170 in 

science, one in data management and 57 in education 

and outreach, and in myriad related national activities. 

IPY marshaled the intellectual resources of scientists 

from a large spectrum of nations, disciplines, and 

fields—from atmospheric and solar geophysics 

to ecology, human health, social sciences, 

and the humanities. It reached many new 

constituencies, including polar residents, Arctic 

indigenous communities, and millions of people 

with no direct connection to the high latitude 

regions. It helped raise public awareness 

worldwide about the significance of polar 

regions in our planetary system and about the role of 

polar science in addressing Earth’s “new challenges.” 

IPY generated a much-expected spike in coordinated 

research and observation in the Arctic and Antarctica 

over a two-year period, from March 2007 to March 

2009, with many related efforts started earlier and 

extended beyond that date. By the official closing 

date of IPY in June 2010, the field of polar research 

had been re-energized and rejuvenated by a full 

decade of planning, organization and implementation 

of various research and public programs and by the 

entry of new players, such as the social scientists, 

View of Davos (from the conference webpage)

Congress Centre in Davos (from Wikimedia Commons)
22 ASC Newsletter

indigenous people organizations, early career 

scholars, educators, media, and arts professionals. 

IPY also generated a widely anticipated “pulse“ 

(momentum) in the form of substantial new funding 

for polar research and observational efforts, and a 

broadened circle of stakeholders in polar science. 

IPY Success: Opportune Timing, Many Sources 

A product of the 50-year cycle of its parent initiatives, 

First, IPY of 1882–1883; Second, IPY of 1932–1933, 

and IGY of 1957–1958, the fourth IPY of 2007–2008 

could not have happened at a more opportune 

time. It was shaped by major developments of the 

preceding decade, as the increasingly rapid pace of 

climate and the resulting environmental shifts in 

the polar regions became indisputable. The Arctic 

Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) launched by 

the Arctic Council in 1999 (ACIA 2005) and the 

3rd IPCC Report of 2001 (IPCC AR-3) generated 

a new level of scientific and public concern about 

the impacts of the incoming change—in the polar 

regions and across the planet, in general. 

Besides being rooted in the tradition of the previous 

large-scale polar ventures, organizers of IPY 2007–

2008 drew energy from a widespread longing for a 

new broad initiative to re-energize the polar science 

community, international organizations, and agencies in 

charge of the planning, funding, and research capacity 

building in the polar regions. These and other factors 

conjoined in 2001–2002, at the very time when polar 

researchers began talking about how to celebrate 

the 50th anniversary of IGY 1957–1958. These early 

talks about a commemorative event, “IGY+50” 

quickly evolved into planning for a new Polar Year.

IPY was also a product of many driving forces coming 

from different quarters of the global community of 

scholars that combined in a concentrated push for 

a new IPY in the years 2001–2002. One way or the 

other, the message about a new bi-polar program 

50 years after IGY 1957–1958 spread rapidly 

across various disciplinary groups of scientists 

and research organizations. It helped generate the 

much needed synergies for across-the-board support 

for new IPY 2007–2008. The key lesson is that it 

is imperative to have the opportune timing and a 

large and energized support base for a program of 

such magnitude to be successfully launched. 

IPY “Playbook” 

Other factors contributed to IPY 2007–2008 success, 

beyond it taking place in the right time. From the 

very beginning, IPY 2007–2008 was initiated, 

endorsed, and supported by the same sponsors or 

their direct successors that supported previous IPY/

IGY ventures, namely the International Council of 

Science Unions (ICSU) and the World Meteorological 

Organization (WMO). These two organizations, so 

different in scope and operational profile, offered much 

needed legitimacy, funding, institutional capacity, 

and respective constituencies to plan, promote, and 

successfully implement IPY, much like they did 

in the previous IPY/IGY ventures. Their role was 

substantially expanded and enhanced by several 

new players, like the IASC, SCAR, Arctic Council, 

Antarctic Treaty Organization, NSF and others. 

Like all previous IPY/IGYs, the IPY 2007–2008 

had a definitive time focus. It was planned as a 

synchronous ‘pulse’ in research and observations in 

both the Arctic and Antarctica within a common twoyear time frame, from March 2007 till March 2009. 

In the tough budget environment of the time it was an 

understandable goal and a reasonable justification.

Special efforts were undertaken to expand the 

international and participatory nature of the Polar 

Year by welcoming the contribution of all potential 

players; encouraging the new ones; avoiding political 

competition; and successfully promoting the nonpolitical, non-military, and non-commercial image of 

polar science. These features were long established 

in the earlier IPY/IGY ventures and they were strictly 

enforced in IPY 2007–2008 from the very beginning. 

Careful planning for IPY 2007–2008 program and 

activities was conducted by appointed international 

The banner of IPY panel
 ASC Newsletter 23

bodies, the IPY Planning Group, 2003–2004, and later, 

by the ICSU-WMO Joint Committee, 2005–2010. 

These international bodies were eventually assisted by 

the International Programme Office and the network of 

national IPY committees in the participating nations. 

Again, this structure followed the model established 

over 140 years ago for the First IPY in the 1870s and 

it had proved its effectiveness in later ventures.

While relying on this tested “playbook”, the 

IPY 2007–2008 planners also introduced several 

critical innovations that distinguished the most 

recent IPY from its three predecessors. 

IPY 2007–2008 presented a new face of contemporary 

polar scholarship by deliberately expanding its 

disciplinary range. It openly welcomed contributions 

from the social scientists, humanities and human 

health professionals, polar residents, as well as 

Arctic indigenous experts, organizations, and 

communities. Altogether, these new players produced 

the third largest share of research projects, after 

oceanographers and terrestrial ecosystem specialists. 

They helped create a new, more inclusive society and 

humanity-oriented vision of polar science in the 21st 

century. It also ushered in a new role for education, 

media, and arts specialists in the era of expanding 

global communication and public outreach. 

Rather than delegating the full power to the national 

IPY committees (as occurred in IPY-1, IPY-2 and IGY), 

the new IPY introduced a bottom-up planning process 

that was built upon, and took strength from, grass-root 

activism of individual scientists and science teams. 

Calls for individual research projects (or “ideas”) for 

IPY program were issued four times in 2003–2004, so 

that the first action of the ICSU-WMO Joint Committee 

in winter 2005 was to select 228 international research 

projects out of some 900 (!) submitted proposals for IPY 

activities. All previous IPY/IGYs relied on powerful 

national committees or agencies, science unions, 

and individual luminaries to frame their program. 

Lastly, a determined effort was made in IPY 2007–

2008 to engage early career scientists and to train 

the next generation of polar scholars, particularly 

women and minorities. It was another sign of a 

much greater role played by the university-based 

science (hence, more students and young scholars) 

in IPY 2007–2008, compared to its predecessors 

dominated by the national research agencies and, 

before that, by the overwhelmingly male military 

and navy personnel and governmental-supported 

scholars. Such institutional build-up of young 

polar researchers was a wise investment; it helped 

expand the base for the IPY science, much like its 

bottom-up nature and inclusion of social scientists, 

polar indigenous peoples, and educators. 

Doing It Right In 2057?

While history rarely repeats itself, the IPYs did occur 

four times over the past 140+years—in 1882–1883, 

1932–1933, 1957–1958, and, again, in 2007–2008, 

that is, have been successfully replicated every 50 

and once even in 25 years. If history is a guide, then a 

move to launch new IPY will be palpable by the late 

2020s and the drive for the fifth IPY of 2057–2058 

may be unstoppable. The momentum will probably 

start building by 2050–2052, as indeed happened in 

the most recent IPY around 2000–2001. 

As of today, “Global Change” (or “Change 

at the Poles”) seems like the most obvious 

theme for the next IPY in the 2050s—unlike 

in 2007–2008, when IPY planners went to 

great length to preserve the multi-focused 

nature of their venture. The main reason, 

naturally, is the pace of environmental 

change in the Arctic and in Antarctica that 

is breathtaking and far beyond anything that 

would be considered a “new normal.” Such 

a rapid pace of change may trigger an even 

earlier IPY-like effort, particularly in case of 

visible dramatic shifts, like the summer icefree Arctic Ocean or a rapid collapsing of the 

Antarctic or Greenlandic ice sheet. In any 

case, the topic of “change” is certain to play 

an ever-large role in the next IPY in the 2050s.

It is highly likely that the bi-polar nature 

of the previous IPYs (covering the Arctic 

IPY 2007–2008 project “honeycomb chart” 

(Krupnik et al. 2011)
24 ASC Newsletter

and Antarctica) will be transformed to include 

high mountain periglacial environments. It is also 

likely that more science effort will be supported 

internationally, via collaborative bottom-up 

partnership and broader community-driven base. 

Note: Igor Krupnik served as a member of the U.S. 

National Committee for the International Polar Year 

2007–2008 (in 2003–2004), member of the ICSU-WMO 

Joint Committee for IPY 2007–2008 (in 2005–2010), 

and as the lead editor of the Joint Committee’s final 

report, “Understanding Earth’s Polar Challenges. 

International Polar Year 2007–2008” (2011).

A JAPANESE INTERNATIONAL FORUM 

ON “MEMORY AND THE MUSEUM”

By Aron Crowell

As public institutions charged with narrating history 

and representing cultures, world museums increasingly 

emphasize the recording and presentation of intangible 

knowledge maintained by source communities, 

recognizing that curated object collections are 

material signs of this living heritage that can serve 

as starting points for dialogue and collaboration. 

This approach was highlighted by the 23rd Science 

in Japan forum Memory and the Museum, presented 

by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 

(JSPS) at the National Museum of the American 

Indian (NMAI) in Washington in June 2018. The 

program examined, in the words of Steven Lubar

(Brown University), how collections can serve as 

“touchstones of past events, evoking emotions, 

and connecting us to others” and offered examples 

of collaborative museum and community-based 

research by Japanese and American scholars.

The forum was the first held by the JSPS in the 

United States to focus on social sciences and was cosponsored by an international consortium including 

the American Association for the Advancement of 

Science, the National Science Foundation, the Social 

Science Research Council, the International Union 

of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and 

the World Council of Anthropological Associations. 

After welcoming remarks by Kohji Hirata (JSPS 

Washington office), Machel Monenerkit (NMAI), 

and Kazutoshi Aikawa (Japanese Ambassador to the 

Organization of American States) the forum opened 

with a keynote address by Kenji Yoshida (DirectorGeneral of Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology), 

who described the ambitious scope of outreach and 

source community collaborations by the National 

Museum of Ethnology in Osaka (also known as the 

Minpaku), including its global Info-Forum project, 

international research fellowships, and museology 

training programs for the developing world with 

participants from Africa, South America, the Middle 

East, New Guinea, Southeast Asia, and other regions.

Academic staff of the Minpaku presented aspects of 

their research including oral histories of the great East 

Japan Earthquake of 2011 (Isao Hayashi); ethnic 

identity and family heritage as embodied in Alaskan 

Iñupiaq drum dancing (Nobuhiro Kishigami); 

collaboration with Taiwanese indigenous peoples to 

interpret historical collections from their communities 

(Atsushi Nobayashi); and participatory archaeology 

and heritage preservation in the highlands of Peru (Yuji 

Seki). These themes were paired with presentations 

by American scholars including survivor narratives 

as the basis for museum depictions of Hurricane 

Katrina (Carl Lindahl, University of Houston); 

histories and identities encoded by Malian Sogobò 

puppets and masquerades (Mary Jo Arnoldi, 

National Museum of Natural History); community 

collaborations at the National Museum of the 

American Indian to “change the narrative of history” 

(Michael Pahn, NMAI); and comparative studies of 

indigenous oral traditions and archaeology in Alaska 

and western Canada (Aron Crowell, NMNH).

Proceedings of the Memory and the Museum forum 

will be presented as full-length papers in a volume of 

Senri Ethnological Reports, edited by Isao Hayashi 

and anticipated for late 2019. My own paper, The 

Truth of Oral Tradition: Multisource Confirmation of 

Northern Indigenous Histories, presents archaeological 

and other evidence for the substantial accuracy of 

arctic and subarctic oral historical narratives, some 

centuries old. Oral traditions about the St. Lawrence 

Island famine (1878–1880 AD), the north Alaskan 

“summer that never came” (1783 AD), rapid Little 

Presenters and JSPS staff at the Memory and the Museum

conference. Photo courtesy of Isao Hayashi, National 

Museum of Ethnology, Osaka
 ASC Newsletter 25

RESEARCH

HOMAGE TO ANNA KERTTULA DE ECHAVE

An ASC Staff tribute

After sixteen years serving as Social Science Program 

Director in the NSF Office of Polar Programs, 

Anna Kerttula de Echave stepped down from her 

post in mid-2018. Her tenure brought enormous 

change to a US government program supporting 

social science and humanities research in the Arctic. 

Thanks to Anna’s persistence, political skills, and 

the support she received from Polar Programs’ 

leadership, she was able to advance the scope of 

research and funding for social sciences multiple 

times and to make the field far more diverse. 

Our association with Anna began during her graduate 

school days in the 1980s when she was conducting 

ethnological research in Chukotka and later when 

she worked with Senator Ted Stevens and the Alaska 

State Governor’s office. She came to NSF in 2002, 

following in the footsteps of Noel Broadbent, Fae 

Korsmo and other predecessors who helped launch 

the Arctic Social Science Program at Office of Polar 

Programs. Noel Broadbent’s tenure (1989–1997) had 

already brought innovations like the introduction of 

ethical principles in northern research to the conduct 

of NSF’s polar science, which was heavily slanted 

toward physical and biological sciences. Like Noel and 

Fae, Anna continued pushing the boundaries of polar 

science, outward and inward, convincing OPP that social 

science and indigenous perspectives are not simply 

another discipline in a scholarly stew but the central 

integrative tissue of northern research. Anna’s efforts 

caused us to see polar science in a perspective that 

holds Arctic residents, peoples, and cultures as central 

players in the production of knowledge. By putting 

people, cultures, and institutions first, she changed the 

way northern science is done and provided models 

for how it should be conducted there and elsewhere.

Although as government-sponsored researchers 

we could not rely on NSF funding for our field 

studies, Anna’s leadership was instrumental for 

many of our public, outreach, and knowledge 

dissemination ventures. These included our periodic 

ASC “festivals,” several sessions and symposia, 

and our largest-ever 18th Inuit Studies conference 

at the Smithsonian in October 2012 that brought to 

DC over 600 participants from across the Arctic. 

Anna’s service to the Arctic social sciences 

community has been highly regarded by her many 

colleagues and peers, as well as by hundreds of 

early career scholars whom she helped with funding, 

Ice Age glacial advance in Glacier Bay, southeastern 

Alaska (1700–1770 AD), Ahtna migration to Yakutat 

Bay (ca. 1450 AD), the era of bow and arrow warfare 

in Alaska (ca. 900–1850 AD), and the White River 

Ash volcanic eruption in the Yukon Territory (800 AD) 

are considered. Most of these examples reflect Arctic 

Studies Center research in the field and with museum 

collections in collaboration with indigenous scholars. 

The conference was also an opportunity to reflect 

on the long, productive, and continuing relationship 

between the Arctic Studies Center and the National 

Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku). The Minpaku was 

a crucial partner in development of the Smithsonian 

traveling exhibition Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People

in 1999, curated by William Fitzhugh, and opened the 

door to connections and collaborations with Japanese 

scholars including Yoshinobu Kotani, Toshikazu 

Sasaki, Masahiro Nomoto, Koji Deriha, and 

Nobuhiro Kishigami. The Minpaku has generously 

invited and funded participation by ASC and other 

Smithsonian staff in research seminars held in Osaka, 

most recently a workshop in 2016 on indigenous 

community collaborations for the Info-Forum project. 

Currently, the ASC is working with the new National 

Museum of the Aini, which is borrowing objects from 

the Hitchcock collection at NMNH for their opening 

exhibition in 2020.

Aron Crowell presenting “The Truth of Oral Tradition” at 

the Memory and the Museum conference at the National 

Museum of the American Indian. Photo courtesy of Isao 

Hayashi, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka

Anna Kerttula 

completes a long, 

successful career as 

NSF Arctic Social 

Science Program 

Director
26 ASC Newsletter

advice, encouragement, research-related travel, 

and professional connections. One of her principal 

legacies will be providing educational opportunities 

for native youth. Anna’s office supported all major 

professional conferences in Arctic social sciences 

for over 15 years by providing travel funding for 

early career scholars, Indigenous participants, and 

researchers from Russia, East European, and Asian 

countries. She made a significant contribution to the 

2003 World Archaeological Congress in Washington 

by providing funds to facilitate participation of Inuit 

students from Labrador and Alaska, all of whom 

subsequently went on to work in cultural resource and 

heritage management. Anna’s latest achievement was 

the series of six forward-looking workshops, Arctic 

Horizons. Collaborative Research: Social Science and 

the High Arctic (http://arctichorizons.org) conducted 

in 2015–2016. These meetings engaged more than 

200 scientists, educators, artists, data managers, 

Indigenous knowledge, and cultural experts from 

across the Arctic in discussions about the future of 

the social sciences and humanities in the North.

In 2013, she received a “life-time” membership in 

the International Arctic Social Sciences Association 

(IASSA), the group’s highest honor. In recognition of 

her remarkable tenure, colleagues organized a special 

session honoring her contribution at the 46th annual 

meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association 

in Nome (March 1, 2019). Another symposium was 

organized at the 2019 Society of American Archaeology 

Annual Meeting to honor her many achievements. One 

of the SAA presentations, a paper authored by Ben 

Fitzhugh, Sven Haakanson, and Catherine West, 

described Anna’s diplomatic exercise of “soft power” 

directed towards changing the culture of scientific 

practice in the North. Anna transformed scholarly 

practice through the encouragement of junior scholars, 

especially women, Natives, and members of other 

academically under-represented groups, and by pushing 

researchers to work collaboratively and proactively with 

Indigenous and local communities wherever they work.”

The Arctic Studies Center staff joins our many 

colleagues in honoring Anna for her lasting 

contribution to the field and to the community of Arctic 

social scientists, students, and Indigenous researchers. 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEYS 

IN RIGOLET IN 2018

By William Fitzhugh and Jamie Brake

At the invitation of the Rigolet community, the 

Nunatsiavut Archaeology Program and the Smithsonian 

Arctic Studies Center completed a fourth season of site 

Mullen’s Point settlement site and midden. 

Photo by William Fitzhugh

Excavation in Enclosure 3 at the Maritime Archaic site on 

West Indian Island (GbBj-11) near a cal. 6,600 BP oval pithouse. Photo by William Fitzhugh

survey in the Rigolet region of the central Labrador 

coast. As in previous years, we aimed to identify and 

record sites in unexplored areas of Groswater Bay and 

Eastern Lake Melville. Fieldwork took place during 

the last two weeks of July in what turned out to be the 

finest summer weather Labrador can offer. The research 

team was led by Jamie Brake and William Fitzhugh

accompanied by students from Dartmouth College 

(Jacob Marchman), Williams College (Halcyon 

Brown), Notre Dame (Alexandria Castellanos), 

Yale (Katherine Meier), and American University 

(Mary Maisel), supported by Pitsiulak skipper, Perry 

Colbourne. Consultations with Rigolet elders and 

community members provided information on site 

locations, subsistence resources, and local history.

Rigolet is one of the best-known archaeological regions 

in Labrador, and its cultures—both Innu and Inuit—
 ASC Newsletter 27

have ancient histories. The earliest Indians, known as 

Maritime Archaic, appeared shortly after deglaciation 

of the coast between 8–9,000 years ago. Thereafter, 

Labrador Maritime Archaic cultures persisted until 

3,500 BP, when they were replaced by a series of 

proto-Innu cultures leading to the Innu of today. The 

first Paleoeskimo people arrived from the Arctic about 

4,500 years ago, followed by Groswater and Dorset 

cultures, and about 1500 CE by Labrador Inuit. Climate 

change, shifts in animal resources, and dynamics 

between Inuit, Innu, and European groups resulted in 

expansions, contractions, and changes in these cultures, 

leading to the modern coastal boundary between Innu 

and Inuit groups between Rigolet and Cartwright, 

an enclave of Indian occupation in the Davis Inlet 

region, and the appearance of Europeans in settlements 

throughout the region in the 18–19th centuries.

Our 2018 research continued surveys along the southern 

shore of Groswater Bay, the eastern side of the Narrows, 

the southern shore of the Backway, and northeastern 

Lake Melville. Unlike the northern shore of Groswater 

Bay where research in the 1960–70s identified many 

prehistoric sites, sites so far found on its southern shore 

mostly date to the last 500 years. At Collingham’s 

Cove, Mullen’s Cove, and Grassy (John’s) Point, we 

found sites with deep midden deposits similar to those 

at Broomfield Island, containing 18th to 20th centuries 

ceramics, iron tools and traps, square nails, glass beads, 

and clay pipe fragments, .22 shell cases, and brick. Most 

of the bones from our test pits were seal, and the deep 

middens indicated cold weather occupations. Whether 

these sites are Inuit, settler, or mixed is uncertain, 

although the presence of glass beads suggests Inuit 

women may have been present. One of the sites we 

found in a previous survey—Broomfield Island—is 

being considered for tourism development. Our hope 

that one of these grass-covered middens might turn up 

a Groswater Dorset winter site did not materialize.

In addition to the southern shore survey we returned 

to West Indian Island in southeastern Groswater 

Bay to continue investigation of a Maritime Archaic 

site (GbBj-11) found on the high marine beaches 

in the center of the island in 2015. At that time we 

excavated a small oval boulder pit dwelling that 

produced a radiocarbon date of cal. 6,600 BP. Nearby 

on this same beach level is a series of boulder-lined 

enclosures sharing common walls. Test pits in two of 

the enclosures this year produced no artifacts, flakes, 

bones, or charcoal. Their function remains mysterious 

although they are almost certainly a product of the 

Maritime Archaic occupation. South of the Feature 

11 enclosures, a circular tent-ring (Feature 10) with a 

central hearth at the crest of the beach ridge produced 

two Ramah chert flakes and charcoal and is probably 

Remains of the copper mine hoist platform on the southeast 

shore of Big Black Island. Photo by William Fitzhugh

Earth graffiti at North Henrietta Island.

Photo by William Fitzhugh

Tent rings on Bear Island, near Middle River, in the eastern 

Backway/Back Bay. Photo by William Fitzhugh
28 ASC Newsletter

a post-Maritime Archaic camp. We also excavated 

Feature 9, a probable Maritime Archaic boulder pit 

on the northwestern shore below Feature 11, that had 

a floor of broken rocks, but no cultural material.

Having arrived in Groswater Bay a day early, and with 

calm weather with no sea swell, we visited the exposed 

cove on the east side of George Island and scouted the 

terraces above its sandy beach. The only archaeological 

features noticed were boulder caches, caribou bones 

scattered about the tundra, and caribou trails beaten 

into the tundra. Rigolet people told us that a few years 

ago a group of caribou became isolated on the 

island, reaching it when a cold winter created and 

ice bridge, but after that, with milder winters, could not 

regain the mainland, and were killed by hunters or died.

We continued north across the mouth of Groswater 

Bay to Rattlers Bight and during the afternoon revisited 

Shell Island, a small skerry south of Winters Cove, 

where in 1969 we excavated a small site (Shell Island-1, 

GcBi-11). This site had produced a prodigious amount 

of biface thinning flakes of Ramah chert, as well as a 

few flakes of Groswater chert. After some difficulty, 

we relocated the site and determined its GPS position. 

Our original interpretation (Fitzhugh 1972) still 

seems valid; Shell Island is probably a late prehistoric 

Daniels Rattle or Point Revenge site where Ramah 

chert quarry blanks were flaked into intermediate stage 

preforms destined to supply the extensive southern 

trade of Ramah chert artifacts known for this period. 

Black Island on the north side of Groswater Bay is 

known from Inuit oral history as an important place 

for spring and summer camps. This may have been 

the place where the early settler William Phippard

found a gold medal on an island amongst “...so many 

dead Esquimaux” (Townsend 1911: 261). George 

Cartwright saw the medal and recognized it as having 

once belonged to his brother who had given it to one of 

a small group of Inuit that Cartwright had brought with 

him to England. Tragically, all but one of that group 

died of smallpox before returning to Labrador. The 

only Inuit survivor was a young woman named 

Caubvik, who was sick with the disease during 

the return voyage. Though she survived the trip, 

Cartwright was convinced after seeing the medal that 

the sickness had been passed on after he had returned 

Caubvik to her people (Townsend 1911:260–261).

We found numerous food caches and some habitation 

evidence in the boulder beaches on the southwest 

corner of the island, but little evidence of the large 

camp that is supposed to be here. On the other 

hand, surveys on the island’s southeastern end 

revealed numerous tent rings and caches. Most 

surprising was a huge stone-walled structure built 

of mine tailings around a water-filled, circular mine 

shaft dating to the early 20th century. The quartzrich tailings had been used to build a platform 

for supporting a lift to raise rock from the shaft. 

A family memorial to Jack and Dorcas Sheppard.

Photo by William Fitzhugh
 ASC Newsletter 29

A survey trench extended south from the mine 

across the adjacent raised beach. According to local 

reports, the mine never produced copper and closed 

after the manager’s son died in an accident. 

Surveys on the east side of the Narrows produced 

evidence of seal caches and an historic era cemetery 

but no prehistoric sites. The most important place 

is Summer Cove, where we found a group of tentrings. This is the largest concentration of Inuit tent 

sites in the Narrows and appears to date to the 19th

and 20th centuries. Inspection of the northern shore 

of Henrietta Island revealed several sites of the 

same period on exposed gravel and slab outwash 

delta around the mouth of a small river draining the 

interior of the island. Visitors to this area have written, 

using small white quartz rocks, the dates “1987”, 

“1992”, and “1994” on the exposed gravel surface.

The Backway (also known as Back Bay) is the 

least-known archaeological area of Hamilton Inlet. 

Previous surveys identified sites as far east as 

Haniuk on its north shore. This year we surveyed 

the southern shore and found small historic tentring sites at Indian Point, South Long Point, and on 

the western end of Bear Island. Time did not permit 

exploration of the eastern end of the Backway or 

the travel route through the “flat-land” waterways 

leading to the south shore of Groswater Bay. Most 

of the sites lacked sleeping area borders and appear 

to be Innu camps. Local reports indicate the inner 

Backway was part of an Innu route leading from a 

river emerging from the Mealy Mountains across the 

lowlands between the Backway and Groswater Bay.

We also surveyed the northern shore of Lake Melville 

from Valley Bight to Charlie Point. Rigolet people say 

this coast was used for temporary camps when traveling 

between Rigolet or Groswater Bay and western Lake 

Melville. The eastern part of the northern shore of Lake 

Melville has few islands, harbors, or large rivers to 

attract permanent settlement. We found small hearths 

on exposed points and cobble beaches, and at Charlie 

Point, a series of modern stone inuksuks, but no 

evidence of extensive use until the recent speedboat 

era. One of the more interesting areas was a cove on 

the mainland south of Valley Bight and Andy Island 

where we found a modern cabin and a cemented stone 

memorial to the previous occupants, Jack and Dorcas 

Sheppard, installed by their children and relatives.

In 2017, we found a sod-walled Inuit winter dwelling 

on the north end of St. John Island, which is an 

excellent place for netting seals through the ice. Test 

pits in 2018 revealed a large house with a paved 

interior, a raised sleeping platform in the rear, and 

a paved entryway that opened onto a paved “patio” 

at the end of the entry tunnel. The dwelling dates 

to the 18th century and is the western-most Inuit 

winter site in Hamilton Inlet. The site is full of 

seal bones and may have been a staging point for 

spring caribou hunts in the Mealy Mountains.

As noted in previous reports, Hamilton Inlet has 

extensive archaeological and heritage resources 

that could be developed for scholarly and touristic 

purposes. The most likely opportunities lie with Inuit 

and Innu sites near the Mealy Mountains National 

Park, especially studies of Inuit-Innu contact at 18th

to 20th century settlements. While there may have 

been periods of Inuit-Innu hostility in the 18–19th

centuries, oral history today indicates frequent peaceful 

contact and collaboration. These stories could be 

explored by archaeological work at many of the sites 

we have identified during the past several years.

JESUP-2 TREE KEEPS BEARING 

FRUITS: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON 

SIBERIAN ETHNOGRAPHY

Jochelson, Bogoras and Shternberg. A Scientific 

Exploration of Northeastern Siberia and the Shaping of 

Soviet Ethnography (2018, Erich Kasten, ed. Verlag der 

Kulturstiftung Sibirien: Fürstenberg/Havel, 288 pp.)

By Igor Krupnik

ASC Newsletter readers and many of our research 

partners are well familiar with the “Jesup-2” initiative, 

St. John Island Inuit winter house and midden.

Photo by William Fitzhugh
30 ASC Newsletter

a decade-long “centennial” program celebrating 

the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of 1897–1902, 

with its several teams working in Northeast Siberia 

and Northwest North America, under the general 

leadership of Franz Boas (ASC Newsletter 1, 2a, 6, 

9, 10, 12, 13, 14). The ASC began this program in 

1992 and ran it successfully for over a decade—via 

several scholarly symposia, published volumes, 

public and collection-based initiatives, small exhibit 

and website projects (mostly implemented by our 

partners at the American Museum of Natural History 

in New York), and other activities. Although the 

Jesup-2 program unofficially closed in 2003, over 

the years, new publications continued to appear, like 

Sergei Kan’s monumental book on Leo Shternberg 

(2009), an edited volume Raven’s Arch (1903–2002), 

The Jesup North Pacific Expedition Revisited 

(Tanimoto and Inoue 2009), and scores of research 

papers and collection discoveries (ASC Newsletter

12). Nonetheless, over the years most of the Jesup-2 

partners moved on to other research topics.

Unbeknownst to many colleagues in North America, 

a small research institution in Fürstenberg/Havel, 

Germany, led by one of the Jesup-2 alumni, Dr. Erich 

Kasten continued to wave the Jesup flag, at least on 

the Siberian side of the Jesup-2 North Pacific area. 

Kasten heads a small research foundation called 

Kulturstiftung Sibirien (Foundation for Siberian 

Cultures—www.kulturstiftung-sibirien.de) he 

helped establish in 2010 with the aim of preserving 

indigenous languages and knowledge systems and 

enhancing arts and craft traditions of Northern 

indigenous peoples, particularly across the Russian 

Far East and Northeast Siberia. Kasten is no stranger 

to exploring Franz Boas and his legacy; in 1989–90 

he produced an exhibit Maskentaenze der Kwakiutl 

(Kwakiutl Masked Dances) that was displayed at the 

Ethnological Museum in Berlin and in 1992, (together 

with Michael Duerr and Egon Renner) he edited a 

volume dedicated to the legacy of Boas in studying 

people, cultures, and languages of North America.

When we first met Erich at the Jesup-2 “centennial” 

conference in 1997 at AMNH in New York, he was 

already firmly working with the Koryak and Itelmen 

people of the Russian Far East on their contemporary 

issues of culture and language preservation. He 

maintained this research focus over the next 20 

years; he also visited the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), 

Chukotka, and other areas once studied by the Jesup 

North Pacific Expedition. Soon after the Kulturstiftung 

Sibirien Foundation was launched, he embarked on 

an ambitious project to reprint the original volumes 

of the Jesup Expedition series (1898–1933), at least 

those related to Siberia and make them accessible and 

searchable online via the existing PDF files scanned by 

AMNH, primarily for local users, who have difficulty 

accessing the original books. His vision also included 

providing each volume with a new “introduction” 

to be written by a modern scholar specializing in 

the respective indigenous nation or its area.

One by one, Kasten’s ambitious plan materialized in the 

production of a new library of the Jesup volumes called 

Bibliotheca Sibiro-pacifica: The Koryak (by Waldemar 

Jochelson, 2016, with a foreword by Kasten and 

Michael Dürr), Chukchee Mythology (by Waldemar 

Bogoras, 2016), The Chukchee (by Bogoras, 2017, 

with a foreword by Igor Krupnik), The Yakut 

(by Jochelson, 2018, with a foreword by Tat’iana 

Argounova-Low), and The Yukaghir and Yukaghirized 

Tungus (by Jochelson, 2018, with a foreword by 

Thomas R. Miller, another Jesup-2 alumni). This is a 

monumental shelf of thick volumes in light-beige hard 

cover that, besides the new introductions, replicate the 

original AMNH publications of the Jesup Expedition.

In 2018, Kasten made a typical “Jesup-2” move: he 

compiled these new introductions and several other 

research papers dedicated to the Jesup Expedition work 

in Siberia and published them together as an edited 

volume titled Jochelson, Bogoras and Shternberg. A 

Scientific Exploration of Northeastern Siberia and the 

Shaping of Soviet Ethnography (2018). The volume 

includes nine papers, of which four are the abovementioned new introductions to the reprinted Jesup 

Expedition volumes. Five other papers in the book 

explore in more general terms the life and research of 

two lead figures in the Jesup work in Siberia (Jochelson 

and Bogoras) and of their colleague and ideological 

peer, Leo Shternberg, who was instrumental in the 

foundation of new Russian Siberian ethnography 

after 1920. These papers that were written by both 

members of the original Jesup-2 team (Sergei Kan, 

Tatiana Roon) and other Siberian specialists (Anna 

Sirina, Elena Liarskaya, Matthias Winterschladen) 

offer new perspectives of the famous Siberian “ethnotroika” before and after the Jesup Expedition. 

It is refreshing to see the “Jesup-2” tree that we 

helped plant in 1992 still vibrant and bearing 

products, including those by people who were too 

young to join the original Jesup-2 team almost thirty 

years ago. It provides a useful match to another 

recent collection published by the Kulturstiftung 

Sibirien (2016, in German), Auf Den Spuren Der 

Modernen Sozial- Und Kulturanthropologie. Die 

Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902) im 

Nordosten Sibiriens (On the Trail of Modern Social 

and Cultural Anthropology. Jesup North Pacific 

Expedition, 1897–1902 in Northeast Siberia) edited 
 ASC Newsletter 31

by Diana Ordubadi, Matthias Winterschladen, 

and Dittmar Dahlmann. The latter book contains six 

more papers on the history of the Jesup Expedition 

work in Siberia and it even features on its cover 

the original Boas’ draft map of the future Jesup 

research area that was recovered by Curtis (Kit) 

Hinsley and mailed to AMNH in 2003, where I had 

a chance to explore and identify it in 2004 based 

on our knowledge on the history of the expedition 

(ASC Newsletter 12:16–17). It is prudent to say that 

our (unannounced) closure of the Jesup-2 program 

in 2003 was perhaps premature, as the field remains 

active and several younger researchers have replaced 

members of the original Jesup-2 founding cohort.

BURCH ENDOWMENT SUPPORT 

FOR ASC ACTIVITIES IN 2018

By Igor Krupnik

2018 was the sixth year, when ASC operations have 

been strongly bolstered by the funding from the Ernest 

(“Tiger”) Burch Endowment established by the family 

of our late colleague, Ernest “Tiger” Burch, Jr. 

(1938–2010). In 2014–2016, the endowment, together 

with the SI “Grand Challenges” grant was instrumental 

for the success of our Arctic Crashes project (ASC 

Newsletter 21, 22, 23) that has materialized as a major 

volume, now in press. It also allowed us to establish 

an annual “Burch Lecture” series started in 2015. 

The Burch Endowment continued to boost the 

ASC activities, both in Washington and Anchorage, 

throughout 2018. It covered several research and 

conference trips by the ASC staff, a portion of 

expenses for the editorial work on the Arctic Crashes 

manuscript and for the production of this Newsletter, 

the ASC membership in ARCUS (Arctic Research 

Consortium of the U.S.), our contribution to the 

2018 SI “Mother Tongue” film festival, and several 

other activities. As in the prior years, it supported 

the annual “Tiger Burch” lecture in April 2018.

We had a special speaker for the 2018 Burch 

Lecture—Dr. Karen Mager, Assistant Professor of 

Environmental Sustainability at the Earlham College 

in Richmond, IN. Karen is an ecologist studying 

wildlife populations responses to environmental 

change; but via her graduate training and research 

in Alaska, she became interested in indigenous 

knowledge, oral history, and Native perspectives on 

animal-human-environmental relations. She is also a 

contributor to the forthcoming Arctic Crashes book. 

What made Karen a special Burch speaker was 

her relations with Tiger in her early research years 

in Alaska that overlapped with Tiger’s writing on 

his decade-long research on the history of Alaska 

caribou herds. Karen was the youngest of Tiger’s 

many correspondents and, perhaps, among the 

last influenced by personal interactions with him. 

He would be pleased to see her speaking at his 

80th birthday on April 17, 2018 at NMNH.

GHOSTS OF CARIBOU HERDS PAST: 

EVALUATING HISTORICAL HERD 

CRASHES USING GENETICS AND 

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE

By Karen Mager

The opportunity to survey a vast landscape is 

something most of us experience only occasionally, 

Dr. Karen Mager gives the 2018 Ernest S. Burch lecture at 

the National Museum of Natural History, April 17, 2018.

Photo by Igor Krupnik
32 ASC Newsletter

Ranges of proposed historical herds from the mid-late 1800s overlaid on a map of modern caribou herd ranges in western 

Alaska. Scenario 1: Large Bering Seacoast Heard. BSH – Bering Seacoast herd, WAH – Western Arctic herd, MCH – 

Mulchatna herd (MCH). Scenario 2: Three Small Herds. ARH – Andreafsky River herd, NHH – Nulato Hills herd, and SPH 

– Seward Peninsula herd (SPH) (approximate herd ranges from Burch 2012:119)

from the top of a hill or the window of an airplane. 

In the Arctic tundra of Alaska, the summer landscape 

is a green matrix surrounding the curved lines and 

circles of rivers and lakes...and if you’re lucky, the 

chance to spot some caribou, ant-like from the air. 

Biologists use aerial surveys to count caribou, and 

biologist Jim Dau recalls: “During the 2009 Western 

Arctic Herd (WAH) census...we photographed a 

single group of caribou that numbered >211,000 

caribou. That group, even though it was incredibly 

dense in places, covered well over 30 mi2 (78 km2)."

However, if you were to travel back in time to the 

same landscape 100 years earlier, you’d not likely 

see any caribou. Biologist Rudolph M. Anderson

wrote in 1913: “Until a few years ago the coastal 

plain of Arctic Alaska...was the pasture of vast 

herds. Only an occasional scattered band is now 

seen....The caribou are practically extinct....” 

This dramatic change in caribou abundance fascinated 

anthropologist Ernest S. “Tiger” Burch (1938–

2010) and me. Both of us heard repeatedly about 

changes in caribou abundance, distribution, and 

behavior from Alaska Native elders who we sought 

to learn from using oral history research. Why did 

caribou populations crash? How did they recover? 

What were the caribou doing in the intervening 

century, and how have those “ghosts of caribou 

herds past” shaped the caribou herds of today?

I first met Burch, the acclaimed ethnohistorian, 

during my time as a PhD student at the University 

of Alaska Fairbanks, where I was attempting to 

answer such questions. He was studying the history 

of caribou herds as well, and in 2009 over coffee 

in Fairbanks we launched a scholarly conversation 

that lasted until Burch’s death in 2010. We shared 

obscure historical sources plucked like needles 

from a haystack. I gave comments on Burch’s draft 

manuscript on the history of caribou in Alaska, and we 

discussed the implications of the available evidence 

for caribou biology. I published my findings later in 

several scholarly papers and my doctoral thesis, and 

Burch’s book, Caribou Herds of Northwest Alaska: 

1850–2000, appeared posthumously in 2012.

Burch’s meticulously researched book reconstructed 

the historical migratory routes and population trends 

of caribou herds long before biologists were flying 

aerial surveys or studying caribou movements with 

satellite collars. It fills a significant gap in knowledge 

about caribou biology. My recent research enters into 

dialogue with Burch’s book by adding to research on 

reindeer-caribou interactions, a subject that interested 

him greatly, and by using genetic analysis to “test” 

the historical hypotheses that Burch proposed. 

Caribou populations fluctuate in size over decadal time 

scales across the Arctic. Some herds that crash will 

later recover. Others will not, due either to extinction 

or merging with another herd. Some perceived caribou 

crashes may actually be due to range shifts, emigration, 

or shifts in behavior. To research historical crashes in 

caribou herds as well as their interactions with reindeer, 

I conducted oral history interviews with Iñupiat 
 ASC Newsletter 33

Map of modern Alaskan caribou herds mentioned, indicating the time period each herd 

is thought to have crashed (* indicates herds believed to have gone extinct, and their 

ranges later recolonized): PCH = Porcupine herd, CAH = Central Arctic herd, TCH = 

Teshekpuk herd, WAH = Western Arctic herd, MCH = Mulchatna herd

elders, former reindeer herders in Utqiagvik (Barrow) 

and examined primary historical sources and their 

interpretation by various authors. Next, I formulated 

predictions about the population genetic patterns we 

would expect to find if each alternative historical 

hypothesis were correct. Finally, I used genetic data 

from modern herds to evaluate each prediction and 

provide new understandings of historical caribou herds. 

“How” caribou populations crash is an important 

question for many reasons. Caribou are integral to the 

livelihoods of many northern peoples, as well as to 

their natural biological predators (like wolves) and their 

abundance or scarcity matters to those who depend 

on them. The “herd” is the unit used by biologists to 

manage caribou populations, and is defined as a group 

of individuals born in a particular calving area to which 

females return each year. Understanding how herds 

crash and recover is important to tracking their identity 

and continuity. Additionally, caribou herd declines 

influence their genetic diversity, which can impact their 

future adaptive capacity to environmental change. 

Burch and I both engaged these “how” questions, 

relying upon historical documents and oral histories 

that describe caribou herd crashes in the Bering Sea 

Region (1870–1900) and the 

North Slope (1900–1915) of 

northwestern Alaska. Burch’s 

careful and extensive analysis 

of these sources, including oral 

histories he recorded that recall 

the direction of travel taken by 

hunters at different times of year, 

led him to conclude that up to 

seven historical caribou herds 

once lived in a region currently 

occupied by only four herds. 

Burch’s interpretation of how each 

of these herds recovered (or did 

not), along with my additional 

research, form the basis of the 

genetic predictions I test. 

Burch’s historical reconstructions 

differ from those of earlier 

authors. For example, we know 

that caribou were numerous in 

the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim 

watersheds of western Alaska in 

the mid-1800s, but interpretations 

differ regarding who they 

were, and how they declined. 

Biologist Ronald Skoog (1968) 

hypothesized that one large, 

migratory “Bering Seacoast 

Herd” spanned the region. This was based on a 

tantalizing, if uncertain, suggestion of a migratory 

route from another biologist, Olaus Murie (1935), 

who heard that caribou once crossed the Yukon 

River heading south to a calving ground, and also 

migrated northward along the Norton Sound coast in 

the fall to their wintering grounds. Using the same 

information along with many additional sources, 

Burch proposed instead that up to three small herds 

occupied patches of high quality, montane habitat in 

the region: the Seward Peninsula Herd, the Nulato 

Hills Herd, and the Andreafsky River Herd. Which 

of these interpretations most closely approximates 

the actual history of caribou in the region? Genetic 

methods provide a tool to help us answer this question!

There are no caribou herds in the Bering Coast region 

year-round today; the region is at the southern extent 

of the Western Arctic herd and the northern extent 

of the Mulchatna herd but it is rare for animals from 

either of these to cross the Yukon River. Contact 

between these herds in the 1800s is conceivable, 

however. Large, migratory, tundra herds are often 

closely related to neighboring herds and to more 

distant herds with which they share an intermediate 

neighbor. By contrast, small montane herds are often 
34 ASC Newsletter

Karen interviews Tom Brower III in Utqiagvik (Barrow) in 

2008 about caribou and reindeer in the Teshekpuk herd range

more genetically differentiated. Therefore, if a large 

Bering Seacoast herd once existed we would expect 

some evidence of past genetic exchange between the 

Western Arctic and Mulchatna herds. In analyzing the 

relationships of these two herds to 18 other caribou 

herds in Alaska, I found that the Mulchatna herd was 

more closely related to nine other herds throughout 

Alaska than it is to the Western Arctic herd. This 

genetic pattern suggests that the lower Yukon River 

has been a barrier to genetic exchange, rather than a 

conduit, historically. Thus, the genetic data are more 

consistent with Burch’s interpretation, that three small 

and less-migratory herds once lived in this region. 

By 1900, these three small herds were extinct and 

the Western Arctic herd had declined dramatically. 

Not long after, herds to the east along Alaska’s North 

Slope also crashed. The people of Barrow, Alaska 

harvested 1,200 caribou in the winter of 1897–1898 

to feed men from a stranded whaling ship, but 

caribou were scarcely seen again in that coastal 

region until the 1930s. In the intervening years, 

people in the Barrow area used reindeer introduced 

from Russia to establish several domestic reindeer 

herds that numbered in the hundreds of thousands 

by the 1930s but declined to zero by the 1950s. 

This complex history begs the question: are the 

Teshekpuk and Central Arctic herds that inhabit the 

North Slope today direct descendants of past herds? 

Burch concluded from his research that the historical 

herds in the Teshekpuk and Central Arctic herd ranges 

went extinct, and were then repopulated via emigration 

from neighboring herds. An alternative interpretation 

of these and some additional sources suggest that herds 

may simply have shifted southward into the mountains, 

or declined and switched to a non-migratory pattern, 

rather than going extinct. Thirdly, many local residents 

and biologists suspected that modern caribou herds 

were founded by escaped domestic reindeer, which 

are the same species as caribou and capable of 

interbreeding. To determine which of these historical 

interpretations is most likely, I turned to genetics again!

If caribou herds had declined dramatically and 

then recovered, we would expect to see signatures 

of a genetic “bottleneck” in herds today, but we 

find no evidence of this. Alternatively, if the herds 

went extinct and were then re-established by 

emigration from the nearby Porcupine or Western 

Arctic herds, we would expect today’s herds to 

be genetically similar but less diverse than their 

founders—however, we find no such pattern. 

Finally, my oral history research with 25 former 

reindeer herders and caribou hunters in Barrow, 

including 12 elders who were active herders in the 

1920–1940s, suggested extensive opportunities for 

mixing between caribou and reindeer. The genetic 

data suggest some interbreeding between caribou 

and reindeer, however it is clear that modern herds 

are descended primarily from caribou and not feral 

reindeer herds. The exact history of North Slope 

herds remains murky, though genetic data are more 

consistent with a history of herd persistence rather 

than the extinction and colonization Burch proposed. 

Looking to the past can provide us with models of 

caribou herd change over time scales beyond the 

range of modern biological data. Modern satellite 

collar technology, however, enables us to observe 

movements of caribou in crashing or expanding 

herds, and to note how they alter their space use 

and social associations. These observations raise 

questions about how we measure herd persistence. If 

one herd joins another’s calving ground for a decade 

but then “reappears” as caribou begin to use the 

area again, is it the same herd? If a herd abandons 

its calving ground but all the females of the herd 

stick together as they shift to join another herd, is 

the herd still intact? Links to geographic range and 

to descendants both affect the adaptive capacity of 

caribou, and their value to people. This is an exciting 

new frontier in the study of caribou herd histories, 

as we begin to have long enough periods of satellite 

collar data to observe such behavioral changes. 

Long-term case studies remind us of the astounding 

diversity of caribou ecology—their use of landscape, 

social behavior, and fluctuations in size—recorded 

across the species’ range over time. By taking an 

expansive, well-researched, and bold approach, Burch 

extended our understanding of caribou herd dynamics 

over the time scale of centuries. In doing so, he 

revealed the likely existence of small herds that are 

now extinct, and helped to kindle my interest in one 

of my next projects—studying genetic relationships 

of some of the small herds that still remain. 
 ASC Newsletter 35

charismatic Chicago naturalist Robert Kennicott

to assemble a team of researchers to survey the 

route, gathering information on everything from 

geology to people. Kennicott and Baird assembled 

a team of specialists to survey the terrestrial zone: 

J.T. Rothrock, botany; Ferdinand Bischoff, 

entomology; Henry Elliott and Charles Pease, 

ornithology and mammals; Henry Bannister, 

paleontology; and William Healey Dall, invertebrates 

and fish. These became members of the WUTE 

“Scientific Corps”. There was also the Bering Sea 

to be dealt with, and for this, WUTE assembled a 

much larger “Marine Corps” under the charge of 

the US Revenue Marine Captain Scammon, for 

whom both Scammon’s Lagoon in Baja California, 

and Scammon Bay, Alaska are named. The joint 

marine expeditions of the Western Union Company 

and the Russian American Company became a 

prelude to the transfer of the vast lands of what 

became Alaska to the United States in 1867.

William Healey Dall in his WUTE Scientific Corps uniform, 

1865

TIES THAT BIND: SUBMARINE CABLES 

AND SMITHSONIAN RESEARCH

By John Cloud

The electric telegraph, invented in the 19th century, 

has been called “the Victorian Internet”. In the 21st

century, in our ever more inter-connected digital 

world, the amalgam we refer to as “The Internet” is 

increasingly looking like “the Victorian telegraph”. 

That is because the most important advance in 

the history of the telegraph was the successful 

completion of submarine electrical cables linking 

entire continents across the ocean basins that occupy 

most of the planet. Near instantaneous transmission 

of data around the world defines our world. 

Since 1866, most of that transmission has 

occurred underwater. The successes and failures of 

submarine cable systems have shaped not only our 

world, but also the history of the Smithsonian. 

The original plan for a submarine cable system was 

to link western Europe and North America across 

the North Atlantic Ocean. The shortest route is from 

Ireland to Newfoundland, to the Canadian mainland 

and then the United States. To successfully lay the 

cable, the configuration of the bottom of the Atlantic 

had to be determined. In the 1850s, American and 

British attempts to do this transformed human 

knowledge of the deep ocean. Royal Navy Lt. Joseph 

Dayman’s 1857 map and bottom profile of the 

approach to Newfoundland along the proposed route 

was foundational to contemporary oceanography.

The first cable was completed in September 1858 

and was the wonder of the moment, but within a 

month the cable had failed. The technology was 

not ripe enough for the task. By the early 1860s, 

when there was still no successful Atlantic cable, 

the Western Union Company in the United States 

began to explore a route across the Bering Strait from 

North America to Siberia. The company secured 

the cooperation of the Russian American Company, 

the Russian imperial company that owned what 

became known as Alaska. Together, they launched 

the Western Union Telegraph Expedition (WUTE). 

The proposed route would go up the Fraser River in 

Canada, cross over into the Yukon to Port Clarence 

on Seward Peninsula, pass under the Bering Strait 

to Siberia, and from there link to existing Russian 

telegraph systems. The sketchiness of the WUTE map 

reflects the poor state of knowledge of the land and 

peoples that the cable system would pass and affect.

In consultation with Smithsonian Assistant Secretary 

Spencer Baird in 1865, WUTE commissioned the 
36 ASC Newsletter

In 1866, in the midst of prodigious efforts by 

all involved, there were two momentous events: 

Robert Kennicott died mysteriously in the field 

and a second trans-Atlantic submarine cable was 

successfully completed. The WUTE project was 

instantly obsolete and was cancelled. The loss 

to Western Union and the Russian American 

Company, however, was the Smithsonian’s gain. 

The surviving members of the Scientific Corps, 

with their vast collections and their ethnographic 

research, returned to Washington where Baird helped 

parlay their results into popular and congressional 

support for the purchase of Alaska. The brief but 

productive history of the WUTE has enriched 

the Smithsonian and the nation ever since.

Submarine cables may seem archaic, but in 

fact there are more of them being laid every 

day in the 21st century. Humans are profoundly 

terrestrial, so the underwater cables are largely 

invisible. But civilization as we presently 

know it is held together by a vast, expanding 

aquatic web dating to the Victorian era.

A BOREAL FOREST INTERLUDE

By Robert Mullen and Stephen Loring

Named for Boreas, the Greek God of the North Wind, the 

Boreal Forest, girds the Arctic with a crown of conifers 

whose vast expanse creates the world’s largest terrestrial 

ecosystem and the Earth’s greatest remaining wilderness. 

It is a critical component of climate modelling; it contains 

a sizeable proportion of the world’s critical fresh-water 

wildlife and nesting habitat; and it is the homeland of 

indigenous cultures whose intellectual heritage is a 

vestige of humanity’s hunter/gather origins. For almost 

twenty years the Arctic Studies Center has advanced the 

idea of an exhibition and educational initiative to raise 

awareness of the tremendous significance of the boreal 

forest. Plans have surfaced and prospered repeatedly only 

to be dashed as the Museum’s agendas and personnel 

have changed over time. Through this whole process, the 

Arctic Studies Center has partnered with Rob Mullen

and his Wilderness Rivers Expedition Art Foundation 

(WREAF), working together to fuse scientific, artistic, 

and indigenous perspectives of the Boreal Forest. This 

Celebration of Ocean Telegraphing, 1858
 ASC Newsletter 37

past year Carol Bossert of the Smithsonian Institution 

Traveling Exhibition Service reignited the embers of 

a Boreal Forest Exhibition, and served as a catalyst 

for the Ungava canoe adventure reported below.

A core mandate of WREAF has been to promote and 

publicize awareness and appreciation of the boreal forest 

by creating opportunities for artists and researchers to 

travel in wilderness portions of northern Canada and 

Alaska. For the summer of 2018, Rob Mullen, with 

the support of The Center for Circumpolar Studies, 

Alliance de Industrie Touristique du Québec, Nunavik 

Tourism, Nunavik Parks, and the Natural Resources 

Defense Council (NRDC), arranged an expedition to 

Wiyashakimi (the Lac aux l’Eau Claire/Clearwater 

Lake meteorite impact crater) in Nunavik (Arctic 

Quebec). The expedition included a canoe-borne 

traverse across the Ungava Peninsula from Richmond 

Gulf on Hudson Bay via the Rivière aux Mélèzes 

to Kuujjuak at the mouth of the Koksoak River on 

Ungava Bay. This rarely travelled route was pioneered 

by the intrepid Canadian geologist, A.P. Low, in 

1896, who traversed this portion of Eeyou Istchee 

with the help of Cree/Eeyou informants and guides. 

Our 2018 fieldwork was to gather insight and materials 

for the exhibition and to follow up on the ASC 

“Animal Crashes” research initiative, particularly to 

gather data on caribou and the freshwater seals of 

Ungava, as well as aspects of Innu history and landtenure in the northwestern corner of Nitassinan. 

The WREAF/ASC party consisting of Stephen Loring, 

Rob Mullen, videographer/naturalist Robin Tapley, 

and photographer Steve Gorman, flew from Montreal 

to the small Inuit village of Umiujaq on the northeast 

coast of Hudson’s Bay on August 2. The first 150 miles 

of our trip would be within the new (2013) Tursujuq 

National Park. Early in our discussion about an Ungava 

traverse, Rob’s consultation with park personnel 

and with Nunavik tourism officials resulted in their 

extending an invitation to us to spend our first week 

in Nunavik as their guests on the “Tasiujaq Treasures” 

excursion. This opportunity gave us a chance to visit 

the community and explore the spectacular landscapes 

in the park, including Nastapoka Falls and Richmond 

Gulf (Lac Guillaume-Delisle). We owe a conspicuous 

debt of gratitude to Tursujuq Park Operations Manager, 

Michel Haarc-Morrisette and Isabelle Dubois of 

Nunavik Tourism for facilitating our introduction 

to the Umiujaq and Kuujjuak communities and the 

wonders of the region’s geology and wildlife.

Our survey party left Umiujaq on a chartered TwinOtter that flew us into the Clearwater Lakes on August 

9th, from whence we followed A.P. Low’s route up the 

Noonish River, crossing over the Clearwater/Nastapoka 

Close encounters of the Rangifer kind: for several days in 

late-August small companies of caribou crossing the Rivière 

aux Mélèzes were never out of sight and occasionally dense 

enough to prove a navigational hazard! Photo by Rob Mullen

The sometimes thought-to-be-extinct Fresh Water Seal of 

Ungava (Phoca vitulina mellonae) photographed in Lacs 

des Loups Marins. Photo by Rob Mullen

An Innu (Eeyou Istchee) raised earthen-walled tent-ring 

(with a central stone hearth), ca. 1880–1900, above a 

portage route from the Clearwater Lakes to Ungava. 

Photo by Stephen Loring
38 ASC Newsletter

divide into the Seal Lake country. The Seal Lakes 

(Lacs des Loups Marins) have a near mythical status 

as home of a unique population of freshwater seals 

(Phoca vitulina mellonae) whose ancestors became 

trapped as post-glacial isostatic rebound expelled the 

Tyrrell Sea from the Hudson Bay lowlands between 

8,000 and 3,000 years ago. Although known to Inuit 

and Innu, and referenced by early Hudson’s Bay 

Company explorers, they remained “unknown to 

science” until a pair of Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh 

naturalists (J.K. Doutt and Arthur Twomey) acquired 

two during a mid-winter expedition in 1938–1939. 

Seal Lake is a large complicated maze of interconnected bays and waterways interspersed with 

islands and peninsulas that trend southwest-tonortheast for over 80kms. A leitmotif of the few 

accounts of traversing the lake, from Low’s day to 

recent times, are the dangerous winds and high seas 

these travelers faced. We were greatly relieved/blessed 

by moderate westerlies that propelled us, for the 

most part, safely along. The only lament being that 

the fair weather precluded intensive archaeological 

survey for previous Innu/ Eeyou land-use and the 

documentation of wildlife and subsistence resources. 

Nevertheless, we were thrilled by encounters with 

four of the mysterious (but curious) freshwater seals. 

At the extreme northeast of Seal Lake our route, a 

series of short portages led across the Height-of-Land 

to the Lac du Sem headwaters of the Rivière aux 

Mélèzes (Larch River). The valley of the Mélèzes 

closely approximates the northern tree-line in Quebec 

and forms the border country between the boreal 

forest to the south and the arctic tundra stretching 

northward to Hudson’s Straits and Ungava Bay. We 

followed the river for over 350 kms from its source as 

a boulder-strewn stream with barely (or not) enough 

water to float the canoes to its youthful stage of ledge 

drops and rapids and then a mature and majestic 

river with long, ferocious, intimidating rapids to its 

confluence with the Kaniapiskau. There its combined 

waters formed the Koksoak, which eventually leads 

to salt-water and tidal extremes at Ungava Bay. We 

reached the community of Kuujjuak on September 

7 and flew back to the States a few days later.

It was quite a privilege to traverse such a historic 

route, following in the footsteps of A.P. Low and 

the Hudson’s Bay Company explorers like Nicol 

Finlayson and Erland Erlandson, whose 1830 

traverse led to the establishment of Fort Chimo 

across the river from Kuujjuak and the beginning of 

recorded history in Nunavik. We were thus able to 

compare their experiences and observations on the 

activities of Innu/Eeyou families they encountered 

with the relative abandonment of the region today. 

On 28 August we reached Lake Natuak, about a third 

of the way down the river and 170 kms above the 

confluence with the Kaniapiskau, a large lake-like 

expansion of the river where Low found Indian families 

camped to intercept migrating caribou. From the 

moment we reached the lake and for the following four 

days we were never out of sight of strings of migrating 

caribou, often numbering in the hundreds, moving 

down from the north and crossing the river and lake 

to the western-shore. The abundance of caribou was 

reminiscent of the George River herds seen in Labrador 

prior to a few years ago when the George River herd 

crashed and is only now beginning to re-build. The 

abundance of the Leaf herd several hundred miles to 

the west, speaks to the difficulties of defining caribou 

demography and herd identity over space and time.

Caribou are a revered icon of the North, and they are a 

key subsistence component of many indigenous boreal 

forest cultures as well as an indicator species for the 

health of the boreal forest ecosystem. While many 

caribou herds throughout Canada have experienced 

population crashes over the last decade, our river route 

provided an exciting opportunity to encounter elements 

of the Leaf River herd, which is one of the only herds 

in North America that is doing well. Of additional 

interest, it is adjacent to and somewhat overlaps the 

George River herd which has lost over 90% from its 

1990s heyday as the largest ungulate herd in the world.

FIFTH THULE EXPEDITION 

CENTENNIAL MARCHES ON

By Igor Krupnik

In last-year’s issue of the Newsletter, the ASC 

unveiled its plans for a major new international 

program dedicated to the centennial of the Fifth 

Thule Expedition (hereafter FTE) of 1921–1924 

(ASC Newsletter 25:38–42). The story from the 

year 2018 ended with the announcement of the 

forthcoming “Fifth Thule session” at the 46th annual 

meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association 

(AkAA) held in February 2019 in Nome, Alaska. 

We are glad to report that this session indeed took 

place on February 28, 2019; it marked a major 

advancement in the planning for the international 

“FTE centennial program.” 

A lot of work was done in 2018 in preparation for 

FTE session. In September 2018, I met in Copenhagen 

with several prospective speakers and FTE centennial 

contributors. Bent Nielsen, Director of the Danish 

Arctic Institute, hosted a small meeting attended 

by several Danish scholars interested in the FTE 

activities. Eventually, they all traveled to Nome and 
 ASC Newsletter 39

gave their presentations at the AkAA session. Bent 

also prepared a small display of archival materials 

in the possession of the Danish Arctic Institute, 

including Rasmussen’s letters, expedition reports, 

and an album of expedition photos once owned by 

famous Danish archaeologist and FTE participant 

Therkel Mathiessen. That direct reach to the 

expedition’s legacy was highly useful to the discussion 

of future research on the intellectual history of FTE. 

Following this meeting, Knud Michelsen, Arctic 

Institute associate and the author of several books 

on his grand-uncle Knud Rasmussen, took me on 

a tour of Rasmussen’s family house in Hundested, 

off Copenhagen and of the nearby Industrimuseet in 

Frederiksvaerk that houses personal papers of Knud 

Rasmussen. Another enthusiastic partner who signed 

for the FTE program was Danish film director Lene 

Borch Hansen, at the Nordisk Film Production, who 

was the lead power behind the newly released film, 

Knud Rasmussen: The Great Enchanter (2017).

We also explored several venues to bring more Inuit 

participants to the Nome FTE session, to expand the 

usual crowd of curators, anthropologists, historians, 

and ASC researchers. Aron Crowell and I submitted 

(and received) a travel grant from the AkAA to 

support Inuit participants from Canada—Pamela 

Hakongak Gross, executive director of the Kitikmeot 

Heritage Society in Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuuttiaq) 

in Nunavut and also the town’s new mayor, and 

Bernadette Metkusak Dean, educator and heritage 

worker from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. The U.S. 

Arctic Research Commission (special thanks to its 

executive director John Farrell) sponsored Eileen 

Norbert, Nome-born Inuit educator and cultural 

worker, who recently published a book on historical 

photography of her grandfather Charles Menadelook

(1892–1933; ASC Newsletter 25). Lastly, through 

our connections to the Greenlandic Representation 

at the Danish Embassy in Washington (Inuuteq 

Olsen), colleagues at the Greenlandic National 

Museum and Archives (Nunatta Katersugaasivia 

Allagaateqarfialu), and support from the Greenlandic 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs we were lucky to have Dr. 

Mari Kleist, Greenlandic-born and British-trained 

archaeologist, originally from Nuuk. Mari provided 

links to several Greenlandic institutions interested in 

the FTE centennial program. ASC participants (Aron 

Crowell, Stephen Loring, Bernadette Driscoll 

Engelstad) and two Danish scholars (Birgitte Sonne

and Daria Schwalbe) were funded by the ASC Tiger 

Burch Endowment. It was a deeply symbolic bridge 

to Burch’s legacy, since thirty years prior, Burch 

and Danish anthropologist Inge Kleivan co-edited a 

special issue of the journal Études/Inuit/Studies (1988) 

dedicated to Knud Rasmussen and the FTE legacy.

Display of the Fifth Thule expedition documents in the 

collection of the Danish Arctic Institute. Copenhagen, 

September 2018. Photo by Igor Krupnik

The interior of Knud Rasmussen’s house in Hundested, 

September 2018. Photo by Igor Krupnik

Knud Rasmussen’s personal papers and books in the archives 

of the Industrimuseet in Frederiksvaerk, September 2018 . 

Photo by Igor Krupnik
40 ASC Newsletter

While funding was secured, nothing went smoothly 

in late 2018–early 2019, though our troubles had little 

in common to what Knud Rasmussen and his FTE 

partners experienced almost 100 years ago. The session 

to be co-chaired by Aron and I was fully aligned by 

late December 2018; yet it faced forces beyond our 

control. On January 2, 2019, the Smithsonian was 

closed, due to the U.S. government shutdown; that 

prevented us from entering our offices and it also 

blocked the use of our travel funds and our very 

ability to travel. The shutdown ended on January 

26; yet the threat of another shutdown loomed until 

mid-February, leaving most of our plans in the air, 

since we could not guarantee even our own presence 

at the session. Plus one should never discount 

Mother Nature, particularly in the Arctic. 

The flight from Anchorage to Nome on the 

night before the session with several speakers on 

board could not land, because of a heavy snowstorm, 

leaving those of us in town scrambling for emergency 

plans. Fortunately, everyone eventually arrived, 

although some sessions at the conference were moved 

by a day or two to accommodate late arrivals. 

The full-day session with 15 papers ran on February 

28, from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. with some 60 people 

packed in the largest classroom of the UAF Northwest 

Campus building in Nome that hosted the conference. 

The papers were organized to cover three major 

topics: 1) intellectual history of the FTE; 2) its work 

in Alaska and specifically in the Bering Strait-Seward 

Peninsula area, including Russian Chukotka; and 

3) the legacy of the FTE, including the role of its 

museum, archival, photographic and other resources 

to contemporary scholarship, museum work, and to 

the people living in the areas covered by FTE team. 

My opening presentation covered the history of the 

FTE centennial effort and also positioned Rasmussen 

and his team among their peers in Arctic/Inuit 

research of the era (Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Roald 

Amundsen, Diamond Jenness, William Thalbitzer, 

Christian Leden), as well as their predecessors from 

the earlier cohort of explorers (Franz Boas, Gustav 

Holm, Fritjof Nansen, Edward Nelson, Lucien 

Turner, and others). In the following talk, Knud 

Michelsen introduced the varying plans—six 

altogether—that Rasmussen developed between the 

early 1900s and 1921 for the FTE activities. It was 

remarkable to learn how persistent he was in pursuing 

his early dream of a big sled-journey across the entire 

Inuit area that he eventually accomplished at the age 

of 45. Stephen Loring’s paper addressed the legacy 

of Charles Francis Hall and other early Arctic 

travelers, who preceded Rasmussen in relying on Inuit 

means of transportation, subsistence, clothing, and 

support by Inuit partners—that were so remarkably 

missing in the preceding era of the polar exploration. 

Birgitte Sonne, the author of Agayut: Nunivak 

Eskimo masks and drawings from the Fifth Thule 

Expedition, 1921–24, collected by Knud Rasmussen 

The FTE session participants: (left to right, 

first row) Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad, 

Daria Schwalbe, Pamela Hagongak Gross, 

Lene Borch Hansen, Eileen Norbert, and 

Birgitte Sonne. (Second row) Igor Krupnik, 

Bent Nielsen, Aron Crowell, Stephen Loring, 

Ken Pratt, Matt Ganley, Mari Kleist, and 

Knud Michelsen. Nome, February 28, 2019

Pamela Hakongak Gross (right) presents 

her paper featuring the map of the Inuinnait 

territory and the iconic photo of the ‘Copper 

Eskimo couple’ (Ikpukhuak and his wife 

Higilak) taken by George Hubert Wilkins on 

the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913–1916
 ASC Newsletter 41

(1988) and of the recent seminal volume, Worldviews 

of the Greenlanders (2017) compared beliefs of the 

Yup’ik people from the Nunivak Island to the general 

spiritual culture of the Inuit world. The last in these 

series of talks was given by Bernadette Engelstad, 

who explored the richness of Inuit clothing design and 

museum collections assembled by Rasmussen and his 

Arctic peers, like Jenness, Amundsen, Stefansson,

also Capt. George Comer, Rudolf Anderson during 

the first three decades of the 20th century.

Six following papers addressed various aspects of 

Rasmussen’s work in Alaska and the nearby Chukotka 

Peninsula during the FTE final leg in summer-fall 

1924. Aron Crowell evaluated Rasmussen’s materials 

on Inuit whaling that he recorded in Utqiagvik 

(Barrow) and Point Hope, particularly in comparison 

with other data on Iñupiat subsistence whaling from 

the era. Ken Pratt (BIA, Anchorage) introduced a 

poorly known story of Nunivak Island shaman called 

Najagneq, who was put on trial in Nome in 1924, 

thus fortuitously offering 

Rasmussen a chance 

to document Nunivak 

Islanders beliefs and 

stories from him and 

his relatives, who were 

brought to Nome to 

testify in his trial. Matt 

Ganley (Bering Straits 

Corporation, Anchorage) 

examined Rasmussen’s 

materials recorded 

from King Islanders on 

the Eagle-Wolf dances, 

in comparison with 

other sources on this ceremonial cycle. Russian 

historian Sergei Shokarev (Moscow, University of 

the Humanities) submitted his paper (in absentia) on 

the small native hamlet of Kengiskun (Dezhnev) in 

Chukotka, where Rasmussen landed on his aborted 

trip to meet the Russian Eskimo at East Cape. Eileen 

Norbert presented the rare photographs taken by 

(Charles) Menadelook, Inupiat teacher and selfmade photographer, whose lively pictures from the 

same era differed in many aspects from the staged 

and landscape photography by the FTE members. 

The last talk in this group by Daria Schawlbe

(Copenhagen) explored various resources that 

originated from Rasmussen’s short trip to Chukotka, 

including a major collection of Siberian Native 

clothing that he purchased a few years after FTE 

and donated to the Danish National Museum.

The last group of papers explored various resources 

produced by the FTE and its value to today’s 

Arctic communities and to the pan-Inuit language 

and heritage preservation efforts. Bent Nielsen, 

Director of the Danish Arctic Institute summarized 

major blocs of archival and photographic materials 

produced by the FTE that are now stored in many 

institutions in Denmark and elsewhere (including the 

Smithsonian Institution Archives). Pamela Gross, 

in a joint paper with her research partner, Darren 

Keith presented the story of building electronic Fifth 

Thule Expedition Atlas, a joint online venue by the 

Kitikmeot Heritage Society, Danish National Museum, 

and the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre 

at Carleton University, Canada. Mari Kleist shared 

her memories of coming of age in Nuuk, Greenland 

and the role played by the legacy of Kunuunnguaq 

(Knud Rasmussen) in the formation of Greenlandic 

identity and cultural pride. The final presentation by 

film director Lene Borch Hansen was accompanied 

by clips from her recent film, Knud Rasmussen: The 

Great Enchanter (2017, Nordisk Film Production).

At the conclusion of 

the session, the group 

discussed further steps 

to promote the work of 

Knud Rasmussen under 

the “FTE centennial 

program” in 2021–2024. 

The discussion was 

much enlightened by a 

story told by Bernadette 

Metkusak Dean about 

her family’s connections 

to Knud Rasmussen 

and his team forged in 

winter 1921–1922, when 

Bernadette’s grandparents hosted the famous explorer 

in their winter snowhouse on the Southampton Island. 

On the closing day of the AkAA conference, the group 

held a four-hour public session at the Carrie McLane 

Memorial Museum for conference participants and 

the Nome residents which was attended by more than 

70 people. It started with an hour-long presentation 

by Pamela Gross and Bernadette Dean who talked 

about the ways Canadian Inuit communities support 

their languages, subsistence traditions, and cultural 

heritage via scores of community grass-root projects. 

Knud Michelsen delivered a full-hour lecture featuring 

the life of Knud Rasmussen and his many travels 

beyond the FTE. Lastly, Lene Borch Hansen showed 

the complete 55-minute version of the film, Knud 

Rasmussen: The Great Enchanter and talked about 

its production that, incidentally, included the booking 

of Margrete II, the Queen of Denmark and Crown 

Prince Frederik as its key narrators. The film also 

Film director Lene Borch Hansen (right) shows the film 

Knud Rasmussen: The Great Enchanter. 

Photo by Igor Krupnik
42 ASC Newsletter

featured the Crown Prince driving a dog sled across 

the snowy Greenlandic landscape, the skill he learned 

while serving on the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, annual longrange reconnaissance patrolling of Northeast and North 

Greenland performed on dog sleds to enforce Danish 

sovereignty over these remote portions of Greenland. 

The audience, naturally, welcomed the “royal side” of 

the story; it also enjoyed the first official premiere of 

the film in North America that symbolically took place 

in Nome, in the community Richard Foster Building.

We are grateful to the Alaska Anthropological 

Association, its former President Julie Esdale and its 

current President, Amy Phillips-Chan, the U.S. Arctic 

Research Commission (John Farrell, director), the 

ASC Burch Endowment, the Danish Arctic Institute, 

the Greenlandic Foreign Ministry, the Nordisk Film 

Production, and other entities that provided funds for 

the session participants to travel to Nome. Papers from 

the session, plus a few additional contributions will 

be reworked by the end of this year for publication in 

2021 in a book or a special journal issue, so that they 

appear in print by the centennial of the Expedition. The 

group also decided to call another meeting in 2021, 

to expand its effort to popularize the achievements of 

the FTE. A particular emphasis is to be put on sharing 

the knowledge about FTE legacy with modern Inuit 

communities visited by the Expedition, along its long 

path from Greenland to Alaska. Stay tuned, as more 

plans to follow in the footsteps of Knud Rasmussen and 

his FTE peers will be forged in the coming months.

QUEBEC LOWER NORTH SHORE 

ARCHAEOLOGY IN 2018

By William Fitzhugh

Since 2001, the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center 

Gateways Project has conducted fieldwork assessing 

the extension of Paleo-Eskimo and Neo-Eskimo 

cultures along the Lower North Shore of the Gulf 

of Saint Lawrence (LNS). This initiative located 

Groswater culture sites occupied during the Iron 

Age cold period (mid-1st millennium BC) and found 

extensive archaeological evidence that Inuit expanded 

onto the LNS during the 17th and early 18th centuries. 

In addition to surveys, we tested or excavated Inuit 

villages at Petit Mécatina (Hare Harbor), Little Canso 

Island, Bonne-Espérance, and Hart Chalet. Recent 

research focuses on clarifying the nature of this 

occupation by investigating economic relationships 

between Inuit, Europeans, and Innu, as well as 

exploring Inuit demographics, seasonality, and land 

use. In 2018, we excavated at Hart Chalet and two 

sites at Grand Isle. Hart Chalet is a medium-size 

settlement in Brador, Quebec, that has three winter 

Hart Chalet House 2 excavation in progress. 

Photo by William Fitzhugh

houses, two of which have been partially excavated. 

The Grand Isle Inuit sites are in the municipality 

of Bonne-Espérance and have three components: a 

small qarmat-style house; a sod winter house; and pit 

houses with caches and human remains in a boulder 

field above Kettle Head. We also briefly excavated 

a Groswater hearth in Grand Plain and mapped 

two Inuit houses on Belles Amour peninsula.

The Hart Chalet Inuit site was first investigated at 

the Hart cottage in Brador by Clifford Hart and 

René Levesque in 1968. At that time, it was thought 

to be a Basque site based on finds of roof tiles 

and large spikes and nails. In 2013, we excavated 

trenches through the middle of House 1. In 2014, we 

tested a midden between H1 and H2 and excavated 

test pits in the H2 entry, recovering an Inuit ivory 

needlecase. Both houses had been disturbed, and 

H2 was overgrown with spruce. In 2015–2017, we 

excavated House 3. In 2015–2017, we began surveys 

in St. Paul River, and in 2016–2017 excavated at 

the Grand Plain Groswater Paleoeskimo site and 

the Grand Isle-2 Inuit site. 2018 plans called for 

excavating part of the midden of Hart Chalet House 

2, a hearth at Grand Plain, and the remaining sections 

of Grand Isle-2. We also planned to test the Grand 

Isle-3 Inuit winter house discovered in 2017.

Hart Chalet (EiBh-47), House 2. House 2 had been 

tested by three 50 cm units in the entry and the NE, 

SE, and SW quadrants of a 2-meter square inside the 

door. The 2018 excavation opened a 2x6m trench south 

of the front (south) wall and completed the 2x2 unit 

inside the door. All three Hart Chalet houses have the 

same general features: a roughly 4x8 meter rectangular 

structure with short 2–3 m long entries, side and rear 

sleeping platforms, and hearths outside the door.
 ASC Newsletter 43

1635–1650. The faunal assemblage mirrors that of Hart 

Chalet Houses 1 and 3 and Little Canso Island. The 

hearth build-up suggests an occupation lasting from a 

few years to a decade or more.

Grand Isle-2 (EiBk-54). (Parts of the following two 

paragraphs are repeated from our 2017 report). For 

many years, we considered the St. Paul River region as 

the most likely place for Inuit settlement on the LNS, 

especially after discovering Inuit winter dwellings at 

Petit Mécatina, Jacques Cartier Bay, Belles Amour, 

and Brador. Despite this, preliminary surveys revealed 

no trace of Inuit settlement. Why would Inuit have 

chosen not to occupy St. Paul, one of the richest 

resource zones on the LNS? One possibility was that 

the region was avoided because it was already occupied 

by Europeans when Inuit appeared in the early 1600s. 

Our 2017 excavations forced us to reassess this theory 

when houses at found in 2016 at Grand Isle-2 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 northern half to 

shore erosion. The low-mounded house foundation 

encloses two lateral sleeping benches on either side 

of a slightly lower central floor area. In 2016 we 

interpreted the house as an Innu dwelling based on 

the presence of dark chert debitage, rusted sheet iron, 

and a 14C date of AD 1415–1455. This suggested 

the site might be an early European-contact Indian 

(Innu) site. However, excavation of the center of the 

structure in 2017 produced Inuit evidence from the 

dwelling’s floor: Basque roof tiles, Inuit soapstone 

pot fragments, iron sheet metal, and large iron spikes. 

These materials were on the remains of a wood floor. 

Below the floor, a thin humus level representing the 

original vegetated ground surface contained flakes of 

chert and charcoal (dated above). Apparently, Inuit 

Florence Hart and her husband Clifford discovered and 

initiated our work at their ‘chalet’ near the mouth of the 

Brador River. Photo by William Fitzhugh

Finds from the Hart site House 2 midden. 

Photo by William Fitzhugh

The House 2 excavation revealed superimposed hearths 

outside the door with 30–50 cm deep deposits of bone 

mixed with house midden material and artifacts. Most 

of the bone was caribou, but small amounts of seal and 

other animals were present. All caribou long bones 

were split and broken for marrow extraction, and 

fragments of soapstone cooking vessels were found. 

Bones were often packed closely together, sometimes 

burned and mixed with charcoal; patches of charcoal 

mixed with fish and bird bone were also present. 

Unit 12N4E was east of the northern hearth and 

contained fewer bones, but produced a French coin 

and other artifacts. The northern part of this unit 

contained two back-filled pits excavated by Clifford 

Hart. Unit 12N6W along the east side of the entryway 

contained cobble hearths filled with charcoal, bone, 

iron nails and spikes, European ceramics, a few bone 

artifacts, beads, glass, an iron harpoon and arrow point, 

and other material. Slabs of whale bone bordered the 

east and west sides of the entryway, separating the 

hearths from the entry. Unit 12N8W encompassed the 

west side of the entry and had three distinct cobble 

hearths. Broken parts of two soapstone cooking pots 

were recovered along with nails, beads, ceramics, 

and other artifacts. The NW quadrant of 14N/8W 

produced part of a stoneware vessel, beads, and a lead 

navigation sounding weight. This interior unit did not 

have a stone pavement; rather, fragments of rotted 

wood suggest that the floor was covered with planks. 

Basque tile fragments were present in all excavated 

units. Besides nails, glass beads, stoneware, glass, and 

rusted iron fragments and iron tools were common. 

A few whale bone artifacts were present as well as a 

perforated caribou shoulder blade and an antler knife 

handle. Earthenware and clay pipes were not present, 

suggesting a pre-1650 date. If the coin is similar to 

the one found in House 3, House 2 should date around 
44 ASC Newsletter

had built a dwelling at a location previously occupied 

by prehistoric Innu. Its rectangular shape and sod 

walls suggest it was an Inuit qarmat used during the 

fall when summer tents did not provide sufficient 

protection, but before moving into winter pit-houses. 

We returned in 2018 to complete the excavation of the 

raised benches at the east and west ends. The eastern 

bench produced an iron spike and fragments of an 

iron spear point. The western bench revealed nails 

and the remains of a collapsed roof made of spruce 

poles. Chert flakes were present in all the soil levels, 

including the Inuit floor. Inuit may have used turf for 

flooring that contained chert flakes from prior Indian 

occupations. There were very few artifacts in the 

structure other than nails, an iron spear point, and a 

soapstone pot fragment. Even considering what was 

lost to erosion, the paucity of finds suggests a brief 

occupation. Later we learned from Medric Thomas

and his family, who use Leonard Thomas’ place 

as a summer fishing camp, that they used to find 

bones and arrowheads on the beach below the site. 

[From our 2017 report:] In 2017 we also discovered a 

second Inuit structure (Grand Isle-3, formerly called 

Grand Isle-2a) on a raised beach about 75 meters upslope (south) of GI-2. Tests in this roughly circular 

feature about 20 meters in diameter revealed a paved 

entry passage and a hearth pile containing fire-cracked 

rock and caribou bones. This structure at first seemed 

to be a typical Inuit semi-subterranean winter house, 

but when we tested the house “interior” we found no 

sign of a floor or cultural level with artifacts, bones, 

or charcoal. What we thought was an excavated house 

turned out to be a natural declivity in which Inuit had 

begun building a winter house. A house pit had not 

been excavated and no walls were present. The site 

appears to have been abandoned after creating the entry 

and hearth. It seems likely that both the rectangular L1 

(GI-2) feature and the L2 unfinished winter dwelling 

were seasonal expressions of a single Inuit group that 

occupied this area for a brief period in the 17th century. 

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. 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). 

In 2018, we returned to continue exploring GI-2 (L2). 

We only could spent a few hours at the site, but during 

that time we exposed a slab-paved entrance passage 

whose floor deposits included roof tiles, stoneware, 

nails and spikes, an improvised iron hammer, and other 

artifacts. The entry leads to a doorway, but beyond 

that, the structure to the west remains a mystery. 

Test pits inside the door produced nails, and one test 

near the door had remains of nailed planks. More 

work at this site is needed, but our interpretation 

from 2017 still seems valid: an Inuit winter dwelling 

that was abandoned before it was completed.

Grand Isle-2 begin to suggest an unusual history 

of Inuit occupation in St. Paul River. The lack of 

substantial Inuit settlements such as found elsewhere on 

the LNS may result from Europeans having established 

prior “ownership” of this rich resource zone before 

Inuit appeared on the LNS in the early 17th century. 

Grand Plain-1 (EiBj-41) [from our 2017 field report.] 

This site 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. We found the site in 2016 from 

flakes of Groswater chert in an RV path. Tests revealed 

in situ deposits beneath a thin veneer of caribou moss, 

Grand Isle-2 qarmat excavation showing 20018 excavation 

and back-filled 2017 house floor. Photo by William Fitzhugh

Belles Amour Peninsula boulder house, probably, Indian

(ca. 2-3,000 BP). Photo by Mary Maisel
 ASC Newsletter 45

Blanc Sablon Airport Road Sites. Reports by local 

people of stone mounds a couple hundred meters 

north of the airport road prompted us to investigate. 

We found two prominent boulder mounds a few 

hundred meters north of a prominent raised beach 

whose exposed boulder front runs several hundred 

meters along the southern side of a former embayment. 

The terrace front has numerous pit features, some of 

which are large enough to be dwellings while most 

are caches. The two mounds, both on the south side of 

two of the largest pits, are clearly the result of backhoe excavation of pit features. These excavations 

were probably directly by René Levesque during 

his work in Blanc Sablon in the early 1968–70. 

Summary. As in previous years, the 2018 season owed 

its success to many individuals and organizations, 

and to a span of excellent summer weather. Our 

sponsors included Notre Dame University (which 

supported intern Alexandra Castellanos), Dartmouth 

College (which supported Jacob Marchman), the 

Center for Coparative Archaeolgy of the University 

of Pittsburgh (which supported Igor Chechushkov) 

Mayor Roderick Fequet of the Municipality of St. 

Paul, and Eileen Schofield and Garland Nadeau

of the Whiteley Museum of St. Paul Municipality 

supported by grants from MRC du Golfe-du-SaintLauren, a Quebec government economic development 

agency, Caisse Desjardins Blanc Sablon, and I & S 

Seafood via Irving Roberts. In Brador, we enjoyed 

the hospitality of Florence Hart, who opened her 

home, cooked meals, and facilitated domestic bliss. 

Most importantly, she allowed us to excavate at 

her chalet cottage. We thank the Quebec Natural 

Resources Department, and the Quebec Ministry 

of Culture and Communication for permits. 

Members of the 2018 field team included Mary Maisel

(American University), Halcyon Brown (Williams 

College), Katherine Meier (Yale University), and 

Igor Chechushkov (University of Pittsburgh). Boyce 

Roberts was our host in Quirpon, and at the Parcs 

Canada L’Anse aux Meadows site we were invited 

to become “junior interpreters” for several days by 

Mathias Brennan. Perry Colbourne skippered the 

Smithsonian’s research vessel Pitsiulak, and Perry 

and his wife, Louise, opened their home in Lushes 

Bight at both ends of the summer. Anja Herzog

cleaned and catalogued our collections, and André 

Bergeron and the Quebec Conservation Center 

provided artifact storage and conservation services. 

Finally, I deeply appreciate assistance provided 

by Nancy Shorey for office and printing support, 

and to Mary Maisel, Chelsi Slotten and Igor 

Chechushkov who worked up our field maps, profiles, 

and data and produced our field report volume. Fitzhugh discussing an artifact with Medric Thomas and 

Garland Nadeau. Photo by Mary Maisel

lichen, and birch shrubs, and we returned in 2017 to 

obtain a sample of tools and charcoal and excavated 

a 1x8 meter trench in sandy beach sediment on top 

of a low rocky ridge. Flakes and tools were scattered 

evenly across the excavation area. The site produced 

endscrapers, side-notched and box-based points, flake 

scrapers, microblades, and ground and spalled burinlike tools. Endscrapers were most abundant, suggesting 

skin-working activity. No internal features were 

noted, and no organics remained other than charcoal 

stains and chunks. Two meters west of the excavation 

trench is a 30-centimeter high mound of fire-cracked 

rock containing burned chert. Called “Crossroads 

Groswater” site in in our 2016 field report (2017:74), 

Grand Plain-1 produced a small Paleoeskimo 

collection that probably dates ca. 2,400–2,200 BP). 

In 2018, we returned and excavated the hearth. 

Groswater hearths—like remains of their dwellings—

are rare, so we had hopes for an interesting excavation. 

These hopes did not materialize. Our finds were 

modest, consisting of only a few microblades and 

debitage, a tiny charcoal sample, and some scorched 

slab rocks.There was no discernible structure to the 

hearth beyond a cluster of thin slabs and small cobbles.

Belles Amours Peninsula. We visited the Belles 

Amours Peninsula site for two hours to make a 

low resolution topographic map of its two Inuit 

winter houses found by Dumais and Poirier (1994) 

in 1983. We tested the site in 2007, and Marianne 

Stopp did the same in 2013, but the site is known 

only from sketch maps. Our map is not detailed 

but provides basic contour information for the two 

houses, each of which has a 4–6 meter long entrance 

tunnel and exterior earths outside their doors. Both 

houses are intact with no evidence of disturbance.
46 ASC Newsletter

THE SMITHSONIAN LABRADOR 

RADIOCARBON DATE PROJECT

By Jacob Marchman

If you conduct 

archaeological 

fieldwork for fifty 

years, you end up 

with a treasure trove 

of data. Such is the 

case of the Arctic 

Studies Center. 

Between 1968 and 

the present, Dr. 

William Fitzhugh

and Dr. Stephen 

Loring and their 

colleagues have 

conducted research 

programs along the 

east coast of Canada, 

reaching south to the 

Lower North Shore of Quebec and as far north as Killiniq 

Island in the Hudson Straight and Frobisher Bay in Baffin 

Island. From these efforts have come bookshelves full of 

data on stone tools, faunal remains, settlement geography, 

and, last but certainly not least, radiocarbon dates. 

These radiocarbon dates have allowed Smithsonian 

archaeologists to write the history of culture in this 

southeastern reach of the Canadian Arctic. Archaeology 

is a funny business, however. Unlike in other sciences 

where you can repeat experiments, you only have one 

chance to get your data right. You destroy a site when you 

excavate, so it’s vital that you carefully preserve all your 

data. With this in mind, Bill Fitzhugh, Stephen Loring, 

and I decided it was important to publish the complete 

archive of the Smithsonian’s radiocarbon data, so future 

researchers would be able to access this invaluable data.

The only problem was that this data didn’t exist 

in one place. Most of it was in old computer 

printouts, but a lot of it was also in files scattered 

between Bill and Stephen’s offices. Before we 

could think about publishing these dates, I had to 

put them in a central database. In some cases, this 

required manually entering the data. In the case of 

the computer printouts, I was able to digitize them 

using an optical character scanner. From there, I 

could clean, transform, and load the data into our 

geographic database, using a series of Python scripts. 

In hindsight, there was such a learning curve here that 

I probably would have been faster doing it by hand!

After building the database, I had to calibrate the 

radiocarbon dates to prepare them for publication. It’s 

a common misconception that radiocarbon dates are 

the “real” date of an archaeological artifact or site. 

However, that’s not true at all. Radiocarbon dating 

works by counting the ratio of the radioactive carbon 

14 isotope (14C) to the stable carbon 12 (12C) isotope. 

Over time, the radioactive 14C in an artifact will decay 

into nitrogen, leaving behind a higher ratio of 12C.

Where does the 14C come from? It turns out that 

it’s produced in the atmosphere when high energy 

cosmic rays strike a nitrogen atom. When this new 14C 

isotope encounters oxygen, it quickly becomes carbon 

dioxide and is absorbed into plants and trees during 

photosynthesis. When ancient people make a campfire 

with wood from one of these trees, the leftover 

charcoal will have 14C in it, which will slowly degrade. 

If you know how much 14C is in the atmosphere and 

how fast it decays into nitrogen (it has a half-life of 

5,730±40 years), then you can date the campfire by 

calculating the ratio of 14C/12C in a charcoal sample.

The problem is, 14C doesn’t get produced in the 

atmosphere at a constant rate. To convert a 14C date into 

calendar years, we must “calibrate” it. 14C calibration 

works by making a correction curve out of control 

samples from objects of a known date, such as tree 

rings. Using this curve and a bit of statistics, you 

can then correct your radiocarbon date to the real 

calendar date. After building the database, this was 

our next step. We took the dates, ran them through a 

calibration protocol (it must be done differently if the 

date is from a sea animal due to something called the 

“reservoir effect”), and voila, we know (within a 95% 

callibrated error range) how old our samples are.

Now, with the database together, it was time to prepare 

the document for publication. We decided on writing 

a “date list” which is a common publication format 

used in the journal Radiocarbon. This entails going 

through and discussing each date and providing 

interpretation of its significance and validity. Throw 

in a couple of maps, and you have yourself a date list. 

It’s a time-consuming process, especially with the 

amount of information we have; but in the end, it will 

be a valuable document for future archaeologists.

At the time of writing, we’re not quite finished, but 

we want to be done in time to submit our date list 

to the next volume of Radiocarbon. I’ve had a great 

time learning about radiocarbon dating and delving 

into the history of the ASC’s research. Despite starts 

and stops, I am coming away from this project with a 

much fuller understanding of Labrador’s prehistory. 

I’m sure if I had known when I started what I know 

now, this would have gone a lot faster. But then it 

wouldn’t have been very much fun, would it?

Jake Marchman at 14C command 

central
 ASC Newsletter 47

SIWO OBSERVERS DOCUMENT 

SHRINKING SEA ICE AND UNPREDICTABLE 

WALRUS IN THE BERING SEA

By Igor Krupnik, Brad Benter, and Lisa Sheffield Guy

Alaska residents, scholars working in the Western 

Arctic/Bering Sea region, and general readers 

concerned about the “warming Arctic” have been 

recently on alert, due to the record low sea ice 

extent in the Bering Sea in the winter of 2019. As 

of this writing (late March 2019), the winter seaice maximum extent that is commonly recorded in 

mid-late March across the Arctic regions was by 

no means a “maximum” in the Bering Sea. It was 

just the opposite: by March 1, 2019 the Bering Sea 

was literally ice-free. Huge expanses of open water 

could be seen across the Norton Sound area, off St. 

Lawrence Island and into the Bering Strait leading to 

the southern Chukchi Sea; two authors (Igor Krupnik

and Brad Benter) personally observed it when flying 

to and from Nome during this time. Though the 

ice has partly returned by mid-March, scholars and 

media outlets expressed concerns about the impact 

of the winter ice-free conditions on the Bering Sea 

marine life and the people who live along its shores. 

There is, however, one constituency whose voice 

has not been heard and whose perspective is critical, 

namely, local subsistence hunters in rural communities 

across the northern Bering Sea region. Many of these 

hunters have been collaborating with scientists and 

weather/ice services in the effort to monitor sea ice 

and weather conditions around their communities. 

They have been systematically recording their 

observations and sharing critical data and assessment 

of the ongoing change. In spring 2010, a network of 

local community monitors in the northern Bering Sea 

and Chukchi Sea was organized into what was named 

“Sea Ice for Walrus Outlook” (SIWO), an offshoot 

of two earlier observational programs, SIKU (Sea 

Ice Knowledge and Use) and SIZONeT (Seasonal 

Ice Zone Network) during the International Polar 

Year 2007–2008. SIWO observations were originally 

conducted in four Alaskan communities—Wales, 

Shishmaref, Gambell, and Nome; they continued in 

the following years, with two more communities, 

Savoonga and Diomede, added to the list lately. SIWO 

observations have been commonly conducted from 

early April until the end of the ice season, formerly in 

late June. In the past four years, however, the season 

ended in early June (June 1–9, in 2015–2018), due to 

the early disappearance of sea ice in the region. Since 

2017, the SIWO season has shifted dramatically to 

both begin and end 2–3 weeks earlier. All personal 

observations accompanied by photos have been posted 

onto a special SIWO website https://www.arcus.

org/siwo that is operated out of the Arctic Research 

Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) office in Fairbanks.

The new, tenth SIWO observational season started 

on March 15, 2019, with one more community, 

Brevig Mission on the Seward Peninsula joining 

the effort. SIWO village monitors report ice and 

weather conditions, walrus availability and local 

NASA image of sea ice distribution in the northern Bering and southern Chukchi Sea (February 28, 2019)
48 ASC Newsletter

hunting effort, take pictures of sea ice from boats 

and the shore – that are matched with satellite 

images of ice distribution, synopsis of ice and 

weather conditions, and ice forecasts provided 

by specialists at the National Weather Service, 

Alaska Region and ice specialists. SIWO partners 

also include the Kawerak, Inc. Eskimo Walrus 

Commission in Nome, ARCUS, the National Weather 

Service, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

On March 15, 2019, local observers, Frank (Boogles) 

Johnson from Nome, Robert Tokeinna, Jr. from Wales, 

and Clarence Irrigoo, Jr. from Gambell reported open 

water off their communities or a thin sliver of shorefast ice that is quickly eroding. They and other SIWO 

monitors will have a critical role in the assessment of 

what is to happen 

to the Bering Sea, 

the Pacific walrus 

population, and 

Alaskan subsistence 

walrus hunting, 

because of the 

continuing shrinking 

and thinning of the 

ice cover during 

the winter- and 

springtime.

Yet in our assessment 

of what may happen 

to Bering Sea ice 

and subsistence 

walrus hunting in 

2019, there is no 

better comparative 

body of data than 

the one from the 

previous winterspring season of 

2018. According 

to the summary of ice conditions in the Bering Sea 

prepared by Heather McFarland at the University of 

Alaska Fairbanks, the freeze-up in winter 2017/2018 

was exceptionally late, the new ice was thin, and it 

was easily broken by the series of strong storms in 

January and February 2018. Following persistent 

strong winds from the south—a new phenomenon 

that is contrary to Native people’s knowledge of the 

“normal” winter conditions when northern winds 

prevail—this broken ice was carried out northward, 

to the Bering Strait and even pushed further north 

into the Chukchi Sea creating huge expanses of open 

water, much like in 2019. The overall extent of sea ice 

in February 2018 was estimated at less than 100,000 

sq. mi, about a third of the average extent over 150+ 

years of available records and 51,390 square miles less 

ice than in February 2001, the previous record low. 

Storms, break-ups, and ongoing cycles of unstable 

freezing and refreezing continued throughout the 

month of March 2018, as reported by local monitors: 

“After February’s lack of ice, winds shifted abruptly 

on March 9, bringing sea ice back to Savoonga. Even 

as ice returned, it is all broken up...no flat pieces and 

it is real rough. There are patches of open water... 

biggest open patch in front of town is maybe as big as a 

football field” (Aqef Waghiyi, Savoonga, March 16).

By April 2018, the ice was mostly gone from the 

Bering Sea with large stretches of open water 

extending into the southern Chukchi Sea along the 

Alaskan coast—in 

stark contrast to the 

“normal” breakup season from 

8–10 years ago. 

Subsistence hunters 

who observed this 

unusual condition 

were as puzzled 

as ice scientists.

On May 18, 2018, 

Clarence Irrigoo

Jr. from Gambell 

reported “Very little 

ice left. Boats are 

harvesting walrus. 

Some went very 

far to the ice—up 

north 48 nautical 

miles—and some in 

the water.” A similar 

report from observer 

Boogles Johnson, 

from Nome from 

a week prior (May 

12, 2018): “We went out yesterday to the location on 

the map and didn’t see any ice as far as the eye can 

see with binoculars. We did find walrus swimming. 

They are migrating west and north from the Norton 

Sound to their summer grounds and having to sleep 

in the water. This is the first time I’ve ever seen 

walrus sleep in the open water. ...We thought the 

walrus were a boat since they were sleeping in a 

group and can be seen from a great distance.”

The shore-fast ice was broken off in front of the 

community of Wales on the first days of May—“super 

early,” according to local monitor, Robert Tokeinna, Jr., 

and two weeks earlier than in the 2000s. The main 

body of Bering Strait cleared of ice in early May, at 

Bering Strait: Summary of the winter conditions (flyer by Heather 

McFarland, 2018)
 ASC Newsletter 49

least along the Alaskan side. As Diomede monitor 

Opik Ahkinga reported, “On May 2nd, herds of 

walrus and calves drifted north with the ice floe over 

the International Dateline. Locals stood on the helipad 

to watch them pass. ...By early morning the ice had 

passed and it’s open ocean again. I was told by one of 

the crewman that five [walruses] were brought back. 

The boat crew divided their share; this will feed their 

families well. We are grateful for this hunt and hope to 

see another ice floe.” (May 4, 2018)

While Native hunters, ice specialists, and marine 

biologists continue to grapple with the impact of record 

low winter ice and early break-up in spring 2018 (like 

is expected in 2019), other questions emerged related to 

the sea ice-walrus-people interactions. To address them, 

we may use data on walrus subsistence catch by Alaskan 

coastal communities that is systematically collected by 

the Marine Mammals Management (MMM) Division, 

Alaska Region, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

The subsistence catch data have been available for a 

long stretch of years (see ASC Newsletter 23, paper 

by Krupnik and Benter), including for all years 

of the SIWO program observations (2010–2018). 

We may also use hunting records from 2018 as a 

proxy to assess what may happen in the next few 

weeks, as herds of walrus start migrating northward 

past indigenous communities, on their way to 

summer feeding grounds in the Chukchi Sea.

Two questions loom large: How the record low sea 

ice and early break-up affected Alaskan subsistence 

harvest in spring 2018? and What can we learn 

about the current status of the walrus population 

from the harvest data and hunters’ observations?

For the former question, the MMM catch records offer 

a compelling answer. By summer 2018, the cumulative 

Alaskan subsistence walrus take was 785 animals—

higher than in 2017 (700) and above the average of 

703 for the past six years (2013–2018). Thus, the 

unusual sea ice situation did not trigger a catastrophic 

drop in the Alaskan subsistence walrus catch—as 

indeed happened in 2013 (ASC Newsletter 23). 

Yet, the overall fair catch in winter-spring 2018 blurred 

the sharp differences among individual locations. 

Two most active walrus hunting communities in 

Alaska, Gambell and Savoonga on St. Lawrence 

Island, together harvested 707 walruses, more than 

in any year since 2013. Brevig Mission, another 

hunting community on the Seward Peninsula, had 

its third largest harvest (33) of the past eleven years, 

2008–2018. To the contrary, most other communities 

fared below average (Nome, Toksook Bay, Wales), 

or even poorly (Diomede, King Island, Wainwright, 

Utqiagvik/Barrow). Thirty villages that historically 

hunted walrus killed no animals at all in 2018, 

including Hooper Bay, Kivalina, Mekoryuk, Point 

Hope, Point Lay, Shishmaref, and Togiak. So, to the 

majority of subsistence hunters, the situation in spring 

2018 was by no means “average” or “ normal.”

Another obvious outcome of the low ice/early breakup 

conditions in 2018 was the continuing shift to ever 

earlier timing of active hunting during the spring 

season. In Diomede and Wales, it was the first week 

of May in 2018. In Gambell and Savoonga on St. 

Lawrence Island, the prime spring walrus hunting in the 

years 2000–2013 was generally around mid-May and 

often extended into early June; in 2018, only 30% of 

walruses were killed during the month of May (28.7% 

in Gambell, 30.7% in Savoonga—MMM data. Instead, 

active hunting now extends into what was traditionally 

considered the wintertime, that is, into the months 

of January, February and early March. It already 

happened in winter 2019, like in the low-ice winters 

of 2018 and 2017. The time around late March and 

early April is now a new “peak season” (46 walruses 

taken in Gambell and 109 in Savoonga, in 2018), 

and the bulk of the catch in 2018 occurred during the 

NASA map: Sea ice extent in the North Pacific-Western 

Arctic, April 29, 2018

NASA map: Sea ice extent in the North Pacific-Western 

Arctic, April 29, 2013
50 ASC Newsletter

month of April. Productive hunting in Gambell literally 

ceased after the third week of May, and in Savoonga, 

it stopped on the fourth week of May. This dramatic 

shift in the prime catch time is another indicator of 

new seasonal patterns, due to the changing ice regime.

We may discern other trends from the MMM catch 

data for 2018. There has been a significant shift in the 

past six years from a more even sex-age distribution 

in Alaskan subsistence catch with a ratio of roughly 

55:35:15 of males, females, and calves to a new 

model, with a much higher share of adult males, 

around 70:20:10. The respective shares in 2018 were 

even more skewed—78:16:5. It poses a question first 

raised by our colleague, marine biologist Carleton 

Ray: Where are the calves and the females? Hunters 

in all communities report that they are indeed seeing 

fewer calves and females on their boat trips. So, are 

females and calves elsewhere? Are they passing beyond 

hunters’ reach, that is, earlier/faster or farther away 

from shore? Or there is indeed a rapid drop in the 

share of females and calves in today’s Pacific walrus 

population, another sign of its impending stress? 

Hunters believe that all three factors are actually in 

play. When the Gambell crews did get out in April–

May 2018, they never found the herds of females and 

calves that used to pass by to the west of Gambell 

on their spring migration (“beyond hunters’ reach”). 

Therefore, they went northward, after the animals) that 

Savoonga was reporting and that were predominately 

males (increase in bull walrus catch). Hunters also 

reported that many of the females they harvested last 

year had lost their calves, most likely due to drowning—

because of storms and no ice floes to travel and to rest 

on (“fewer calves due to environmental stress”).

Observations of SIWO monitors and other subsistence 

hunters, therefore, may offer critical insight to 

the changes in walrus patterns during a rapid 

restructuring of its habitat that are hard to observe 

without detailed and expensive biological surveys. 

The SIWO team (of which the authors are members) 

planned to have a special workshop with local 

monitors in February 2019 in Nome. We anticipated 

to hear their explanations and to share data on the 

shifting status of sea ice and walrus in the Bering 

Strait region. Unfortunately, that workshop was 

cancelled due to government shutdown; we hope to 

organize it again in winter 2020. In the meantime, 

the SIWO team will keep monitoring the situation. 

Interested readers are welcome to visit the SIWO 

website at www.arcus.org/siwo or SIWO Facebook 

page /seaiceforwalrus during the SIWO 2019 

season to explore the richness of local observations 

and knowledge of the changing Bering Sea. 

A HOKKAIDO SABBATICAL

By Ben Fitzhugh

During their 2018 sabbaticals from the University of 

Washington, Ben Fitzhugh and Laada Bilaniuk spent 

three months in residence in Sapporo, Japan. They each 

received Invitational Fellowships from the Japanese 

Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to conduct 

collaborative research with colleagues at Hokkaido 

University. Ben worked closely with Katsunori Takase

to investigate zooarchaeological collections from 

around coastal Hokkaido. They visited more than 15 

museums and examined collections from more than 

22 archaeological sites with components spanning the 

mid-to-late Holocene. Takase-san went out of his way to 

plan, guide and translate during these trips. The scientific 

agenda of our tour of Hokkaido museums was to take 

stock of these collections for possible future research 

into changes in climate and marine ecosystems tied 

to human coastal settlement histories and community 

resilience to variability in maritime food availability. The 

immediate goals were to identify collections with good 

preservation, stratigraphic integrity and secure dates 

or potential. The project is an extension of Fitzhugh 

and Takase’s archaeological research collaborations 

in the Kuril Islands and relates to the ASC’s Arctic 

Crashes theme. Shortly after the sabbatical visit, 

Takase-san submitted a pilot JSPS proposal for a first 

phase of morphological, isotopic, and a DNA research 

based on the collections from Southeast Hokkaido. 

When touring Hokkaido, Katsunori, Ben and often 

Laada and Larissa visited many of the archaeological 

sites associated with the collections. Some sites have 

been converted into educational parks like that of the 

famous Moyoro Shell Mound site in Abashiri. Before 

and after the Second World War, major excavations 

at this site on the seasonally ice-choked Okhotsk Sea 

coast revealed evidence of large pentagonal pithouses 

Ben Fitzhugh and Katsunori Takase inspect archaeological 

fauna at the Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples in 

Abashiri on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk
 ASC Newsletter 51

and an extensive cemetery including burials with 

Japanese swords and brass buckles from the Manchurian 

mainland. This site provided some of the earliest 

substantial evidence of the enigmatic, marine-specialized 

Okhotsk Culture. Subsequent research showed the 

Okhotsk settled and expanded around the coastal 

regions of the southern and eastern Sea of Okhotsk 

from southern Sakhalin Island, to the northernmost 

Kuril Islands. In 1961, Chester Chard suggested a link 

between the Okhotsk and Bering Strait Inuit (Old Bering 

Sea Culture) because of similarities in marine mammal 

hunting adaptations. Today the Okhotsk are linked to the 

cultures of Northern Sakhalin and the lower Amur River 

region in the earliest centuries of the Common Era. The 

Okhotsk brought domesticated pigs to Hokkaido and 

may have introduced the practice of raising bear cubs for 

sacrifice that developed into the Ainu bear spirit-sending 

practices continued into the early 20th century. Other 

highlights of the trip included visiting the Shiretoko 

and Nemuro peninsulas adjacent to the southernmost 

Kuril islands (a break in the weather at Nemuro gave us 

a clear view of Kunashir and the Habomai Islands); a 

trip to Okushiri Island off SW Hokkaido and the Aonae 

Sand Dune site, where Epi-Jomon and Okhotsk people 

may have traded or even co-occupied a settlement; 

and a visit to the present Ainu settlement of Nibutani 

and the workshop of master carver Toru Kaizawa.

Having conducted extensive archaeological and 

paleoenvironmental research in the Kuril Islands 

and around the North Pacific Rim in Alaska, Ben 

used the sabbatical trip to become a fulltime student 

of Hokkaido archaeology, studying the subject in 

greater depth than was possible from shorter visits 

and the limited English literature on the topic—a field 

still best covered in English by the ASC’s 20 year 

old Ainu exhibit catalog, Ainu: Spirit of a Northern 

People (Fitzhugh and Dubreuil, eds., 1999). Longtime colleagues Tetsuya Amano and Hiroko Ono

(Hokkaido University Museum) took time to give 

Ben a personal short-course on the details of northern 

Hokkaido culture history and its links to greater 

Japanese and mainland NE Asian prehistory. They 

are collaborating on a project about mobility and 

migration into and around coastal Hokkaido by the 

Okhotsk Culture in the early First Millennium CE.

While Ben immersed himself in Hokkaido archaeology, 

Laada Bilaniuk spent the trip collaborating 

with linguist Motoki Nomachi on questions of 

multilingualism and Anglicism in post-Soviet 

Eastern Europe as a guest of the Hokkaido 

University’s Slavic-Eurasian Research Center. 

Larissa Fitzhugh, age 14, joined the trip 

and finished off her seventh grade at Hokkaido 

International School, picking up some Japanese and 

learning to navigate the Sapporo subway system 

like a native. The Fitzhugh-Bilaniuk family were 

made welcome in Japan by many long-time friends 

and collaborators of the ASC, including Tetsuya

and Kazuko Amano, Hiroko Ono, Koji Deriha, 

Nobuhiro Kishigami, Kaoru Tezuka, Hirofumi 

Kato and several others. While there many other 

friends passed through Sapporo, including Russian 

collaborators Olga Shubina and Igor Samarin, 

Peter Jordan, and Gary Crawford. Considered 

a frontier zone to cosmopolitan Japanese, Sapporo 

is a thoroughfare of Arctic scholars and research 

collaborations, and a great place to spend a sabbatical.

Masuo Sugihara, Takamune Takabatake, Ben 

Fitzhugh and Katsunori Takase in front of an 

Okhotsk Culture pithouse reconstruction at the 

Esashi Okhotsk Museum. Photo by Ben Fitzhugh

Katsunori Takase snaps a photo of Housepit 

9 at the Moyoro Shellmound archaeological 

park in Abashiri. Photo by Ben Fitzhugh.
52 ASC Newsletter

COLLECTIONS

SWISS CURATORS INAUGURATE NETWORK 

FOR ARCTIC MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

By Florian Gredig, Igor Krupnik, and Martin Schultz 

A land-locked nation in the heart of Europe, without 

a Navy or any colonial ambitions during its long 

history, Switzerland is an unlikely candidate for 

being a hub of Arctic ethnographic collecting. Yet, 

thanks to a long-established tradition of academic 

learning and because of many devoted private citizens, 

Swiss museums were able to amass impressive 

ethnographic and archaeological collections from 

various parts of the Arctic. Only recently did the 

Swiss “Arctic riches” receive some attention; this 

short paper tells the story of an attempt to summarize 

ethnographic and, partly, archaeological, collections 

from the North housed at Swiss museums.

Altogether, Switzerland has several hundred 

museums, large and small—over 500, according to the 

Swiss “Museum Pass” 

network, more than 750 

if one counts all of the 

institutional members 

of the Swiss Museums 

Association (including 

Liechtenstein), and 150+ 

museums with individual 

entries on Wikipedia. 

The earliest museums 

originated in the 1500s 

and 1600s, primarily 

from the private and 

university-based 

collections of antique 

books, manuscripts, 

and curiosities.

Only about a dozen Swiss museums have 

ethnographic (or archaeological) objects from the 

Arctic and Subarctic, often of only a few dozen 

objects. Yet certain institutions house substantial 

collections of several hundred objects, such as the 

Basel Historical Museum, the Historical Museum 

Bern and the Cerny Inuit Museum in Bern, the 

Nordamerika Native Museum (NONAM), and 

the Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich 

(Ethnographic Museum at the University) in Zürich, 

the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève, and others. 

The first documented objects from the North at 

Swiss museums date back to the 1700s, though most 

were collected during the 19th and 20th centuries, 

even in the last decades of the latter. As our survey 

indicates, Swiss museum institutions continue to 

collect objects from the polar regions, in both Eurasia 

and North America in the 21st century. They are 

also increasingly taking stock of their possessions 

by featuring their collections online, in electronic 

databases, printed materials, and, partly, on exhibits. 

Only few museums feature any northern objects on 

their permanent displays, so that the Swiss public, 

visiting tourists, and foreign professionals are mostly 

unaware of the riches stored behind the scene. 

The first and so far, the only specialized exhibit in 

recent times displaying northern objects from several 

Swiss museums called Aiguuq! (“Look here!” in 

Canadian Inuktitut) was organized in 2008 by the 

North American Native Museum (NONAM). It was 

on display for five months and included about 110 

objects (according to its printed catalog). NONAM, 

as well as other museums, also staged several 

temporary exhibits featuring objects from the North.

Swiss Arctic Collections Network

In November 2017, 

some 20 museum 

specialists representing 

five institutions met 

at the Historical and 

Ethnographic Museum 

(Historisches und 

Völkerkundemuseum) in 

St. Gallen to establish the 

Swiss Arctic Collections 

Network (Netzwerk 

Arktis-Sammlungen 

Schweiz, NASS), with 

the aim to facilitate “a 

comprehensive exchange 

for people involved 

in Arctic collections 

in Switzerland.” They 

also held a two-day session with presentations of 

Arctic collections at individual Swiss museums 

(St. Gallen, Cerny Inuit Collection, NONAM, Bern 

Historical Museum) that advanced the collaboration 

started during the NONAM exhibit of 2008. 

On November 9, 2018, the NASS team renamed the 

group to Network Arctic Collections Switzerland 

(NACS) and held its second annual meeting at the 

Völkerkundemuseum in Zürich (followed by an evening 

visit and reception at NONAM). This time, the spectrum 

of participating institutions (13) and attendees, including 

museum workers, agency representatives, and private 

collectors, was far more diverse. The list of speakers also 

featured two foreign curators, Igor Krupnik (NMNH, 

Smithsonian Institution) and Martin Schultz (Statens 

museer för världskultur, Stockholm, Sweden), who gave 

“Arctic” section of NONAM permanent exhibit. 

Photo by Florian Gredig
 ASC Newsletter 53

overviews of the Arctic collections at their respective 

museums. Schultz also pointed to important historical 

links between the collections held in Switzerland 

and Sweden. Two additional Swiss museums also 

presented session papers—the Völkerkundemuseum 

in Zürich (by Maike Powroznik) and the Musée 

d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel (by Yann Laville), both 

with substantial northern holdings. The participants 

agreed that the 3rd NACS meeting would be hosted 

at the Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel in 2019.

A new issue raised following Krupnik’s presentation 

was the online accessibility of ethnographic objects 

at Swiss museums. Whereas today each modern 

museum has an internal electronic collection database, 

Swiss institutions differ greatly in the ways they 

open their collections online. There is neither a 

shared policy nor a common online database (like 

those in Iceland or in Sweden) that allows to search 

collections via the Internet—by fellow museum 

researchers, online visitors, and, specifically, 

by Indigenous people from the object’s “home 

areas.” The issue of accessibility is becoming 

ever more urgent with the growing demand by 

Arctic indigenous people for cultural resources 

from their areas often held in distant countries. 

Another factor is the ongoing effort to produce 

an international “guide” for Arctic ethnographic 

collections at the world’s major museums that 

may be accessed online (see ASC Newsletter

24). Following the NACS meeting in Zürich, the three 

co-authors agreed on the need of a comprehensive 

summary of Swiss museum holdings from the polar 

regions and their online accessibility. This work is 

still ongoing; below we provide short entries on three 

individual Swiss museums that may be viewed as 

contributions to the future international online guide. 

Using the criteria established earlier, the “Arctic” 

(or rather “North”) is defined broadly, to include the 

Arctic and Subarctic culture areas in North America, 

the northernmost (Alaskan) portion of the Northwest 

Coast, the northernmost regions of the Nordic 

countries, and the areas populated by Indigenous 

people across the Russian Arctic and Siberia. 

Museum Cerny Inuit Collection, Bern

This unique and privately owned museum started 

in the early 1990s when Martha and Peter Cerny 

acquired some 120 stone and ivory sculptures, 

lithographs and rare batiks produced by the 

contemporary Inuit artists from Arctic Canada. As the 

collection grew via more acquisitions in the Canadian 

Inuit communities and at art auctions, new objects 

made of stone, antler, whalebone, musk ox horn, 

sealskin, mammoth, and walrus ivory were purchased. 

They depict animals, people, human-animal 

metamorphoses, hunting and shamanistic scenes, as 

well as Inuit daily life. Since the 1990s, pieces 

from Greenland, Alaska, and, later, from Russia 

were added, so that the collection now offers a 

circumpolar coverage of Indigenous artworks.

The museum currently occupies a two-story 

building in downtown Bern, with two large 

exhibit halls displaying over 500 objects and a 

storage with roughly the same number of works. At 

~1,000 object-strong, it represents the largest public 

display of Northern objects in Switzerland. In addition, 

the Cerny Museum (formerly, “Cerny Inuit Collection”) 

organized dozens of off-stage exhibits and displays, 

making it the most active institution in publically 

presenting Arctic artworks in Switzerland, and, perhaps 

across Europe.

Permanent exhibit of modern Inuit art at the Cerny Inuit 

Museum. Photo by Igor Krupnik

Martha and Peter Cerny in the Cerny Inuit 

Museum. Photo by Igor Krupnik 
54 ASC Newsletter

The museum public website (www.cernyinuitcollection.

com) does not provide online access to collections. 

An internal electronic database (in progress) cites 

over 900 objects from Arctic Canada alone; they are 

organized by the home communities (Cape Dorset, 

Iqaluit, Pangnirtung, Kimmirut, etc.) of their creators. 

The second largest group (over 80 objects) comes 

from Siberia, primarily from the ivory craftshop 

in Uelen, Chukotka and Yamal, West Siberia. The 

collection also includes a handful of objects from 

Greenland and Alaska, with no artwork from the 

Sami areas. The museum is expanding its coverage 

and is the only Swiss institution actively acquiring 

modern art and ethnographic objects (clothing, jewelry, 

ornamentation) from across the circumpolar regions.

Nordamerika Native Museum (NONAM), Zürich

The Nordamerika Native 

Museum was founded 

in 1963 under the name 

Indianermuseum der 

Stadt Zürich and is owned 

by the city of Zürich. 

It is based on a private 

collection originally 

assembled by Gottfried 

Hotz (1901–1977), 

a Zürich high school 

teacher who took interest 

in Native American 

cultures early in his life. 

He eventually succeeded 

in acquiring about 1,000 

objects via purchases 

from private owners 

and at antique shows, 

mainly from the Plains/

Prairies, Eastern Woodlands and Southwest, before 

selling his collection to the City of Zurich.

It was only after 1993 that collecting Arctic objects 

was also actively pursued (particularly after the 

museum moved to a new building in 2003), so that 

NONAM now officially presents itself as the museum 

of “Native American and Inuit cultures.” Notably, the 

museum acquired many Inuit stone sculptures and art 

prints from Canada, as well as the private collection 

of anthropologist Jean-Loup Rousselot (former 

curator at the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde 

in Munich), containing 309 objects from Alaska and 

Canada. The NONAM currently houses about 400 

objects from the Arctic and 300 from the Subarctic, 

of which a considerable part is on permanent exhibit, 

making NONAM northern displays the second largest 

in Switzerland. Indigenous cultures represented are 

the Inuit/Eskimo of Alaska and Canada, the Gwich’in, 

Koyukon, Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi), Slavey, 

Subarctic Ojibway and the Inland Tlingit (with just 

a few objects from the Old World polar regions). 

NONAM’s permanent exhibits are arranged by the 

North American culture areas. It has a small catalog 

(in German) listing more than 760 objects on display. 

The museum also features a small “soundscape” 

installation offering sound recordings from the Inuit, 

Hopi, Navajo, and other Native cultures. A hunting 

coat of the Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi), made around 

1700, is considered to be one of the oldest and finest 

known pieces of its kind. The museum regularly 

publishes catalogs of its temporary exhibits, of which 

many represent polar art and cultures. No online 

access to the collections is currently provided. 

Bern Historical Museum (Bernisches Historisches 

Museum), Bern

Museum collecting in 

Bern started with the 

foundation of the Hohe 

Schule, a predecessor of 

the University of Bern, in 

1528 and of its University 

museum established 

in 1894. Today, the 

museum houses 500,000 

objects divided into four 

main categories: the 

archaeological collection, 

the historical collection, 

the numismatic collection, 

and the ethnographical 

collection of roughly 

60,000 objects. Though 

all museum holdings are 

computerized, there is no online access and no option 

for online search besides a handful of featured objects.

The oldest ethnographic objects from the Arctic 

date back to the third voyage of Capt. James 

Cook and were donated in 1791 by Swiss-born 

naturalist John Webber (anglicised from Johann 

Wäber), who accompanied Cook on his voyage 

as an artist. A bow, arrows, and throwing darts 

were collected in Alaska during that trip.

Today’s Arctic collections at BHM are about 1,200 

objects strong. The largest portion of about 800 

archaeological and 120 ethnographic objects comes 

from St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, collected in the late 

1960s and early 1970s by a team led by archaeologist 

Hans-Georg Bandi (1920–2016). Various Swiss 

expeditions to Greenland led to a set of about 120 

ethnographic objects received also partly from Danish 

Bern Historical Museum. Photo by Igor Krupnik
 ASC Newsletter 55

officials. A small collection of 20 contemporary 

Greenlandic carvings in stone, ivory, antler and 

bone, were acquired during the 1970s and 1980s.

From Siberia, around 20 ethnographic objects 

entered the collections, a Nivkh “chief’s dress” 

was bought in 1886, and a set of 18 Nanai objects 

in 1924. Northern Scandinavia is represented by 

a more substantial number of 120+ Sami objects, 

mostly from Finland acquired in 1937–1939. The 

ethnographic objects are accompanied by several 

hundred photographs, mostly from Bandi ́s expeditions 

to St. Lawrence Island, and a few historic photos from 

Greenland. None of them are currently displayed 

in the museum’s permanent exhibits. They are 

divided between the departments of archaeology and 

ethnography, with different curators responsible.

Future Steps

Overall, the Arctic/Northern museum “scape” in 

Switzerland contains at least 6,000 ethnological 

and archaeological objects plus several thousand 

photographs; it is also remarkably diverse. At 

least seven museums have more than 500–600 

objects each, and four museums have over 1,000 

objects, including photographs or even more. It is 

an unexpectedly high number for a small nation, 

with no history of colonial or imperial ambitions.

Though individual museums differ substantially 

by regional/ethnic strength of their collections, 

cumulatively the Swiss museums offer fairly solid 

coverage of indigenous cultures across the Arctic/

Northern regions: over 3,000 objects from Alaska 

(counting also photos and archaeological specimens); 

1,500 objects from Canada (with a good coverage of 

specific regions), about 500 (500+ in archaeology) 

from Greenland, and some 650+ objects from 

Siberia and Arctic Russia. Only the Sami culture of 

the Northern Europe is relatively underrepresented 

and hardly any objects come from Iceland.

Whereas Swiss Arctic/Northern collections have 

some obvious gaps, they also have several “gems” 

of world significance and excellent quality. These 

include but are not limited to: over 900 pieces of 

modern Inuit art from several communities in Canada 

at the Cerny Inuit Museum; several hundred Central 

Alaskan Yup’ik photographs and graphic art samples 

by German anthropologist Hans Himmelheber at 

Museum Rietberg in Zürich; Jean-Loup Rousselot’s 

collection from the North American Arctic at NONAM 

(more than 300 objects); a remarkable collection of 

objects and photographs by Jean Gabus from the 

Hudson Bay Inuit (split between museums in Basel, 

Neuchatel, and Fribourg); over 50 early-19th century 

objects from Siberia and Alaska from Johann Horner

(in Zürich), and others. These and other collection 

“stars” are poorly known outside Switzerland and 

even among the Swiss Arctic professionals. It is an 

urgent task to publicize its significance in international 

publications and in other languages, including 

to local audiences across the Arctic regions.

Generally, the Swiss Arctic/Northern ethnological 

collections remain poorly researched. They have been 

published but scantily and, by far, lack accessible 

summaries and printed catalogs. Yet, the Arctic themes 

are generally very popular with the Swiss audience, 

as revealed by several temporary exhibits produced 

by NONAM and the Cerny Museum since 2000. 

The online accessibility of Swiss northern collections 

is still in its infancy and many valuable museum 

holdings may be accessed through staff curators 

only. We should, therefore, encourage every effort 

to make these collections available and better 

known to museum professionals, the general public, 

Arctic specialists, indigenous people, students, 

and interested visitors around the world. 

Lastly, our work could not have been completed 

without the generous assistance of many colleagues 

at individual Swiss museums, specifically by 

Sabine Bolliger-Schreyer (Bern), Alexander 

Brust (Basel), Yvon Csonka (Neuchatel), Martha 

Cerny (Bern), Yann Laville (Neuchatel), and 

Maike Powroznik (Zürich). The summary of 

Swiss Arctic/northern holdings remains a work in 

progress; so, please stay tuned for future updates.

ERSERSAANEQ—CREATING 

KNOWLEDGE THROUGH IMAGES

By Malu Rohmann Fleisher, Randi Sørensen 

Johansen, and Michael Nielsen 

In Greenlandic, the word “ersersaaneq” (pronounced: 

ER-ser-SAA-neck) means creating knowledge 

through visual images. Many ethnographic objects 

made by the Greenlandic Inuit are found around the 

world today in foreign institutions and museums 

outside of Greenland. This phenomenon is a result 

of a common practice among major museums 

during the 19th and 20th centuries. Institutions would 

frequently exchange items from various ethnographic 

collections as both permanent loans and for temporary 

exhibitions. Over the years, many Greenlandic 

collections have been loaned and traded or been 

split apart. In some cases objects have become part 

of orphaned collections and important provenience 

information was lost. The Greenland National 

Museum and Archives is presented with the great 
56 ASC Newsletter

challenge of how to deal with these collections that 

are now spread over Europe and North America. 

Greenland is not unique in that much of its heritage 

resides overseas. In 2016 the Ersersaaneq project was 

created to explore this challenge by asking how a small 

museum with limited resources could use new advances 

in 3D-capture technology to improve and modernize 

the digital dissemination of Greenlandic heritage. 

The project began as a collaboration between three 

students from Ilisimatusarfik, (University of Greenland) 

and several senior staff at Nunatta Katersugaasivia 

Allagaateqarfialu (Greenland National Museum and 

Archives). Because so many objects of Greenlandic 

origin now reside overseas in 

foreign institutions, one of the 

underlying goals of the project 

is to have the opportunity to 

show disparate Greenlandic 

ethnographic collections in their 

entirety online. The project 

builds on the successes of 

other indigenous efforts at 3D 

dissemination in North America, 

Australia, the Pacific Islands and 

Africa. This project offers a new 

paradigm in the management of 

museum objects of Greenlandic 

origin and has important 

implications for other national 

museums with limited resources 

in other parts of the world. 

One of the other underlying 

objectives was to not simply 

create 3D images but to 

document the process and 

workflow and thereby make 

it possible to be replicated 

by other Greenlanders in the 

future. The plan includes 

a needed dissemination component that explores 

finding new ways to organize, manage, develop 

and digitize the museum’s online collections from 

start to finish. Since there are very few people in 

Greenland who are specialized in this field, there is an 

urgent need to develop competency in these areas. 

The Ersersaaneq team chose to focus on creating 

3D images from East Greenland as there are many 

unique objects from this part of the country. By 

displaying each object in its entirety from all angles, 

the 3D images will give people a better impression 

of the real shape and color of the object, making the 

viewer experience more interactive and satisfying 

than a 2D image. In addition, it will also be possible 

to reproduce smaller details of the objects which may 

possibly hold important information in relation to the 

objects function and history. Therefore, 3D images 

will give people an experience of getting closer to 

the object despite not seeing it in its physical form.

One of the largest ethnographic collections from East 

Greenland was made by the Danish naval officer and 

Arctic explorer Gustav Holm on his famous Umiaq 

(women’s boat) Expedition, 1883–1885. This collection 

included special pieces of clothing, sewing implements, 

furniture, hunting and fishing equipment, art, and a 

variety of ornamented objects. Today a large part of 

the collection is located at the Greenland National 

Museum, but it is well-known that other parts of the 

collection can be found in the 

National Museum of Denmark 

and the Smithsonian Institution. 

Because of the rich history of 

the expedition and knowledge—

through Holm’s publications—

of this collection, it was decided 

that the Holm collection should 

be the first to be digitized 

by the Ersersaaneq team. 

The collection includes several 

hundred artifacts, but the 

current goal by the team is to 

only digitize a small portion 

to test and refine the workflow 

digitization process. Once a 

selected number of objects 

are made into completed 3D 

models, the images will be 

made public on a dedicated 

website and freely available 

to anyone who is interested in 

gaining a greater knowledge 

of the culture and history of 

the Greenlandic Inuit. The 

Ersersaaneq team has chosen 

to display the 3D images on a website platform called 

Mukurtu, an open-source platform built specifically 

with indigenous communities, to help them manage and 

share their cultural heritage online http://mukurtu.org. 

In addition to the 3D images themselves, supplemental 

information will be provided in both Greenlandic 

and English to enable an interactive educational 

experience for both local and global audiences. 

When the project began in 2016, the students 

had absolutely no knowledge of how to make 

3D digital models or if there were any people 

in Greenland who might have some experience 

with the process. The participants started seeking 

instruction on the internet about how they could 

create 3D models quickly and cheaply. After some 

Bag made of sealskin and fish-heads in the 

Holm collection from East Greenland 332406. 

Photo by Ersersaaneq Project
 ASC Newsletter 57

research, they found that photogrammetry would 

be the best and most cost-effective solution. The 

team tested different photogrammetric software 

and after some trial and error, decided that Agisoft 

Photoscan, (now known as Agisoft Metashape) 

would be the best option for their project needs.

 In the beginning, the Ersersaaneq team pieced 

together what tools and equipment they could find 

at the Greenland National Museum. Staff helped the 

students by also providing work space and access to 

objects in the Holm collection 

that were on display in 

the Museum’s permanent 

exhibition. In addition, the 

team also participated in a 

short course on best practices 

in photographing artifacts 

under controlled settings. It 

quickly became clear for the 

team that 3D digitization is 

not as easy as it first appeared. 

They could not simply use the 

same settings on their camera 

equipment as they use when 

taking ordinary 2D photos of 

artifacts, and it was difficult for 

them to find information about 

which settings would work best 

for sets of photos intended to 

be stitched together in Agisoft. 

The Ersersaaneq team spent 

many hours testing different 

camera settings, tripods, 

lighting conditions and camera 

lenses to see what worked best 

and what did not work at all. 

After a year of testing, the team 

produced its first complete 

3D image of an object with 

no errors. More trial and error 

led to better understanding of the nuances required 

to capture different types of objects with different 

material properties (for example, wood versus metal). 

After many attempts, they finally managed to find the 

parameters needed to capture a variety of different 

objects. This has been no small feat given the limited 

time, resources and competing demands for a team 

consisting of full time students also employed on 

other projects at the Greenland National Museum.

When the Ersersaaneq team felt confident in their 

techniques for 3D capture, they reached out to the 

Smithsonian and the National Museum of Denmark 

with the hopes of gaining access to artifacts from the 

Holm collection curated by those two institutions. 

The Smithsonian was immediately interested in 

the efforts of the team and arranged access for 

the team to photograph several East Greenlandic 

objects from the Anthropology Department stored 

at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center.

The team was awarded a grant to travel to Washington 

DC through the Greenlandic government through the 

Tips-og Lottomidlerne fund. Two members of the team 

spent 12 days working with members of the Arctic 

Studies Center and Department of Anthropology in 

December 2018. Throughout 

the process, The Smithsonian 

Institution staff were extremely 

welcoming and very helpful 

and created a supportive 

atmosphere that helped 

make the entire experience 

incredibly rewarding for the 

two Greenlandic students. 

During their 12-day visit, the 

students successfully captured 

24 East Greenland objects from 

the Holm and Ryder collections 

(Carl Hartvig Ryder made 

the Hekla Expedition to East 

Greenland in 1891–1892). This 

may not sound like much, but 

since it takes about 100–150 

photos to convert an object into 

a 3D model, the students were 

very happy with the results. 

And since this was their first 

experience of taking pictures in 

unfamiliar surroundings, they 

also gained valuable experience 

in adjusting their process to 

different types of ambient 

lighting and refining their 

work-flow to accommodate 

different work spaces—a 

skill that will greatly aid them as they travel to other 

institutions to create 3D models of objects in the future. 

Based on the success of the Smithsonian collaboration, 

the team has high hopes for its next trip. At the 

moment, the Ersersaaneq team and the Greenland 

National Museum are in dialogue with the Danish 

National Museum to obtain permission to access 

several East Greenlandic objects from the Holm 

expedition currently in their collections. Once the 

3D models in Denmark are complete, it will be the 

first time in history that these rare East Greenlandic 

objects spread over three countries have been 

displayed together as a virtual online collection. 

Female figurines of wood from the Smithsonian 

collection showing the distinctive East 

Greenland hair-do. Photo by Ersersaaneq 

Project
58 ASC Newsletter

Reuniting these objects online helps to fill a gap in 

our knowledge of the East Greenlandic Inuit before 

Danish colonization. In addition to their historical 

value, the items are also directly connected to 

modern conceptions of Greenlandic identity as they 

represent an enduring cultural tradition that goes 

back in time before direct European contact with 

the East Greenland Inuit. Creating a digital online 

repository of 3D images is the first step toward 

bringing greater coherence to the East Greenlandic 

collection as a whole, while making it universally 

accessible as a historical and educational resource.

Special thanks to the following for their assistance: 

Igor Krupnik, Stephen Loring, William Fitzhugh, 

Eric Hollinger, David Rosenthal, Hans Harmsen, 

Daniel Thorleifsen, and Christian Koch Madsen.

CURATORS’ TOUR: INDIGENOUS ART

By Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad

A full-size 

Anishinaabe 

birchbark canoe, 

surrounded by 

paintings of Canada’s 

famed Group of 

Seven, presides 

over the exhibit 

room in the recently 

installed permanent 

collection at the 

National Gallery 

of Canada. Not 

only does the canoe 

appear completely at 

home, it enlivens the 

almost transcendental 

experience captured 

in the woodland 

paintings which 

surround it. The size and physicality of the canoe 

impresses the viewer—its elegant form, the soft 

color of the bark, the scalloped edge along the 

gunwales, the uniform series of bentwood ribs, 

and the linear patches of pine tar that mark its 

surface. In re-envisioning the installation of its 

collection–renamed Canadian and Indigenous Art: 

From Time Immemorial to 1967—it is as though 

the National Gallery awakened from a long slumber 

to the history and vitality of indigenous art, long 

ignored by the institution. It is a sad and persistent 

slumber that afflicts many cultural and educational 

institutions throughout the western hemisphere. 

At the invitation of Denis Chouinard, Public Affairs 

Consul, Embassy of Canada—a dear friend of the Arctic 

Studies Center—I joined Kayla Aubid (MacRostie 

Art Center, Grand Rapids, MN), Kerry Boyd (NMAI), 

Jenny Keller (Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK), Michelle 

Rich (Dallas Museum of Art), Joe Williams (Plains 

Art Center, Fargo, ND), Laura Youngbird (Plains 

Art Center, Fargo, ND), and Dani Fisher (General 

of Canada, Minneapolis) on a cross-Canada tour for 

curators of indigenous art, organized by the Generals 

of Canada in Dallas and Minneapolis. Coming from a 

variety of museum backgrounds (curatorial, educational, 

exhibits, and administration–often overlapping), we 

were hosted by directors, curators and museum staff in 

a behind-the-scenes journey through the transformative 

change which has taken place in cultural institutions 

across Canada. Responding to the 94 count “Call to 

Action” documented in the Report of the Truth and 

Reconciliation Commission resulting from the searing 

multi-year testimony of indigenous survivors of the 

residential school system, cultural institutions across 

Canada are urgently reshaping the narrative 

of Canadian art history, 

repositioning the 

historical marker which 

has long determined 

the western European 

origin of Canadian art 

history to acknowledge 

and embrace aboriginal 

art created before, 

during, and after EuroCanadian settlement.

Moving through 

the galleries of the 

historical collection at 

the National Gallery of 

Canada, archaeological 

objects are on 

prominent display. 

Combs and figure 

carvings from the Dorset and Thule periods, on loan 

from the Canadian Museum of History, are an apt 

reminder of the ancestral history of the North. 

Skillfully crafted, richly aesthetic garments created by 

indigenous seamstresses provide stunning highlights 

throughout the exhibit space: a Naskapi caribou hide 

Ceremonial Coat (c. 1840) sports a swanky collar, 

striking epaulettes, and finely inked multi-tiered 

graphic designs in simple and lyrical patterns that both 

decoratively and spiritually mark the hem, wrists, and 

shoulders of the garment; the hide dress of a Dene 

hunter, scraped to a bright white suede, his mitts and 

Study group visiting Canadian museums with indigenous art 

collections, including Kayla Aubid, Kerry Boyd, Jenny Keller, 

Michelle Rich, Joe Williams, Laura Youngbird, Dani Fisher, and 

Bernadette Engelstad. Photo by Dani Fisher
 ASC Newsletter 59

knife sheath decorated with naturally dyed porcupine 

quill—recalling the neon colors that once thrilled Pop 

artists in the Sixties; the regalia of a Northwest Coast 

chief, his status evident in the elaborately carved 

headdress adorned with the iridescent shimmer of an 

abalone shell; his shoulders, draped by a Chilkat cape 

of mountain goat wool, hand-woven in a geometric 

pattern of black and white, reminiscent of the Op Art 

movement to captivate the New York art world a few 

generations later. In reflecting on the archaeological 

objects, some dating to 2,500 BP, and the finely crafted 

sartorial art in daily use well before the advent of 

European settlement, one wonders why the exhibit 

gallery is not named in the reverse: “Indigenous 

and Canadian Art: From Time Immemorial... ”.

In re-installing the First Peoples Hall at the Canadian 

Museum of History, curatorial staff worked closely 

with indigenous advisors. Against the monumental 

cedar poles and decorated house fronts that speak of the 

resilience of indigenous communities along the Pacific 

coast, text panels in the First Peoples Hall document 

the painful history of indigenous peoples shared across 

the continent. Statements by then-Prime Minister John 

A. Macdonald are displayed along with excerpts 

from the testimony of residential school survivors, 

demonstrating the courage, certitude, and responsibility 

with which indigenous advisors and museum staff 

undertook their mission to 

impart a comprehensive, 

more truthful rendering of 

Canadian history—a history 

shared across the continent. 

Arriving in Winnipeg, we 

were graciously hosted by 

Stephen Borys, Director of 

the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 

Chief Curator, Andrew 

Keir, Julie Nagam, and 

Darlene Wight, Curator 

of Inuit Art in the Gallery 

Boardroom—a setting that 

brought back memories of 

sitting at the same table 

with colleagues working 

out exhibit issues during 

my tenure as Associate 

Curator of Inuit Art 

(1979–1985). With passion, 

Stephen Borys described 

details of the Gallery’s 

bold initiative to create 

Canada’s first Centre for 

Inuit Art. Internationally 

recognized as the key 

center for the exhibition, collection, and publication of 

Inuit art, the new building–now under construction—

will allow the Gallery to showcase its collection 

of almost 13,000 sculptures, prints, drawings, and 

textile art by contemporary Inuit artists. Designed 

by Michael Maltzan, an architecture of Los 

Angeles. The white undulating, multi-storied shape 

of the new building, finding its creative source in 

towering islands of floating ice encountered by the 

architect on travels North, seems to float above 

street level with a glass fronted entrance way. 

Enclosed walkways will connect the two buildings. 

A circular glass-enclosed core of open storage 

dominating the center of the new building will 

allow the Gallery to display over 700 sculptures 

selected from its extensive collection. In addition 

to installation work on the permanent collection 

carried out by Curator of Inuit Art, Darlene Wight, 

a major inaugural exhibition is being planned by a 

team of guest curators representing the four regions 

of Inuit Nunaat. They are: Heather Igloliorte

(Nunatsiavut), Krista Ulujuk Zawadski (Nunavut), 

Asinnajaq (Nunavik), and Jade Nasogaluak 

Carpenter (Inuvialuit Settlement Region).

In a lively presentation, Dr. Julie Nagam, Chair in 

the History of Indigenous Art in North America (a 

Left: Smoked hide coat made by Mississauga artist (unknown) for Kahkewaquonaby (Rev. 

Peter Jones), c. 1844. Smithsonian Institution, Department of Anthropology (E178398-0). 

Right: a wool button blanket cape titled, "Raven on the Colonial Fleet", by Skeen Riece, 

displaying a hand grenade in glittering sequins. Photo by Bernadette Engelstad
60 ASC Newsletter

joint appointment with the University of Winnipeg), 

provided a frank overview of the Gallery’s 

shortcomings in its past failure to support the work of 

Metis and First Nations artists. The 2018 exhibition, 

Insurgence/Resurgence, co-curated by Julie Nagam

and Jaime Isaacs, the Gallery’s Curator of Indigenous 

Art, featured the work of 26 contemporary artists. This 

is an effort that will continue into the future with the 

institutional commitment to a biennial exhibition of 

contemporary Metis, First Nations, and Inuit artists. 

Subsequent meetings with Arlea Ashcroft of Creative 

Manitoba, a non-profit assisting indigenous artists 

with economic and career-building aspects of art 

production, and Daina Warren, Director of Urban 

Shaman, a well-established gallery of contemporary 

aboriginal art in the city’s Exchange District–soon to 

open a satellite location in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

It emphasized the rich vitality and sustainability 

of indigenous art production in Winnipeg. 

With a final stop in Vancouver, we were hosted 

by Anthony Shelton, Director of the Museum of 

Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British 

Columbia, an intellectual force in Vancouver’s art 

world. Accompanying Dr. Shelton on a whirlwind tour 

of the Museum, he emphasized that the institution’s 

collections and curatorial interests extend well 

beyond its impressive display of Northwest Coast 

art, a perspective which sets the latter in a more 

globally non-western, pan-Pacific environment. 

Constantly at the forefront of museum innovation—

the first museum in North America to feature open 

storage—MOA’s Oral History Technology Lab and 

multiple, free-standing kiosks with digital images 

of the collection and catalog data provide critical 

models of accessibility for the museum world.

With a focus on the theme of transformation, the 

Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibit, Metamorphosis, 

highlights recent acquisitions to the collection with 

several works by contemporary indigenous artists. A 

female mannequin outfitted in a rigid white corset, 

dance apron, headdress, sequin button blanket, and 

sporting a pair of black high-heeled shoes dominates 

a center gallery. Entitled Raven on the Colonial Fleet, 

the artist, Skeena Riece (b. 1975), has painted the 

corset and dance apron with Northwest Coast imagery; 

the figure’s headdress is adorned with a pair of marten 

fur pelts, her shoulders are draped in a red wool 

button cloak edged with a black border. In place of the 

ancestral clan image traditionally outlined on the back 

of the cloak, the artist renders the curiously elegant 

form of a hand grenade carried out in silver sequins. 

Baxwana’tsi: The Container for Souls (2006) by 

Marianne Nicolson (b. 1969) consists of a brilliantly 

conceived heirloom box alluding to the ancestral story 

of Raven releasing daylight, its glass sides etched 

with Northwest Coast heraldic imagery. Light fixtures 

within the box project shadows of Northwest Coast 

imagery on the walls of the small room enclosing 

the work, filling the space in a three-dimensional 

surround. Walking through the room, shadows envelop 

the viewer’s body, extending and transforming the 

kinetic energy of the piece as the viewer becomes an 

elemental part of the artist’s creative statement.

Throughout our journey across Canada, the painful 

impact of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings on 

the national psyche was clearly evident. Inscribed at 

the entrances of museums, art galleries, and exhibit 

hall. And it personally conveyed in speech as we were 

welcomed–museum directors and curators formally 

acknowledged the ancestral and contemporary 

occupation of the traditional lands beneath our feet by 

indigenous peoples. Nowhere was this brought more 

sharply into focus than by the three exhibitions on 

view at the Museum of Vancouver: 1) c̓əsnaʔəm, 2) 

Haida Now, and 3) There is Truth Here: Creativity and 

Resilience in Children’s Art from Indian Residential 

and Day Schools. Emerging from the discovery of 

ancient burials the exhibition c̓əsnaʔəm, presents a 

moving tribute to the ancestral Musqueam village 

beneath the modern-day city of Vancouver. 

As described by Vivienne Gosselin, Director of 

Collections and Exhibitions, the large nail installed 

at the entrance to the exhibit gallery represents a 

fixture of Musqueam domestic culture, a reminder 

that one’s opinions, preconceptions, and biases are 

to be left outside the door of another’s home. 

Haida Now balances the display of historical 

belongings with contemporary video and the voices 

of Haida individuals, sharing intimate thoughts 

and concerns with the exhibit guest. There is Truth 

An Anishinaabe birchbark canoe surrounded by paintings of 

the Group of Seven in the National Gallery of Canada. 

Photo by Bernadette Engelstad
 ASC Newsletter 61

Here: Creativity and Resilience in Children’s Art 

from Indian Residential and Day Schools (opening 

April 5, 2019) presents a collection of drawings, 

carved ceremonial boxes, and textiles created by 

students of residential schools in British Columbia 

and Manitoba. To all of us whose children have 

returned from school each day with the proud gift of 

that day’s drawing, it is a tearful realization of the 

isolation these children and their parents experienced, 

removed from the daily love of their families. 

Although the tour program was designed as a means 

of establishing personal and institutional connections 

across the border, its impact can be far more significant 

as cultural institutions, museum staff, and artists look 

to Canadian institutions and colleagues who are 

fundamentally reshaping the public understand of 

North American history.

DARKHAD TEXTILE RECOVERY 

AND CONSERVATION PROJECT

By William Fitzhugh, Paula DePriest, Caroline 

Solazzo and Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan 

Over the past few years, a tragedy unfolded in 

the Darkhad region of northern Mongolia where 

Smithsonian and Mongolian researchers have been 

working since 2001. In summer 2017, our colleagues, 

Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, Research Director of 

the National Museum of Mongolian History, and 

Julia Clark, Director, Nomad Science Mongolia, 

were alerted that looters seeking burial goods at a 

site called Khorig (“taboo,” a name for the protected 

cemeteries of the Mongol Empire Khans) had 

unearthed more than 100 medieval (or earlier) grave 

mounds. In the process, the looters cast aside burial 

garments, many of which were made of luxury silk 

with gold threads imported from China, Central Asia, 

or Persia, and fashioned into Mongolian styles.

When the researchers and their teams visited the sites, 

they found spoil piles filled with textile remains, 

many made of silk. The textiles were damaged by 

decay and the trauma of the looters’ shovels, but 

many more—especially the silk materials, although 

fragmentary, had resisted deterioration and were in 

relatively good condition. Mounting an emergency 

salvage program, the team screened the back-fill of 

25 looted graves and recovered hundreds of textile 

fragments, some whose fabrics, designs, and styles 

were intact. Most likely, the textiles were imported 

into the Darkhad region from production centers 

in China, Central Asia, or Persia and had been 

tailored according to local Mongol fashion. During 

the medieval period, textiles would have reached 

the Darkhad as tributes for the marriages alliances 

between Chinggis (Genghis) Khan’s Royal Family 

and leaders of the local tribes such as the Oirats. 

Along with textiles, there were small objects the 

looters missed: carvings and ornaments, small metal 

objects, game pieces, and others—all important 

items documenting life during the Chinggis Khan 

Empire, as well as in earlier and later times. 

The arrival of winter shut down field recovery, and the 

remaining mounds had to be abandoned. During the 

fall, Bayarsaikhan contacted William Fitzhugh and 

Paula DePriest at the Arctic Studies Center and the 

Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), respectively, 

requesting assistance for conservation and analysis. 

MCI conservation scientists and conservators, led 

by Caroline Solazzo, pledged support to bring a 

selection of the salvaged materials to Washington, 

DC, for preliminary scientific analysis and study 

during the spring of 2019. In collaboration with 

William Honeychurch (Yale), a Yale University 

student was funded through the Yale-Smithsonian 

Internship Program to participate in the analysis. The 

results from these studies would help develop a plan 

for the larger recovery planned for summer 2019.

Bayarsaikhan, Clark, Solazzo, DePriest, Fitzhugh, 

and Honeychurch began discussions about how 

the field and analysis programs might proceed. 

Work was already underway in Ulaanbaatar by 

Bayarsaikhan and Clark with Kristen Pearson, 

Fulbright Fellow (National Museum of Mongolian 

History and University of Pennsylvania), and 

Sandra Vanderwarf, Textile Conservator (Asian 

Cultural Council), to stabilize and document the 2018 

collections. In March, DePriest, Solazzo, Fitzhugh, 

Pearson, Clark, and Vanderwarf met in person to 

Darkhad deel textile fragment with gold-wrapped thread. 

Photo by Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan
62 ASC Newsletter

develop a strategy for selecting the materials and 

types of analytical studies. Meanwhile Bayarsaikhan 

and colleagues made plans for salvaging more of 

the graves during the coming summer season. All 

parties recognized the urgent nature of the effort, 

both for the materials that had been salvaged in 2018 

and for materials that would be recovered in 2019. 

Exposure to the elements, especially during the spring 

thaw, would begin a process of rapid decay now that 

the textiles and other objects have been brought to 

the surface. Currently, the plan has four goals: 

First, to mount a salvage archaeological effort to 

screen and recover all cultural materials from the 

75 remaining looted burials. Since graves tend to 

cluster according to family, lineage, and social 

groups, and reveal socio-economic status, the 

remains would provide information about material, 

social, and political life of Darkhad Mongolians.

Second, to inventory and stabilize the recovered 

remains and to provide field documentation 

(photography, basic description, cataloguing) 

that would be used to organize and manage the 

collection, and to provide on-site conservation 

as needed to prevent loss or deterioration 

in advance of laboratory study.

Third, to bring a sample of the collection to the 

Smithsonian for more intensive conservation and 

stabilization, to conduct physical and chemical 

studies to identify material constituents (fibers, 

metallic threads, dyes), and to undertake more 

detailed documentation and classification following 

standards developed for Asian textile studies. 

Fourth, to train archaeologists, conservators, and 

students—both Mongolian and American—in field 

recovery, conservation, and analytical techniques. 

The Smithsonian-Yale partnership is likely to 

play a role in the recovery and analysis phases.

Preliminary inspection of the samples salvaged in 

2018 confirmed that these garments and fragments 

might be one of the most important archaeological 

collection of medieval textiles ever recovered 

in Mongolia because of their historic context - 

representing the Mongol Empire period and its 

marriage alliances, their noteworthy preservation, 

and their large number and diversity of individual 

fragments from a single time period and geographic 

region. Few archaeological textiles are as well 

preserved. Although spectacular Mongol period 

costumes have been found in dry caves, they have 

been one-off pieces and not representative of a 

large population or an entire geographic region. 

Even in China, such finds are rare. The Darkhad 

Textile Project hopes to turn the tragedy of looting 

and destruction into an opportunity for salvage, 

conservation, training, and research on a previously 

unknown aspect of Central Asian material culture. 

We thank those named above for their role in 

this project and for contributing information and 

suggestions for this report.

TREASURES OFF THE BEATEN 

TRACK: A VISIT TO THE CRANBROOK 

INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE (CIS)

By Stephen Loring

In February 2016 Joan Gero was in Detroit as 

the keynote speaker at the Midwestern Andean 

Conference and I tagged along. She was also invited 

to speak at the Anthropology Department at Wayne 

State University at the invitation of our longago Smithsonian Repatriation Office colleagues, 

Tamara Bray and Tom Killion. Tom took the 

opportunity to arrange for me to see the Arctic and 

Subarctic ethnology collections at the Cranbrook in 

Bloomfield, Michigan. There we were graciously 

received by Cameron Wood, Curator of Collections, 

and introduced to a small but delightful collection 

of artifacts from across the North American Arctic 

from Greenland to Alaska. The collection had been 

assembled piecemeal over the years, and while much 

of it lacked the detailed provenance or systematic 

collecting histories that characterize collections in 

larger institutions, still it contained a number of 

extraordinary treasures. I was especially smittened by 

a stunning small wooden mid-19th century carving of a 

Haida (or perhaps Tsimshian) woman from the Queen 

Charlotte Islands. The Woman With the Abalone Eyes 

had a stoic world-weary expression that seemed to 

resonate over time and space. Other treasures were 

Darkhad textile fragments with patterns intact. 

Photo by Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan
 ASC Newsletter 63

glimpsed in the repository which time did not allow 

me to investigate further, but my imagination had 

been captured and I knew I would have to return.

That opportunity occurred in the Fall of 2018 when 

I arranged to participate in Tamara Bray’s Museum 

Studies (ANT 5600) course at Wayne State. We 

developed an exercise, a hands-on museum practicum, 

that would allow students to select one of the northern 

artifacts at Cranbrook Institute of Science (CIS), prepare 

a condition report, and an object biography. The goal 

was to determine as much as possible about the history 

and significance of the objects so we could eventually 

prepare a report for publication. A few highlights of the 

work the students and I conducted are indicated below:

The Woman with the Abalone Eyes (CIS.3224) has 

made a remarkable journey. In addition to her CIS 

catalog number, discretely written on the underside, 

was another number 11/1311 which I instantly 

recognized as an old Museum of the American Indian/

Heye Foundation catalog number! A subsequent 

check of the National Museum of the American 

Indian (NMAI) card catalog revealed her to have been 

purchased by its director, George Heye, from W.O. 

Oldman’s Ethnographical Specimens in London in 

1922. Oldman was the source for a number of the 

more remarkable 18th and early-19th century American 

Indian artifacts Heye acquired. Heye had a close 

“working” relationship with Julius Carlebach, who 

ran a very upscale “Primitive” and Ancient Art Gallery 

in New York City and who was known to negotiate the 

transfer and sale of objects out of the Heye collection. 

Having traveled from her home on the coast of British 

Columbia, to London, and eventually to New York, she 

arrived at her current Cranbrook repository in 1943/44. 

From left to right and from top to bottom: the woman with the Abalone Eyes (CIS.3224); Haida wooden pipe carving of a 

white man with arms extended; pair of story knives (CIS.1771); and the whale charm (CIS.4175). Photo by Stephen Loring
64 ASC Newsletter

And then there is a second exceptional Northwest 

Coast wood carving, a pipe, that appears to depict 

a European man (or perhaps the figurehead from a 

British or American trading vessel) whose face and 

hands are carved from bone and whose arms move. 

Researching this pipe, Genevieve Prange, a WSU 

student, discovered that it had a “twin” at Harvard’s 

Peabody Museum. Sadly, neither institution has much 

provenience information on either pipe. For now at least, 

the name of this master craftsman remains lost in history.

A second moment of déjà vu occurred when I picked 

up a small Yupik ivory snow-knife (CIS.1771) 

originating from the Yukon-Kuskokwim region 

of Alaska. This is just like the ones that Edward 

Nelson collected for the Smithsonian, I thought 

as I turned it over to see “36575–Nelson–Yukon,” 

the very distinctive numbering and lettering of the 

Smithsonian catalogers from back in the late-19th

century. It is fascinating to learn of the degree to 

which museum collections were being acquired and 

disseminated throughout the late-19th and early-20th

century and which, I suppose, to some extent, continues 

to this day. We assume that museum collections are 

sacrosanct and static when clearly they have always 

experienced a dynamic life and interaction even 

when divorced from their original cultural homes. 

The CIS collection includes a number of very 

significant artifacts pertaining to North Alaskan Inupiat 

whaling. There is a magnificent carved ivory harpoon 

rest (CIS.4544); a harpoon (CIS.9883) and a pair of 

whaling charms similar to ones described by Murdoch. 

One of these (CIS.4175) charms that was important 

for ensuring a successful whale hunt is a truly unique, 

outstanding specimen from Point Hope. It consists of 

two stones in the shape of a bowhead whale bound 

together with a sealskin line. A smooth black stone, 

naturally polished by the sea, forms the head of the 

whale. The proximal end of the stone may have seen 

use as a blubber pounder before it was transformed into 

the charm. The shape of the stone mirrors the tapering 

head and nose of the whale and—amazingly—it has 

a thin white band that perfectly mimics the diagonal 

slant of a bowhead’s mouth. The effect is quite 

realistic and stunning. The back of the whale with 

its carefully shaped flukes and anatomical details is 

carved from a soft black stone (probably cannel coal).

Additional surprises included a small assemblage of 

tools, bones, and artifacts that the American artist, 

Rockwell Kent, recovered from an Inuit burial 

near Umivik, Greenland: a complete set of Innu 

painted caribou-skin clothing that was acquired 

from Frank Speck through his arrangement with 

the trader Richard White in Nain, Labrador, 

ivory carvings from Alaska, and Yup’ik masks.

The Cranbrook Institute of Science (1930) was 

an outgrowth of the Cranbrook School that had 

been founded by Detroit newspaper publisher 

and philanthropist, George Gough Booth, on 

grounds adjacent to his stately home and gardens 

in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The Cranbrook 

campus has expanded throughout the 20th century 

to become one of the country’s premier academy 

of arts and architecture. Ironically, the travelling 

version of the Smithsonian’s Inua exhibition (Inua: 

Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo), with 

artifacts that Edward Nelson had acquired, came 

to Cranbrook in 1984–1985, reuniting (at least 

proximately) objects that had once been part of 

the same collection while show-casing others that 

might have been eclipsed by the Cranbrook’s own.

TWO NMNH “TOTEM POLES” FIND A NEW 

HOME, NEW NAMES AND NEW STORIES

By Igor Krupnik 

In summer 2017, Michael Lawrence, NMNH 

Assistant Director for Exhibitions informed 

Anthropology Department that museum’s Office 

of Exhibits was planning to move two Northwest 

Coast totem poles then-standing in the lobby of the 

IMAX Theater to a new location in the nearby Sant 

Ocean Hall. We met with Michael and agreed that 

the proposed move offered a possibility to revisit 

the text panels accompanying the poles produced 

more than a decade ago. The old panels provided 

mostly museum catalog information and in no way 

reflected the vision and knowledge of their indigenous 

creators. It was an opportunity hard to miss. 

The NMNH Samuel C. Johnson IMAX was closed 

in October 2017, after 18 years of service, to vacate 

space for a new NMNH public restaurant facility. 

The new construction work started promptly. 

Meantime, the poles were cleaned and in January 

2018 they were quietly moved to a new location 

in the corner of the Ocean Hall, near the replica 

of a 45-foot-long North Atlantic Right Whale, 

named Phoenix, hanging from the ceiling. 

As soon as it happened, we established a small team 

in Anthropology made of Eric Hollinger, Felicia 

Pickering, Gwyn Isaac, and myself, as the curator 

responsible for the poles, to work on new panels. 

Judging from the old collection records pulled out 

by Felicia, there was some confusion related to the 

origins of the poles as they were accessioned by the 

Smithsonian (U.S. National Museum) in the late 

1800s. One pole (catalog no. E54297) was reportedly 

collected by James G. Swan (1818–1900), former 
 ASC Newsletter 65

“Indian agent” in what is now Washington state and an 

ardent artifact collector on behalf of the Smithsonian. 

Swan secured the pole for the “centennial” Philadelphia 

Exposition of 1876, after which it was accessioned in 

1882. From the beginning, it was unclear whether it 

was originally made by the Tlingit or Haida carvers 

(though it was listed as “Haida, Queen Charlotte 

Islands, B.C.“ in the original Anthropology catalogue 

ledger book). The most recent collection record was 

also quite ambiguous: “Totem pole, ca.1850–75. 

Probably Tlingit, Southwest Alaska. Cedar, red and 

black paint; probably collected by James G. Swan. 

The figures represent a man, a bear, and a frog”. 

The label in the IMAX lobby reiterated its Haida 

origin and added another name: “Heraldic pole, Queen 

Charlotte Islands, Canada. Haida noble’s heraldic 

pole illustrating ancestral history. The top figure 

wears chief’s hat showing family wealth. Collected 

in 1875 by James Swan and Haida artist Johnny Kit 

Elswa for 1876 Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia.” 

Nonetheless, with the help of several experts (Steve 

C. Brown, Seattle Art Museum, Robin K. Wright, 

University of Washington, and Steve Henrikson, 

Alaska State Museum), this pole was definitively 

identified as coming from the southern Tlingit. 

It was no better for the second pole (E205851) acquired 

in 1900. Even its collection number in the record 

was accompanied with a question mark. In 1968, it 

was examined by George Phebus, Northwest Coast 

archaeologist, and NMNH Anthropology Collection 

Manager, who did a survey of the totem poles in NMNH 

collections, some of which did not have catalogue 

numbers written on them. At that time, he mostly made 

his best guess as to which number went to which pole 

and assigned the # E18925 to a Bella Coola/Nuxalk pole 

with bear/owl/beaver figures. However, the description 

in the accession records actually matched another 

pole, #E205851. So, following the suggestion by Sally 

McLendon, then our prime expert on the Northwest 

Coast objects, the pole was given a new collection 

number in 2006. It consisted of five separate sections 

Tlingit totem pole (right) with a man, a bear, and a frog collected by James 

Swan in 1875. Bella Coola/Nuxalt totem pole (left) showing the bear, owl, and 

beaver sections of a larger pole collected by Iver Fougner in 1900.

Photo by Igor Krupnik
66 ASC Newsletter

representing figures of an eagle at the top, a bear, an owl, 

a beaver, a mountain goat, and a human at the bottom. 

Of the original 30-feet (10 m) pole, only one section, 

featuring the bear, owl, and beaver, was displayed in 

the IMAX lobby. The eagle, mountain goat and human 

were stored as separate pieces in our collections facility 

in Suitland, MD. The note in the accession file from 

the original collector/donor Iver Fougner indicated 

that the pole came from “the lower Indian Village, 

Bella Coola, B.C.” The IMAX exhibit panel identified 

the pole as made “by 

Tlingit, Bella Bella, or 

Bella Coola (though Bella 

Coola is most probably 

correct)” and listed the 

crests as “bear, seated 

owl, and beaver”.

It was obvious that we 

did not have enough 

information to solve the 

riddle. We were very 

fortunate to add the 

perspectives of indigenous 

experts on the meaning 

and origin of the poles. 

In May 2013, during 

the Recovering Voices 

program community 

research visit, Clyde 

Tallio (Nuxalk) of the 

delegation from Bella 

Bella, Bella Coola and 

Rivers Inlet communities 

of British Columbia made 

the following comment 

on the latter pole. “The 

very top figure always 

represents the form in 

which your ancestor came from the upper world and it 

depicts your male lineage. The next figure underneath 

usually represents the mother, grandmother, or wife 

because she is uplifting her husband with all that she’s 

brought to him. At first when we got here, I thought 

we were looking at a Heiltsuk piece because Nuxalk 

are fully painted, they’re not supposed to leave any 

spot unpainted.” He, nonetheless, confirmed that the 

pole had been almost certainly made by Nuxalk (Bella 

Coola) carvers. Eric Hollinger reached out to Clyde 

Tallio once again in 2018. Clyde reviewed a new image 

of the complete pole and provided detailed terminology 

and comments on its various sections. Hollinger also 

secured a confirmation from his Tlingit partners that the 

former pole collected by Swan was most probably made 

in the southern Tlingit tradition, not by Haida carvers. 

In February 2018, I prepared drafts of the new panels 

to accompany the poles based on published and 

collection data and comments from our team members 

and indigenous partners. We promptly decided to 

give the poles a new name, “crest" or “heraldic 

columns”, following the essay by anthropologist 

Robin K. Wright, since it has been long known that 

the word “totem” was a misnomer for the columns. 

Several separate sections of the column E205851 

were photographed by the Repatriation Office and a 

composite image placing 

them in their original 

order was created to add 

to the exhibit panel and 

reveal what portions 

are not displayed in 

the Ocean Hall. I also 

believed that our visitors 

have to know how 

widely the tradition 

of installing heraldic 

(or crest) columns 

was spread across the 

Northwest Coast, which 

Indigenous nations had/

have this tradition, and 

which do not. For that, 

I produced a map with 

the names of indigenous 

Northwest Coast nations 

and the location of 

our two columns. We 

worked for two months 

on researching specific 

details and then with 

Jill Johnson, NMNH 

exhibits developer, 

Angela Roberts, exhibits 

writer and Kim Moeller, 

exhibits designer, on finessing the captions and the map. 

In April 2018, the new labels were unveiled next to 

the columns in the Ocean Hall. They read as follows:

(Next to #E54297):

CONNECTING THE ANCESTORS WITH FUTURE 

GENERATIONS. Carved cedar columns not only 

represent ancestors; they embody present and 

future generations in an unbroken continuity.

Many indigenous Northwest Coast nations mark their 

identity and heritage by displaying symbols (or crests) 

of their ancestral lineages and important spirit figures. 

In the late 1800s missionaries and government agents 

discouraged the practice. Many poles fell to the ground 

The totem poles in their new locations in the Sant Ocean 

Hall, together with a case displaying Native American and 

Hawaiian ocean-related items. 

Photo by Igor Krupnik
 ASC Newsletter 67

or ended up in museums. Today, poles like these are 

again standing across the Northwest Coast as symbols 

of vibrant Native American cultures.

(Map—Tribal areas of Native Northwest Coast nations 

with crest column tradition)

Crest Column (totem pole). Southern Tlingit, Tuxekan 

Island, Alaska. Acquired 1882. James Gilchrist Swan, 

a U.S. government agent, collected this column in 1875 

to be displayed at the U.S. Centennial Exposition of 

1876 in Philadelphia

(Next to #E205851):

CARVING THE FAMILY’S HERITAGE IN WOOD

“Asqayalh,” meaning “standing out front,” is the 

Nuxalk word for these carved cedar columns, which 

represent the family’s lineage. Poles carved with 

the family crests stood in front of large communal 

houses occupied by an extended family. Here, the 

eagle represents the family’s ancestors when they first 

came to Earth. The bear, owl, beaver, and mountain 

goat represent the crests of the mother, father, and 

grandparents. The human at the bottom depicts the 

living, high-ranking chief, upholding his lineage.

(Image of the full column indicating its various sections 

with their Nuxalk names and identifying the section on 

display in the Hall)

Crest Column (totem pole). "Nuxalk (Bella Coola), 

Q’umk’uts, British Columbia Iver Fougner, a 

Norwegian-born schoolteacher and Indian agent in 

the Bella Coola Valley, donated this column to the 

Smithsonian in 1900.”

As the visitors tour the Ocean Hall and will soon 

pass by two carved columns on the way to a new 

museum cafeteria they have an opportunity to read 

these labels and to learn about the living traditions of 

Indigenous nations that created them. To us, it was 

also an important learning experience, namely, that 

we have to periodically revisit the way we introduce 

objects of other cultures in our exhibits and museum 

catalogs. 

We hope our Indigenous partners, colleagues, and 

museum visitors appreciate the amount of attention 

and goodwill we put into this process. I am grateful to 

Felicia Pickering, Eric Hollinger, Gwyneira Isaac, 

Clyde Tallio, Torben Rick, Michael Lawrence, Jill 

Johnson, Angela Roberts, Kim Moeller, and other 

colleagues and consultants, who helped give a new 

meaning to what was originally viewed as a technical 

move of two objects across the museum.

OUTREACH

VIKINGS, BASQUES, AND WHALERS: 

ACTIVITIES AT MYSTIC SEAPORT MUSEUM

By William Fitzhugh

Over the past several 

years, the Mystic 

Seaport Museum 

has launched several 

excellent exhibitions 

featuring northern 

topics, in keeping 

with Mystic’s 

historical role as 

an Arctic whaling 

center holding 

important collections 

and archives of 

the North. Their 

exhibition Captain 

George Comer and 

the Inuit of Hudson 

Bay, opening first at 

Mystic, came to the 

Canadian Embassy 

gallery in Washington 

DC in May 2018 

(ASC Newslettter 25).

Also in 2018, Mystic opened Science, Myth, and 

Mystery: the Vinland Map Saga which for the first 

time put Yale’s storied Vinland Map on display 

outside the confines of Yale’s Beinecke Library. 

Mystic’s excellent exhibition explored how Yale’s 

promotion of the map’s authenticity through a major 

Yale Press publication, generated a controversy that 

has subsided only recently with Yale’s acceptance 

of the findings of six decades of research on its 14th

century parchment, literary analysis, and its 20th

century ink.

This year, Mystic also opened The Vikings Begin: 

Treasures from the Uppsala Museum, Sweden. This 

exhibition of spectacular Swedish artifacts explored 

the origins of Swedish Viking art, culture, and society, 

emphasizing the role of women in Norse society and 

how religion and spirituality, trade, ship-building, 

and warfare created the foundations for the Viking 

Age. The exhibition program included a series of 

Viking-related lectures, one of which, on Vikings in 

the New World, was given by me. The presence at the 

museum’s wharf of the visiting replica Viking ship 

Draken Harald Hårfagre provided tourists with a live 

experience of Viking era technology and sea-faring.

Banner for the Mystic Museum’s 

Swedish Viking exhibition. 

Photo by William Fitzhugh
68 ASC Newsletter

I drove up from Washington DC and met Martin and 

Pamela at Ted and Sandra Timreck’s home in the 

old Manhattan Project Building in Lower Manhattan. 

Ted and Sandra’s place has been a rendezvous spot 

for many ASC film-related projects over the years.

The Met’s announcement ran: “Across the millennia 

and around the globe, elusive one-horned creatures 

have been celebrated, chronicled, analyzed and 

depicted. Join us for talks that plumb the history of 

science to enlighten us about the Unicorn, the Narwhal, 

and our evolving understanding of our changing 

environment. Speakers include William Fitzhugh, 

Director and Curator of the Arctic Studies Center of the 

Smithsonian; Martin Nweeia, Harvard/Smithsonian 

scientist and one of the world’s foremost experts on 

narwhal tusks; Barbara Drake Boehm, Paul and Jill 

Ruddock, Senior Curator for The Met Cloisters; and 

Pamela Peeters, Vrije Universiteit Brussels Fellow, 

and noted environmental economist. The event opens 

the fifth edition of Sustainability Week NYC”.

A large crowd gathered for the lectures in one of 

the Cloister’s chapels with the projection screen 

beneath a suspended medieval crucifix and the 

lecture podium in the normal place of the pulpit. It 

was without question the most august place I have 

ever spoken in. Pamela—Belgian by birth and a 

promoter of all things Belgian, including its famous 

chocolates, samples of which she passed out to the 

audience—had arranged for the Belgian ambassador 

to the US and members of his staff to attend. 

Narwhals shared the event with the inauguration 

of Pamela’s fifth annual Earth Sustainability Week 

program. The two topics merged seamlessly.

Barbara Boehm (who gave us a special tour of the 

Met’s magificent Unicorn tapestries before the program) 

spoke about the history and the evolution of the unicorn 

Mystic’s current exhibition, Death in the Ice: the 

Mysteries of the Franklin Exhibition, originally 

created by the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, 

documents the discoveries of John Franklin’s ships 

Erebus and Terror, recently found in the western 

Canadian Arctic. Located with the aid of Inuit 

knowledge, these finds and their future archaeological 

exploration will provide the missing chapter to the saga 

of this ill-starred venture in British Arctic exploration. 

Mystic’s resources include an important archive 

of whaling era records, including those of George 

Comer and others whalers, dating to the 19th and 

early 20th centuries. The combination of these littleresearched written and photographic records and 

an active curatorial interest and exhibition facilities 

places the Seaport Museum in an excellent position 

to promote scholarship and enhance public awareness 

of the North, historically and in modern times, 

when climate change is transforming the Arctic, its 

peoples, culture, and environment. Perhaps Mystic 

might be interested in exploring another little-known 

chapter of northern history: the 16–17th century 

Basques and their whaling and Inuit connections.

NARWHALS AND UNICORNS MEET 

AT THE MET CLOISTERS

By William Fitzhugh

Pamela Peeters and Martin Nweeia arranged with 

Dr. Barbara Boehm, curator at The Met Cloisters, 

part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to bring a 

narwhal event to the Met’s lovely medieval “abbey” 

at the northern tip of Manhattan. The program, “In 

Pursuit of the Narwhal and the Unicorn,” was a series 

of lectures that took place on Saturday afternoon, 

10 November, 2018 when the Cloisters was full of 

people enjoying, besides many other wonders, the 

MET’s famous Unicorn Tapestries. Nancy Shorey and 

Replica Viking ship Draken at Mystic Seaport. 

Photo by William Fitzhugh

Martin Nweeia, Pamela Peeters, Nancy Shorey, and Bill 

Fitzhugh dine at “The Rockefellers”
 ASC Newsletter 69

idea in Europe. Martin Nweeia talked about his lab and 

field studies and the surprising developments leading to 

recognition, assisted by Inuit, that the narwhal tusk is 

much more than a tusk—in fact, it is a sensory organ that 

has evolved to sustain the animal’s life in icy Arctic seas. 

I gave the audience a virtual tour of the Smithsonian’s 

narwhal exhibition at the National Museum of 

Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. Pamela 

provided an impassioned talk about sustainability and 

the need for new thinking about humans and their 

relationship to nature and the world around us.

We used the occasion to promote Sustainability Week 

NYC and distribution of our book, Narwhal: Revealing 

an Arctic Legend, edited by Fitzhugh and Nweeia, with 

contributions by Dr. Boehm and Pamela Peeters. We 

had just learned that it won the 2018 William Mills

Prize for Arctic non-fiction Polar Books. Following 

the program we enjoyed a fine dinner at the Cloisters’ 

restaurant housed in the summer “cottage” built by 

John D. Rockefeller, the Met philanthropist and 

visionary who brought Cloisters to New York. The day 

was a marvelous one thanks to careful planning by 

Pamela, Barbara Boehm, and the Met’s creative staff.

BOREAL FOREST EXHIBIT UPDATE

By Stephen Loring

There is new life in the Arctic Studies Center’s long 

held desire to help facilitate an exhibition on the 

Boreal Forest. Trying to raise public awareness and 

appreciation of the ecological and cultural significance 

of the Boreal Forest has long been perceived as an 

obvious initiative to address the core mandate of the 

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History: 

to promote understanding of the natural world and our 

place in it. The genesis of the exhibition dates back 

twelve years or so to the inspiration of Rob Mullen, a 

wildlife painter and director of the Wilderness River 

Expedition Art Foundation (WREAF), who recognized 

the precedent-setting transformative significance of 

the 1987 Robert Bateman retrospective Portraits of 

Nature at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum. 

This was the first time a major natural history museum 

had hosted a fine arts exhibition. Rob’s vision of the 

powerful messaging capacity of art to engage viewers in 

the majesty and mystery of the northern wilderness was 

shared by William Fitzhugh and Stephen Loring. The 

take-down of the Natural History Museum’s last exhibits 

of indigenous cultures in North American and the 

closing of the bird hall had created conspicuous absences 

which the evolving vision of a boreal forest exhibition 

addressed. Increasing awareness of the significance 

of the boreal forest—“the forest nobody knows”—for 

global climate modelling, recognition of its critical 

importance to wildlife (migrating song-birds, waterfowl, 

and iconic northern animals including caribou, moose 

and wolves), as a homeland for indigenous Algonkian 

and Dene peoples, and as the loci of global political 

and economic interests made for a compelling cause. 

Sadly, institutional support for the boreal forest 

initiative waxed and waned over the years despite 

the generous support of T.D. Bank and the Canadian 

Boreal Initiative in planning grants and programing.

Despite set-backs, seeds planted and long dormant may 

yet bear fruit (or pine cones as the case may be). In 

2017, Loring and Fitzhugh were approached by Carol 

Bossert, Project Director at S.I.T.E.S. (Smithsonian 

Institution Traveling Exhibition Services), asking about 

our interest in reviving the Boreal Forest exhibition 

project as a traveling exhibition. Needless to say, we 

(and Rob) were thrilled, and a planning meeting was 

held last February that included several of our old core 

team. These included Jeff Wells (Senior Scientist with 

Abbe Museum canoe and snowshoes. 

Photo by Stephen Loring

"Boreal Dawn", 

a painting by Rob Mullen
70 ASC Newsletter

the Boreal Song Bird Initiative) and Steven Young

(Director of the Center for Northern Studies), and 

Pete Marra (Director of the Migratory Bird Center 

at the National Zoological Park) to bring the SITES 

team up to date. The team discussed intellectual 

content, potential venues, and the practical concerns 

of funding, development, and programing. During 

the fall Carol reached out to the Canadian Museum 

of Nature as to their interest in partnering with us 

in developing and traveling the exhibition. Their 

Director of Content, Stacy Wakeford, was enthusiastic 

about the collaboration, so we are delighted to have 

a Canadian partner going forward. While not the 

grand extravaganza we once envisioned—walls 

festooned with paintings by Bateman, the WREAF 

artists and photographers, the Canadian Group of 

Seven (Norval Morrisseau and others), snowshoes 

and birch-bark canoes (those iconic artifacts of 

the forest!)—we are still excited and pleased to be 

developing an exhibition with a supporting catalog 

and educational materials that can be hosted in many 

venues (including small regional museums, community 

centers and college campuses) to further awareness 

and understanding of this critical global ecosystem. 

Map of the three main avian flyways from summering locations in the boreal forest to 

wintering locations sometimes as far south as Patagonia. Courtesy of Boreal Song-Bird 

Initiative (https://www.borealbirds.org) 
 ASC Newsletter 71

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES,

 FELLOWS AND INTERNS

TIME OF MY LIFE

By Cooper Abney 

Since I arrived at the 

Smithsonian, my goal has 

been to gain necessary 

training and knowledge 

for a career in museum 

science. However, the 

experience went beyond 

my expectations regarding 

what I would see and 

learn. In addition to seeing 

parts of the museum, I 

gained further insight into 

what a career in this field 

would entail. 

My principal work was 

in the Arctic Studies Center in the Anthropology 

Department, under Dr. William Fitzhugh. My duties 

there consisted of setting up a classification system 

and entering data for experimental lithic tools and field 

photos from Dr. Fitzhugh’s expeditions to Mongolia. 

Towards the end of my internship, I also made database 

entries for archaeological sites from field reports as 

well. Once a week, I’d also work in the Paleobiology 

Department and work on a database and classification 

system for brachiopod fossils. While my career goals 

were primarily centered on paleontology, working in 

both departments, as well as networking with many 

different people across the Smithsonian has given me a 

unique perspective in how my experience can be applied 

to multiple fields. My experience this summer has been 

invaluable in giving me hands-on experience in museum 

operations and collections management. The internship 

has been a great foundation for grad school and beyond. 

LAUNCHING A CAREER

By Mitsuyoshi Yabe

In spite of my strong background in creative arts 

during my academics for a decade, my Master’s 

thesis on the digital restoration of an old Canadian 

fortress began my pursuit of a career in Anthropology. 

When I decided to focus on anthropology, I applied 

for an internship at the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies 

Center. An opportunity opened up when Dr. William 

Fitzhugh supported my thesis proposal and he and 

Laura Fleming encouraged me. I worked as an 

illustrator under Bill’s supervision in January and 

again in July of 2014 for nearly two months. With 

Bill providing information to correct my sketches, I 

designed three digital drawings reconstructing three 

stages in the occupation of a Basque and Inuit site on 

the Quebec Lower North Shore, sketching in graphite 

and coloring in Photoshop. One of the drawings shows 

Basque whalers sitting near the fire in the late 16th and 

early 17th century. I depicted the historical events at 

this site between the late 16th to early 18th centuries.

After leaving the internship, I researched the 

rebuilding of Fort Frontenac using 3D modeling and 

interactive computer graphic design to create public 

interest in historical visualization. Three journals 

published my papers based on the thesis. Also, 

when I joined the Ontario Archaeological Society 

for a poster presentation in Midland in 2015, I was 

awarded Student Poster Award and a Free One-Year 

Membership. I was invited to make a formal oral 

presentation by the Council for Northeast Historical 

Archaeology at the 50th Anniversary in Ottawa in 2016. 

In the meantime, I worked as a digital designer 

intern in the Exhibition Department of the American 

Museum of Natural History in New York from 2015 to 

2016. While there, I worked on the British Colombia 

anthropological project and gained a knowledge 

of Native Canadians’ totem poles, houses, kayaks, 

artifacts, and tools by managing digital files. 

My experiences have now led me to move to Canada 

where I am pursuing a master’s degree in Anthropology 

at Carleton University. Dr. Fitzhugh and the Arctic 

Studies Center spurred me on to a career as a digital 

designer and illustrator in the field of anthropology. 

My internship helped me launch my future career, 

so I am hugely grateful to Bill and Laura for taking 

such great care of me. The internship was one of 

the most memorable experiences in my life.

Recreation of 16th century Basque whalers at Petit Mecatina 

site on the Quebec Lower North Shore, by Mitsuyoshi Yabe
72 ASC Newsletter

ARCHAEOLOGY-FORENSICS AND 

PACIFIC NORTHWEST COAST ART

By Cara Reeves

Working at the 

Smithsonian National 

Museum of Natural 

History, first as an 

intern and then as an 

independent contractor 

with the Arctic Studies 

Center, I spent almost 

a full year researching 

fascinating subjects for 

the Anthropology and 

Education & Outreach 

Departments. I developed 

collections-based 

educational resources, 

participated in outreach, 

and worked in the Arctic 

Studies Center assisting 

with an archaeological 

field report and a book 

publication by William 

Fitzhugh. From the staff to the vast resources, the 

Smithsonian Institution strengthened my skills and 

knowledge, and I found it a welcoming and rewarding 

experience both personally and professionally. It 

was hard to leave, but I had a passion for collections 

management that had to be explored elsewhere.

After a long search for collections positions, suddenly 

they were available all over the country. I applied to 

several positions, but I kept returning to a position in 

Gillette, Wyoming as the Collections Assistant at the 

Campbell County Rockpile Museum. I took a chance 

and applied for the position, keeping my fingers crossed 

that I would be chosen from the long list of applicants. 

It was on my way home from the Smithsonian at the 

end of a 2-hour train ride that I received the news—I 

got the job! 

Within two weeks I had the trip planned and I was on 

my way to Wyoming, the Wild West! At least that was 

what I was imagining. I had no idea what to expect of 

the people, the town, or Wyoming. I was pleased to find 

that Gillette is a very welcoming town. Over the last year 

and a half I have had the opportunity to interact with 

donors and volunteers who have spent their entire lives 

in Gillette. Through cataloguing collections, installing 

exhibits, and interacting with donors, I have learned a 

great deal about this community. Every day working 

at the Rockpile Museum is a new experience, and I am 

excited to continue exploring Wyoming, its people, and 

their place in history.

THOUGHTS ON A YEAR WITH THE ASC 

By Mary S. Maisel

Growing up the idea of 

working in the National 

Museum of Natural 

History was a dream. 

What was behind the 

doors hidden within 

exhibits that I never saw 

open? What exactly was 

up the stairs marked 

“Staff Only”? Being an 

intern and a contractor 

with the Arctic Studies 

Center was a wonderful 

door into the world 

of the Smithsonian.

Working through 

the production of 

the 2017 Gateway’s 

Field Report, the 

2017 ASC Newsletter, 

and having a small 

part in the continued 

efforts for the “Boat Book” I saw first hand the inner 

workings of a Smithsonian office. Venturing into 

Northeastern Canada on the Pitsiulak I was able to 

put my classroom knowledge of archaeology into 

practical use. Everyday was a surprise working in the 

ASC. The number of interesting and influential people 

who pass through that office door is astounding.

In December of 2018, I had to say goodbye for now 

to the Smithsonian and the ASC. In January of 2019, 

I began a working as a full-time archaeologist within 

the Tampa, Florida office of an Australian archaeology 

firm, Cardno. So far my time has been focused on 

excavations of Historic Fort Brooke. The work is 

very rewarding and I use skills gained during the 

time I spent in the ASC everyday. The Pitsiulak and 

the ASC have allowed me to meet people and see 

parts of the world that I otherwise would never have 

had access to and for that I am forever grateful.

THOUGHTS ON THE ARCHAEOLOGY 

OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 

By Igor Chechushkov 

In summer 2018, I sat on the pier of the small fishing 

town of Cartwright, on the shore of the cold Labrador 

Sea, and while watching men unloading a crab boat 

I got to thinking. After almost a quarter of a century 

as an amateur and then a professional archaeologist, 
 ASC Newsletter 73

I have started increasingly to ask myself about the 

usefulness of my profession for others. There, on the 

pier, I could not find an immediate satisfactory answer. 

The notorious “knowing 

of the past” and “history 

armed with a shovel”

(common wisdom among 

Marxist archaeologists 

from the former Soviet 

Union) clearly do not 

meet the criteria of 

scientific knowledge, 

because in this case the 

archaeologist is limited 

to a more or less detailed 

antiquarianism and does 

not reach the theoretical 

level, that is, does not 

produce a generalization 

with predictive power.

Early that year, Dr. William Fitzhugh offered me the 

opportunity to join his fieldwork in eastern Canada 

and––thanks to financial help from the Center for 

Comparative Archaeology of the University of 

Pittsburgh (comparch.pitt.edu)––I was able to join 

my third archaeological field trip outside Russia. My 

part of the project began in Rigolet, where I enjoyed 

surveying the shores of the Lake Melville and ended 

with the excavation and reporting on a 17th century 

Inuit house at Hart Chalet near Blanc Sablon. 

After the several days at sea, wandering and waiting 

for the weather, our boat, Pitsulak, arrived at 

Cartwright in Sandwich Bay to buy fuel and water. 

Bill, Perry, and other crew members left for shopping, 

but I decided to stay and to observe port life. I looked 

at men of medium height and middle age, unloading 

a schooner, people who live on the outskirts of the 

world, where the majority of foodstuffs and resources 

are bought in exchange for crabs and northern salmon 

that go into the restaurants of Boston and New York 

City. When, for one reason or another, the high 

demand for seafood ends, Cartwright fishermen will 

have no choice but to move to the agricultural areas 

of the country or adapt to survive independently, 

as European colonizers or their Eskimo and Indian 

neighbors did. As an archaeologist, I know well 

that this has often happened in human history, and 

I have no doubt it will happen in the future.

However, what leads to the collapse of small 

communities such as those I have seen in 

Labrador’s Cartwright, Bolivia’s Oruro, or Russia’s 

Varshavka?—all places I visited at least once as an 

archaeologist. How do they learn to survive while 

experiencing major environmental or societal shifts: 

the formation and collapse of empires, catastrophic 

natural disasters, or gradual but steady climate 

change? Obviously, such questions are asked by 

anthropological archaeologists all over the world, 

but rarely do these questions lead to answers 

needed by the people who live here and now and 

those who will live on our planet in the future. 

Meanwhile, archaeology provides an arsenal of tools 

to formate scientific theories with predictive power, 

based on extremely long trends. One example of that 

is Fitzhugh’s brilliant 1972 monograph Environmental 

Archeology and Cultural Systems in Hamilton Inlet, 

Labrador: A Survey of the Central Labrador Coast 

from 3,000 B.C. to the Present that describes a complex 

set of environmental and cultural changes in Labrador 

from 3,000 BCE to the present. Learning about past 

ways of sustainable living and facing the threats of 

climate change could and should contribute toward 

formulating a rational program of survival for small, 

dependent communities like those I can see around the 

world, while broadening my archaeological horizons 

and learning from the colleagues. 

Back in my undergraduate years, the outstanding 

Russian historian, Arkady Tsfasman, said to me 

that an archaeologist was a man who walks ahead 

backward. Sitting on that pier at Cartwright, I 

decided that for me it is the time to turn around 

and apply our understandings of the past to the 

future. As an archaeologist, I hope to contribute 

knowledge that will help the sustainability of 

human communities, meaning a communal ability 

to survive, reproduce and provide reasonably 

healthy, harmless, happy lives to its members.

Wandering through the northern seas, observing 

deserted islands, visiting still inhabited and already 

abandoned villages––thanks to Dr. Fitzhugh––I 

decided that archeology, looking exclusively to 

the past, is archeology without a future. My own 

generation of archaeologists should seriously think 

about how to turn our science to “the science” in 

the full sense of the word, so that we would be 

more engaged in a business useful to humanity.

INTERNING AT ARCTIC STUDIES

By Seth Clark

I will never forget the first day I met Dr. William 

Fitzhugh. It was an incredibly humid day in 

Washington D.C. when I wiped the sweat off of my 

brow and gathered up the courage to knock on Bill’s 

front door. I was fresh out of a taxi from the airport, 

and I would be staying with Bill while I interned with 

him for the summer. I was rather nervous, but as I grew 
74 ASC Newsletter

to know Bill as a supervisor and as a host I saw there 

was no need. I was new to world of archaeology, but 

Bill took great care as a supervisor to ensure I was 

comfortable with my new work. He was always open to 

answering any question I may have had about the type 

of projectile point I held in my hand, or where to find 

information about specific archaeological sites in his 

numerous field reports. 

Bill’s dedication to the study of archaeology is 

incredible and goes beyond his hours spent at the 

museum. What I learned most from working with Bill 

is that the importance of interacting with the public. 

Bill’s passion for discovery is equaled by his desire to 

spread his knowledge with anybody interested. In my 

eyes the greatest contribution to the world any curator 

can make is to share their time and research with 

the public, and to this cause Bill remained diligent. 

Whether it be children, visiting friends, other staff 

members, or a lost intern that pops their head through 

the door, Bill was always happy to engage with any 

stranger. The ultimate mission of any museum is to 

educate, and for this purpose Bill is an inspiration to 

us all.

A SURPRISING ROUTINE: LIFE ABOARD 

PITSIULAK

By Jacob Marchman

For each of the summers of 2015, 2017, and 

2018, I made the crazy decision to help Bill with 

his fieldwork in Labrador. While every rational 

person was pulling on their swim trunks and to 

go lounge on a sunny beach, I was pulling on my 

rubber boots to go get eaten by black flies.

I am being glib, of course. Going to Labrador with 

Bill is a much better deal than going on a tropical 

vacation. For one, the seafood is cheaper than it 

is at a beachside resort. No matter how much you 

pay for your Barbados vacation, no one is going to 

pull alongside you in their motorboat and hand you 

fresh-caught Arctic char. Likewise, no matter how 

swanky your resort is, you’re will never be able to 

pick enough mussels to fill a 4-gallon pot and then 

sit around eating them like a piscivorous slug.

I have noticed that my trips with Bill follow a template. 

They begin with the drive from his home in Vermont 

to Newfoundland, where the Pitsiulak is stored. I 

always enjoy watching from the car window as the 

deciduous woodland transitions to boreal forest and 

then to the windswept tundra hills of Newfoundland. In 

Newfoundland, we catch up with Perry Colbourne’s 

family and prepare the boat for the summer. From 

here, we take the Pitsiulak north to Quirpon, stay 

with Boyce Roberts while waiting for the wind to 

change, cross the Strait of Belle Isle and head north to 

Rigolet, survey, meet with the Inuit elders, excavate, 

head south to Quebec to escape the August gales, are 

fed mountains of dessert by Florence Hart, shoot the 

breeze with Garland, excavate Inuit sites, get eaten 

by black flies, head to home port in Lushes Bight, 

and make the bittersweet trip back to the States.

You live on a boat when you travel with Bill, and there 

will always be maritime adventures, wacky hijinks, 

and physical comedy. Once, Patrick Jolicoeur fell, 

clothes and all, into Rigolet Harbor and then shuffled 

back into the cabin, abashed and dripping wet. In 

Perry’s parlance, this is called “pulling a Patrick.” 

Sometimes, these events were more nerve-wracking 

than an unexpected dip. There was the case of the 

exploding muffler when, for a little while, no one knew 

where exactly in our wooden boat the billows of black 

smoke were coming from. 

This year, our maritime mishap took place in the 

Backway, a long narrow inlet south of Rigolet in 

Hamilton Inlet. We were anchored in the lee of a stubby 

headland, after an unproductive day of surveying. When 

the wind changed to the west-northwest, with a falling 

tide, we swung on the anchor onto a rocky shoal. We 

spent an agonizing ten minutes hauling on the anchor 

chain and gunning the engine, as the tide dropped, 

heeling us farther and farther onto our beam ends. By 

luck and Perry’s deft handling, we were able to work 

ourselves off the rocks and once more escape unscathed. 

As I said, these trips with Bill follow a pattern, but the 

details always change. Every time you climb aboard 

the Pits, you know you are bound for an adventure, 

but you don’t know what it will be. Every time you put 

your trowel in the ground, you don’t know if you’ll find 

a copper coin or a grub. It’s this tension between the 

repetitious and the unexpected that makes each year a 

gem. 
 ASC Newsletter 75

AN ORANGUTAN RESEARCHER 

IN LABRADOR

By Katherine Meier

I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many far-flung, 

exotic, and beautiful corners of the world. I’ve 

followed orangutans through the rainforests of Borneo, 

I’ve sailed up the Atlantic coast on the last wooden 

whaling ship left on earth, and I’ve watched the 

sun rise from atop the tallest peak of Madagascar’s 

central mountains. Yet I consider the summer spent 

in Labrador and Quebec with Bill Fitzhugh and the 

Arctic Studies Center team easily among my most 

wonderful and awe-inspiring adventures to date. 

It began with a drive up the Northeast Coast, stuffed 

into Bill’s intrepid Subaru, from New Hampshire into 

Canada. The drive consisted of good conversation with 

Bill—a wealth of information concerning the history 

and ecology of the Arctic that could have filled years of 

car rides—long periods watching the coastal scenery go 

by with hopes of a moose sighting, and exploratory pit 

stops at unassuming diners, indulging in the occasional 

coconut cream pie dinner. Museums and landmarks 

marked our passage: Historic Fort Louisburg provided 

many of us our first cannon-fire experience while the 

Triton Sperm Whale Pavillion taught us the true worth 

(and source) of ambergris. In Newfoundland, we met 

our skipper Perry, and, after a few days of preparations 

and amazing dinners from the lovely Louise, we traded 

our wheels for the well-oiled motor of the Pitsiulak

and raced off along the coast towards Labrador!

The next two months were filled with camaraderie, 

exploration, and generally fantastic times as we 

traveled from Newfoundland to Rigolet, Labrador, 

and back down to Lower North Shore Quebec. We 

would anchor in small inlets where the rocky, coastal 

islands and snow-capped mainland mountains were 

the only breaks in the endless North Atlantic sky. 

We would survey those remote islands, hiking across 

boreal tundra, trudging caribou-like through the 

dense, lichen-covered scrub, and stopping briefly 

when some early-blooming wild berries graced our 

path. Bill was always single-minded in his activities, 

teaching us how to recognize the subtle signs of a 

peat-covered tent ring or judge the environmental 

suitability of a suspected campsite. surveying gave way 

to excavation as we moved to Quebec and the Hart 

Chalet site. Excavating ancient seal bones and iron 

nails became odiously mundane in comparison with 

the whalebone artifacts, toggling harpoon heads, and 

translucent Ramah chert stone tools we began to find. 

It would take pages to enumerate all the unique skills 

and experiences that I picked up over my summer. 

Having had little prior training in archaeological 

methods, I learned so much about how to survey for 

and excavate historic cultural sites. In doing so, I also 

osmosed the rich history of the people and places, not 

only through hearing Bill recount these histories but 

also through the numerous opportunities we had to 

speak with and learn from local people along the way. 

In true anthropological spirit, Bill’s easy conversation 

with everyone we met—long-time friend or complete 

stranger—always drew out exciting and illuminating 

stories about our cultural surroundings. Over the 

summer I also acquired some non-anthropological 

skills. I learned how to harvest mussels with my 

toes; how to tie a Double Boleyn knot (thank you, 

Perry); how to jig for codfish and cast for mackerel; 

how to maneuver huge rolls of sod; how to identify 

whales by the characteristics of their spout; how to 

avoid being carried away by blackflies; and the true 

meaning of a “Tickle”—the list could go on infinitely!

I could not have spent my summer in a more 

beautiful place with more wonderful people. Even 

as I prepare to head out to Africa to begin my Ph.D. 

fieldwork on chimpanzee ecology, I am acutely 

aware that all future adventures will be hardpressed to live up to the wonders of Newfoundland, 

Labrador, and Quebec, and the fantastic times 

we had as a team aboard the Pitsiulak. 

FROM PUFFINS TO SOAPSTONE POTS: A 

SUMMER UP NORTH WITH BILL FITZHUGH

By Halcyon Brown

I first met Bill outside the newly opened Narwhal 

exhibit at the Smithsonian when I was in D.C. 

researching information on Viking runestones. From 

the moment Bill began walking my mentor, Loraine 

Jensen, and me through the exhibit, his wealth of 

knowledge, experiences, and expertise in the field 

of arctic studies more than piqued my curiosity. I 

knew that I had to find some way to further explore 

arctic studies with Bill. A few months later, I found 
76 ASC Newsletter

myself aboard the Pitsiulak, with no experience in 

archaeology and no idea what to expect. Little did 

I know, last summer would be a dream come true, 

well maybe minus the 

hordes of black flies.

The day would start 

when Bill ventured 

down into the bow that 

housed the kitchen, 

beds, and dining table. 

I would wake up to 

the sound of the stove 

gas igniting and the 

rolling boil of the coffee 

pot. From there, we’d 

make our way out of 

our bunks, excited to 

learn about our plan 

for the day. Whether 

we were off surveying 

or digging, Bill never 

ceased to amaze me with 

his knowledge of the area and the history of the people 

who have lived on the coast of Labrador and Quebec. 

He saw stories in the landscape, pointing out tent rings 

or historic beach terraces. When we were digging at the 

Hart Chalet site, Bill painted a picture in my head of how 

the site looked back when it was in use: the whale bone 

floor, the soapstone pots, harpoons, Basque tiles, a bone 

refuse pile that was evidence of meals eaten long ago. 

We weren’t the only ones that loved to hear Bill 

talk about the past. When we had the chance to visit 

museums and historic sites, we always had a bit of a 

crowd following us, made up of other visitors who 

were captivated by Bill’s knowledge, forming an 

informal tour with Bill as our expert tour guide. I 

learned so much from his explanations of artifacts and 

landmarks and also from his relationships with local 

people from the towns we visited. The years that Bill 

has been conducting research up north are evident 

in his friendships with fishermen, local families, 

archaeologists, and elders. It was an invaluable 

experience to join Bill and the Rigolet elders for a day 

of site seeing on Lake Melville. Hearing about their 

history in the Rigolet and Nunatsiavut region and how 

the landscape and climate are changing provided a 

present-day reference for the artifacts, tent rings, and 

sod houses that we were uncovering with our trowels. 

I will not forget the time our wonderful group spent 

sitting on the deck of the Pitsiulak, watching puffins, 

icebergs, and whales go by, nor will I forget the fresh fish 

dinners we ate, elbow to elbow around the cozy dining 

table, hearing stories of past voyages on the Pitsiulak. 

MY ASC INTERNSHIP

By Gina Reitenauer

When I applied to spend 

the final semester of my 

undergraduate career 

in Washington, D.C., I 

had an image in mind: 

me, on the way to my 

internship placement, 

walking by my new 

friend Henry (the 

elephant in the lobby 

of the Smithsonian 

National Museum of 

Natural History). But 

at the time, scoring an 

internship in the worldrenown institution 

seemed like only a 

dream. So, when I 

heard back from Bill 

Fitzhugh and Nancy 

Shorey regarding my inquiry about interning in the 

Arctic Studies Center (ASC), you can imagine I was 

excited! Not only would this internship allow me to 

bring out my passion for history, but it would provide 

the privilege of working in a building dedicated to 

the rich places, peoples, and cultures of the world.

And I can certainly say it did! It was always pleasant 

to be among people who have so much passion for 

the world around them, and in my case the peoples, 

residents, and cultures of the North. Having gone 

on quite a few kayaking adventures with my Dad 

growing up, I was immediately intrigued by the first 

task assigned to me: aiding my supervisor in the final 

stages of the production of his manuscript detailing the 

history and uses of bark canoes and skin boats among 

the various cultures and countries of Northern Eurasia. 

I spent many weeks working on various stages of the 

manuscript’s production during my time at the Arctic 

Studies Center, however I also had the opportunity 

to create a short agency page about the ASC for the 

Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee’s 

website, as well as work on the layout and design of 

the ASC’s latest field report. My duties in the Arctic 

Studies Center may have been completed mostly 

at my desk in front of bookshelves and a poster 

on Baleen Whales, but through reading about, and 

working with materials related to, the various cultures 

and countries of the Northern world, this internship 

definitely broadened my horizons beyond the walls of 

the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
 ASC Newsletter 77

BOOK REVIEWS

BETWEEN SEA AND GLACIER: GREENLAND 

IN CHANGING WORLD, by Wilfred E. Richard

IPI Press and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies 

Center and is distributed by Oxbow Press, 2018

Reviewed by William Fitzhugh

Will Richard has spent his life exploring northern 

lands, and in his travels he discovered Uummannaq, 

a town in Greenland and a people that he and his 

wife, Lindsay, adopted and visited many times. 

What began in a chance meeting with transplanted 

Greenland elders at the LL Bean store in Freeport, 

Maine, initiated a chain of linkages and yearly visits 

that led to Will and his wife being adopted by the 

community of Uummannaq, north of Disko Bay. 

Richard brings his perspective as anthropologist, 

geographer, and photographer to bear on cultural 

and economic shifts that are bringing a new way 

of life to Greenland with particular attention to the 

growing effect of climate change on landscapes, 

animals, and people. Among the stories told are the 

meteorological expedition led by Alfred Wegener

(founder of plate tectonic theory), the discovery of 

Inugssuk Norse-related Inuit culture discovered by 

Danish archaeologist, Therkel Mathiassen, and his 

young American student, Frederica de Laguna, artist 

Rockwell Kent who 

painted in Uummannaq 

Fjord and elsewhere 

in Greenland, and 

the linguistic and 

cultural research of 

Knud Rasmussen. 

Read about 

Børnehjemmet, the 

children’s home 

in Uummannaq 

where traditional 

values are taught to 

children confused by 

modernization, about 

Richard’s promoting 

an extension of the 

International Appalachian 

Trail into Greenland, 

and about generations 

of scientific and 

cultural exchanges 

connecting Greenland and New England 

leading to recent Uummannaq children’s 

recital at the Smithsonian Institution. 

Between Sea and Glacier is illustrated by Richard’s 

photographs illustrating the geography, climate, 

culture, arts, and people of Greenland. In addition to 

being an eloquent statement on a resilient northern 

people who can teach the wider world much about 

“treading softly on the earth”, Richard’s book initiates 

a celebration being launched by the Smithsonian and 

others to commemorate the centennial of The Fifth 

Thule Expedition: Greenland to Siberia (1921–24)

led by Greenland’s culture hero, Knud Rasmussen.

I DREAMED THE ANIMALS. 

KANIUEKUTAT: THE LIFE OF AN 

INNU HUNTER, by Georg Henriksen

Berghahn Books, New York, NY, 2008

Reviewed by William Fitzhugh

This book was published almost ten years ago, but I 

never got around to reading it until recently. I knew 

Georg Henriksen when he was doing fieldwork with 

the Innu in Labrador in the late 1960s and early 70s. 

His ethnography helped me immensely in interpreting 

the nascent archaeological record we were creating 

for Labrador and northern Quebec—that, and my 

several visits with Maggie and Jim Saunders at their 

home at the old Hudson Bay Post in Old Davis Inlet 

(Uipat Utshimsaait) before they moved to New Davis 

Inlet (Utshimassit), and more recently to Natuashish 

some miles inland. 

Henriksen’s 

description of Innu 

social organization 

and hunting strategies, 

of the makushan 

ritual, periods of 

starvation, and Innu 

travel capabilities 

helped me visualize 

how pre-Innu peoples 

known only from their 

campfires and stone 

tools had lived in the 

past, and how these 

ethnographic models 

did not conform to 

what we discovered 

in Late Maritime 

Archaic cultures in 

coastal Labrador.

Georg died shortly 

after he finished his book and never lived to receive 

the praise for it accorded by other anthropologists 

working in Labrador and northern Quebec. His 
78 ASC Newsletter

acknowledgments cite the scholarly and practical 

assistance provided, among others, by his wife 

Berit and by Peter Armitage, with whom he 

worked for years on Innu land claims issues.

Following years of offering more or less traditional 

anthropological ethnography, I Dreamed the Animals 

is an annotated oral history created around the stories 

Georg recorded with Kaniuekutat, an Innu whom 

Georg had hunted with who became concerned that 

the Innu way of life and beliefs needed to be recorded 

before they were lost. The sequence of stories begins 

with traditional culture around hunting and subsistence 

in the bush, and proceeds through stories and myths 

about belief, cosmology, ritual, and death, and as 

the book proceeds, increasingly engages modern 

issues dealing with government, land claims, racism, 

schooling, youth rebellion, language and culture 

loss, and prospects for the future. Kaniuekutat was a 

gifted story-teller, and Henriksen does a masterful job 

at preparing the ground for the book’s 22 chapters, 

reflecting on each chapter’s significance, and preparing 

a fine introduction and conclusion. In the process we 

meet wonderful culture-bearers and learn intricacies 

of Innu life, beliefs, of their insatiable sociality, sense 

of community, openness to strangers, generosity in 

the face of starvation, and many other characteristics 

that seem threatened in today’s world. How this shall 

pan out for Innu in the future remains to be seen; but 

Henriksen and Kaniuekutat have given us a beautiful 

portrait of a people with great humanity who have not 

been served well by 20th century western society.

CEREMONY IN STONE: THE BILUUT 

PETROGLYPH COMPLEX. PREHISTORIC 

ROCK ART IN THE MONGOLIAN 

ALTAI, by Richard D. Kortum

NEPKO Publishing, Ulaanbaatar, 2018

Reviewed by William Fitzhugh

Richard D. Kortum

has produced a gorgeous 

introduction to the rock art 

of the Mongolian Altai. This 

book serves many functions: 

as a primer for those 

unfamiliar with petroglyphs 

as both art and history; as an 

introduction to the stunning 

beauty and diversity of Biluut 

rock art; and as a warning 

about the transient nature 

of even the most enduring 

products of human expression.

Kortum discovered the Biluut petroglyphs in 2004 

and for the following fourteen years returned to 

systematically document more than 12,000 individual 

rock art images, most of them found on or around 

three hills on the northwestern shore of Khoton Nuur, 

a lake at the edge of the Altai mountains south of 

the Mongolian city of Ulgii. The location is visually 

spectacular, with a chain of glaciated Altai peaks 

rising along the south side of the lake a few kilometers 

north of Xinjiang on the Mongolia-China border. The 

region is now part of the Altai Tavan Bogd National 

Park, which provides a degree of protection while still 

serving as a homeland for Mongolian Kazakh herders 

who have lived here for centuries, even millennia.

With grants and support from his university, East 

Tennessee State, where he was a philosopher of 

meaning teaching in an English Department, Kortum 

returned year after year to crawl across the Biluut 

hills spying out rock art figures carved into the soft 

metagreywacke polished by eons of glacial ice 

moving through the Khoton trough. A single tap with 

a hammerstone or stylus produced a white mark that 

stood out against the grey geological easel, luring 

hunters and pastoralists into recording their visions, 

beliefs, and attitudes to the world around them from 

Paleolithic times to the present. Just how long ago this 

history began is still open to question; some images 

may the 15–20,000 years old, but most begin in the 

Mesolithic or Neolithic period and become profuse 

rock canvases in the Bronze, Iron, and Medieval Ages. 

From 2010–2012 I joined Kortum to explore the 

connections between rock art and archaeology in 

the Biluut region. In collaboration with the National 

Museum of Mongolia, this NEH-sponsored project 

produced the first comprehensive culture history of 

the Khoton region. Thousands of rock art images 

were recorded, and archaeological surveys and 

excavations demonstrated 8000 years of human 

occupation, with earlier sites still to be found. Kortum’s 

rock art publication is the first major outcome out 

this project and his years 

of prior research. 

Kortum’s text provides an 

introduction to the region, its 

geology, and environmental 

and cultural history. Brief 

statements discuss, in plain 

English and translated into 

Mongolian by Baigalma 

Baljinnyam, their age, who 

made them, how they were 

made, their meaning, styles, 

and other basic information. 

There follow 150 pages 
 ASC Newsletter 79

of images that illustrate the beauty, complexity, and 

mystery of Biluut’s prehistoric artists. One longs for 

Richard’s discussion of each image. But the purpose 

of this book is not to catalog the art; rather it is to 

demonstrate that the Biluut complex is one of the 

premier rock art locations in Central Asia that should 

be recognized as a worthy member of the Mongolian 

Altai UNESCO World Heritage rock art complex 

so well documented by Esther Jacobsen-Tepfer.

A GRAND ADVENTURE: THE LIVES 

OF HELGE AND ANNE STINE INGSTAD 

AND THEIR DISCOVERY OF A 

VIKING SETTLEMENT IN NORTH 

AMERICA, by Benedicte Ingstad. 

McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.

Reviewed by William Fitzhugh

Benedicte Ingstad, daughter of Anne Stine and Helge 

Ingstad, has written a comprehensive and insightful 

biography of her parents’ lives and discoveries. 

Helge and Anne Stine both wrote books about their 

discovery and excavation of the L’Anse aux Meadows 

Norse (LAM) site from personal and professional 

perspectives (see list below), but this work is a marvel 

because it comes from inside the family and recounts 

stories and provides information only Benedicte 

could provide. In addition to describing their lives 

and discoveries, Benedicte, a retired University of 

Oslo medical anthropologist, interweaves their careers 

with insight into their personal lives and relationship, 

probes their psychological foundations, and explores 

their reactions to triumphs and disappointments. 

The book is indeed an adventure. Helge’s life 

careens forward through multi-year expeditions to 

Arctic Canada, East Greenland, 

the American Southwest, northern 

Mexico, Brooks Range Alaska, 

culminating with his discovery of 

the Norse site. A lawyer by training 

but a story-teller and gifted writer 

and lecturer at heart, his Greenland 

settlement venture almost secured 

East Greenland for Norway while 

his courageous medical and 

organizational work during and 

after the Nazi occupation of Norway 

reads like the hero in a movie script. 

Driven by freedom, courage, physical 

stamina, and an intense craving 

for human justice, Helge’s story 

reveals a man driven by the need 

to serve and educate humanity. A 

major life theme was his exploration of geographical 

and anthropological frontiers of culture change while 

living for long periods with indigenous groups.

Anne Stine entered Helge’s life after he had become 

a famous explorer and writer. After discovering 

his ‘expeditionary gene’ could not be tamed, she 

developed a professional career in archaeology 

that led her into museum work and later, textile 

conservation on the famous Viking Oseberg finds. 

Their “grand northern adventure” began after Helge’s 

discovery of LAM in 1960 when they teamed 

up—he as organizer and expedition leader and she 

as lead archaeologist—to conduct the excavations 

that proved the identity of the first Norse site in 

North America. The trials she and Helge endured 

to gain recognition for their discovery, and for 

themselves, is told in detail. Benedicte participated 

in the excavations and ferreted out hidden archival 

and personal correspondence that reveal the roots 

of conflicts and tragic misunderstandings that began 

after the discovery, including instances of defamation, 

sabotage, and deceit complicated by professional and 

national rivalries. All is meticulously documented 

in foot-noted text. Benedicte has set the record 

straight and forever secured the true Ingstad legacy.

Grand Adventure is also a love story about Anna Stine 

and Helge that become a trilogy owing to Benedicte’s 

love and admiration for her parents. Her clear-eyed 

portraits of her parents’s psychologies and their 

relationship is written with candor and sensitivity 

and shows how their personalities intersected their 

private, public, and professional lives. No less honest 

is her description of her own relationship with 

her parents, which oscillates between detached—

almost clinical—observation and tender empathy.

This is a book that inspires. It is a 

remarkable story, beautifully told, 

that serves as a family biography of 

beautiful people whose dedication, 

courage, and persistence against 

formidable odds solved one of 

the most important historical and 

archaeological questions of our time. 

Other Ingstad English language 

works:

Ingstad, Anne Stine

1970 The Norse Settlement at l’Anse 

aux Meadows, Newfoundland. 

A Preliminary Report from the 

Excavations from 1961 to 1968. 

Acta Archaeologica 41: 109–154. 

Copenhagen.
80 ASC Newsletter

1977 The Discovery of a Norse Settlement in America. 

Excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland 

1961–1968. Vol. 1. Trans. E. S. Seeberg. Oslo: Norwegian 

University Press.

2000 The New Land with the Green Meadows. Trans. J.K. 

Stenehjem. Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and 

Labrador.

Ingstad, Helge

1964 Vinland Ruins Prove Vikings Found the New World. 

National Geographic Magazine. Nov.

1969 Westward to Vinland. The Discovery of Pre-Columbian 

House-Sites in North America. Trans. by E.J/ Friis. London: 

Jonathan Cape.

1985 The Norse Discovery of North America. Vol. 2. Trans. E. 

S. Seeberg. Oslo: Norwegian University Press.

NARWHAL RECEIVES WILLIAM 

MILLS BOOK PRIZE

Media Release, July 11, 2018 

Rovaniemi—The Polar Libraries Colloquy is pleased 

to announce the winner of the 2018 William Mills 

Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books is Narwhal: 

Revealing an Arctic Legend edited by William W. 

Fitzhugh and Martin T. Nweeia (International 

Polar Institute). This comprehensive, multidisciplinary book is the companion to a special 

exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum 

of Natural History that unites what is known and 

erroneous about the medium-sized toothed whales 

uniquely identifiable by their spiral tusks. The prize 

winner was announced at an awards ceremony on 

June 14, 2018, in Rovaniemi, Finland, at the Polar 

Library Colloquy's biennial conference. The Polar 

Libraries Colloquy is an international organization 

of librarians and others interested in the collection, 

preservation and dissemination of polar information. 

The William Mills Book Prize is awarded every 

two years and honours the best Arctic or Antarctic 

non-fiction books published throughout the world. 

The prize was first presented in 2006. It is named 

in honour of William Mills, a polar librarian and 

author, and a core member of the Polar Libraries 

Colloquy during its formative years. Twenty-six 

nominations qualified for consideration this year, the 

most ever since the inception of the prize. A full list 

of all titles nominated for the 2018 William Mills 

Prize, including those titles that were shortlisted, is 

available on the Polar Libraries Colloquy website 

https://polarlibraries.org/william-mills-prize-2018

TRANSITIONS

DANA LEVY (1937–2017) AND 

PERPETUA PRESS

By Letitia O’Connor

[Ed.: Dana Levy and Letitia 

O’Connor founded Perpetua 

Press, which they operated 

until Dana’s death in 2017. 

For two decades, the ASC 

worked with Dana and 

Tish on exhibition catalogs 

and other publications. 

They became friends and 

colleagues and produced 

award-winning publications. 

Their success was due to a 

close husband-and-wife team 

that brought finely-edited 

content and beautiful design 

and typography into sharp 

focus, and a production 

process that made authors 

part of the team, not just the suppliers of content. The 

following part of a tribute to both Dana and Perpetua 

Press written by Tish called A Love Affair, with Books, 

adapted from http://www.perpetuapress.com]

Perpetua Press, the studio founded by Dana Levy

and Tish O’Connor produced fine illustrated books 

for museums, university presses, and trade publishers 

throughout the United States from 1984 to 2016. With 

the death of Dana Levy, the legacy Perpetua Press added 

to the time-honored craft of bookmaking ended. Born 

May 15, 1937, in Los Angeles, Dana completed his 

bachelor’s degree at Art Center College of Design in Los 

Angeles in 1962. His first design coup was the American 

Book Award in 1980, for Anatomy Illustrated, published 

by Simon & Schuster—which were the names he chose 

for his pets, an African gray parrot and Siamese cat.

Perpetua Press produced books for various branches 

of the Smithsonian, and especially enjoyed meeting 

challenges posed by Bill Fitzhugh, Director of its Arctic 

Studies Center. We worked with museums across the 

U.S., from the Harvard Art Museums to the Honolulu 

Academy of Arts, and enjoyed a fruitful collaboration 

with the University of Washington Press and its longtime publisher, Don Ellegood, helping establish it as a 

major distributor of museum publications. Among the 

projects we most enjoyed was developing a series of 

large-format nature photography books for publisher 

Hugh Levin, exploring the Grand Canyon, National 

Parks, Alaska, Hawai‘i, Yellowstone and the Grand 

Tetons, among other “spectacular” locations.
 ASC Newsletter 81

shared his knowledge with kindness and enthusiasm. 

Few archaeologists study their hometowns, as Clark 

did, and his personal connections to Kodiak brought 

his research to life for Alutiiq people hungry for 

tribal history. To honor his contributions, a brick 

with Don’s name has been added to the Ancestors’ 

Memorial. Qusuciqamken—We will miss you, Don. 

BOB BRYAN (1931–2018): TRACKING BERT 

AND I INTO SUBARCTIC QUEBEC

By Will Richard

It took some years and 

many projects until I met 

Bob Bryan as minister 

and bush pilot. Eventually 

it came about through a 

series of happenstances 

beginning on Swan’s 

Island in the Gulf of 

Maine in the mid-1970s. 

My family and my friend 

Karl Keim’s family 

used to travel annually 

to Swan’s Island, where 

we camped in a seaside 

pasture owned by a local 

subsistence farmer and 

retired sea captain named 

Clyde Torrey. Clyde regaled us with stories, many 

of which had already been picked up and published 

already by visiting litereati. One of these people was 

Perry D. Westbrook, who wrote Biography of an 

Island (1958). Clyde had embellished his copy of the 

book with notes about stories he had been collecting. 

When Marshall Dodge made his way to Swan’s 

Island, he soon discovered the trove of Downeast 

humor that became part of the folklore base for his 

and Bryan’s joint smash-hit record series, Bert and I.

Starting in the late 1990s and for better than a decade, 

I was a member of a Smithsonian archaeological 

team, traveling aboard their research boat, Pitsiulak, 

in northern Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

and southern Labrador. In Harrington Harbor on 

Quebec’s Lower North Shore, I began to hear stories 

about Marshall Dodge’s partner, Bob Bryan, who had 

taken up summer residence in this small island town 

of Newfoundland fishermen. By then, Bob was the 

Right Rev. Robert Bryan, part-time Archdeacon of the 

local Anglican Church. And he was not “just of the 

cloth”; he was a flying minister whose ministrations 

spanned the entire rock-bound coast from Kegashga to 

Cartwright, Labrador in a small yellow Cesna seaplane. 

Our work at Perpetua Press was a continuing education 

that allowed us to share in the passions and research of 

many talented scholars and curators, artists and writers. 

The legacy of that collaboration endures in the books we 

produced. If they inspire others to seek to understand the 

complexity and brilliance of this world, that will be the 

most fitting tribute to Dana’s life and work.

REMEMBERING DONALD W. CLARK (1932–

2018)

[Ed.: Donald Clark was 

a long-time friend of 

the Smithsonian and a 

pioneer of the archaeology 

of Kodiak Island, where 

he grew up, eventually 

joining the staff of the 

Archaeological Survey of 

Canada in Ottawa and 

becoming a close associate 

of Freddie de Laguna, 

Bill Workman, and Don 

Dumond. His publications 

on Ocean Bay and other 

cultures of Kodiak Island 

and the prehistory of the 

Yukon and Northwestern 

Canada are classics. 

The following memorial 

appeared in the Alutiiq Museum Newsletter 2018, 22(4)]

Kodiak archaeologist Dr. Donald Woodforde Clark 

passed away on March 31, 2018 in his home in 

Canada. Clark, who grew up in Kodiak, was locally 

known as the “father of Kodiak archaeology”. He 

was the first researcher to describe the sequence of 

local cultures, tracking the development of Alutiiq 

societies over 7,000 years. His detailed studies of 

everything from slate working, to fur seal hunting, 

petroglyphs, and the ground squirrels of Chirikof 

Island remain a foundation for research. He was 

a generous supporter of the Alutiiq Museum, 

sharing his time, knowledge, and research notes. 

Clark always considered Kodiak his hometown. He 

moved to the community at age nine, accompanying 

his parents when they relocated to Alaska during the 

second World War. His father owned a gas station 

and auto repair shop in downtown Kodiak. Here, 

Clark learned to repair cars, but his real interest was 

the outdoors. Exploring the coast, Clark discovered 

Kodiak’s remarkable archaeology. He went on to earn 

his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and lead 

numerous research projects. Many Kodiak people 

remember Clark. He returned to the island often and 
82 ASC Newsletter

Combining church ministry with his love for “The 

Labrador” and piloting skills, he had become an “aerial 

Wilfred Grenfell”, creating the Quebec-Labrador 

Foundation as a way to promote education and social 

and civic development along this roadless coast. He 

related to me how, with the proceeds from the Bert and 

I recordings, he learned to fly and bought his first plane.

Later, Bob gave me the last autographed copy of Bert 

and I that Marshall Dodge had signed, to which Bob 

added his signature. On December 13, 2008, at L.L. 

Bean, the fiftieth anniversary of the first Bert and I 

album was celebrated by Bob, together with other 

humorists who had picked up on Downeast humor—

people like Tim Sample who often partnered with Bob 

to create The Best of Bert and I in 2008 and Bert and I 

Rebooted in 2013.

DENNIS STANFORD (1943–2019) 

by Kirk Johnson, assisted by Anthropology and ASC staff 

Dennis Stanford, Curator of North American 

Archaeology at the Smithsonian, passed away on 24 

April after a long bout with cancer. He was a beloved 

member of the National Museum of Natural History, 

always ready with a joke and smile. He founded and 

directed the Smithsonian’s Paleoindian Program and 

was a gifted and passionate archaeologist.

After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of 

New Mexico where Professor John Campbell

introduced him to Arctic archaeology, Dennis joined 

the Department of Anthropology in 1972, launching a 

47-year career at the museum. He became one of the 

best-known archaeologists in North America and had 

a gift for communicating research to both scholarly 

and public audiences. At a time when Paleoindian 

archaeology was still in its formative stage, Dennis 

helped advance the field through his studies of 

lithic materials, especially the distinctive stone 

tools known as Clovis points. His early fieldwork 

at the Jones-Miller Bison Kill site in Colorado was 

an exceptionally careful excavation and study of 

a bison butchery site dating to the Folsom period, 

roughly 10,000 years ago, and helped set the stage 

for the rest of his career. The last few decades of his 

research focused on the origins of the first inhabitants 

of North America, along with human adaptations to 

the changing environment as the last Ice Age was 

ending. He conducted fieldwork in Siberia, northern 

China, the western Arctic, the Rocky Mountains 

and, most recently, in the Chesapeake Bay region, 

seeking the origins of Clovis and earlier peoples. His 

experimental research on using stone tools to butcher 

the accidentally deceased Boston zoo elephant named 

Ginsberg was covered by National Geographic. Using 

experimental methods, detailed field recording, and 

intuition, he led a paradigm shift that established 

“Pre-Clovis” as an archaeological reality. 

Dennis’ Ph.D. work around Utqiagvik (Pt. Barrow), 

Alaska, introduced Paleoindian excavation techniques 

into the previously more casual methods of Arctic 

archaeology. Building on Henry Collins’ work in 

Bering Strait, he brought new vigor to the contested 

topic of Thule origins and its relationship to the 

preceding Birnirk culture from his excavations at the 

stratified Walakpa site. While working there, he also 

discovered Aqmaq, an ancient Palaeoarctic complex. 

Living with Inupiat hunters who were still pursuing 

whales in open skin boats provided inspiration for his 

later idea that European Late Paleolithic Solutrean 

people reached North America in skin boats by 

following the southern edge of the North Atlantic 

pack ice more than 16,000 years ago, a theory he 

and co-author Bruce Bradley presented in Across 

Atlantic Ice. Like Pre-Clovis, the Solutrean hypothesis 

challenged his colleagues, forcing them to consider 

unconventional ideas. His most recent work produced 

evidence of Pre-Clovis sites in Chesapeake Bay.

Dennis was generous in his service to the museum 

and academic community, serving as chair of 

the anthropology department from 1993 to 2000, 

leading the archaeology division multiple times, 

hosting 32 fellows, and serving on many dissertation 

committees. His substantial research and service 

accomplishments are surpassed by his extraordinary 

contributions to the archaeology collections. Dennis 

was the excavator/donor of 20 acquisitions totaling 

475,000 objects and was the curator of record when 

an additional 32 acquisitions joined the collections, 

representing an additional 673,000 items. He will 

remain one of the foremost contributors to the North 

American archaeological collections for decades, if 

not centuries, to come, and his Paleoindian collections 

have established the Smithsonian as the premier 

Paleoindian research collection in the world.
2018 ASC STAFF PUBLICATIONS

Crowell, Aron L.

2018 Inuit-Dene Cultural Ecology in Cook Inlet, 

Alaska since 1000 B.C. In Imagining Anchorage: The 

Making of America’s Northernmost Metropolis, ed. 

James Barnett and Ian Hartman, University of Alaska 

Press, pp. 2–19.

2018 Sugpiaq (Alutiiq) History and Archaeology 

on the Kenai Peninsula's Outer Coast. In 150 Years: 

Proceedings of the 2017 Kenai Peninsula History 

Conference, edited by S. F. Loshbaugh, pp. 223–230. 

Skookum Creek Publishing, Seattle.

Fitzhugh, William W. 

2018 The Rigolet Project IV: Mason Island, Snooks 

Cove, and Lake Melville. Provincial Archaeology 

Office 2017 Archaeology Review 16: 93–100. St. 

John’s, Newfoundland.

2018 The Gateways Project 2017: Hart Chalet, 

Grand Plain, Grand Isle, and Belles Amours. 

Provincial Archaeology Office 2017 Archaeology 

Review 16: 100–110. St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Hitchcock, Robert, Aron L. Crowell. Alison S. Brooks, 

John E. Yellen, James I. Ebert, and Alan J. Osborn

2018 The Ethnoarchaeology of Ambush Hunting: A 

Case Study of ≠Gi Pan, Western Ngamiland, Botswana. 

African Archaeological Review online https://doi.

org/10.1007/s10437-018-9319-x

Krupnik, Igor, Rubis, Jennifer and Douglas 

Nakashima

2018 Epilogue: Indigenous Knowledge for Climate 

Change Assessment and Adaptation. In D. Nakashima, 

I. Krupnik, and J. Rubis, Indigenous Knowledge 

for Climate Change Assessment and Adaptation. 

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press and 

UNESCO Publishing, pp. 280–290. 

Krupnik, Igor 

2018 'Arctic Crashes:' Revisiting the Human-Animal 

Disequilibrium Model in a Time of Rapid Change. 

Human Ecology: 1–16. doi:10.1007/s10745-018-9990-1

2018 Waldemar Bogoras and the Chukchee. A 

Maestro and a Classical Ethnography (reprint). In 

Jochelson, Bogoras and Shternberg—A Scientific 

Exploration of Northeastern Siberia, Erich Kasten, ed. 

2018. Furstenberg/Havel: Kulturstiftung Sibirien, pp. 

131–168.

Loring, Stephen Chelsee Arbour, Napes Ashini and 

Anthony Jenkinson

2018 Pour ramener l’été: À la recherché d’une 

concordance entre l’histoire innue et l’archéologie. 

Recherches amérindiennes au Québec XLVIII, No. 3:41–54.

Nakashima, Douglas, Krupnik, Igor and Rubis, 

Jennifer

2018 Indigenous Knowledge for Climate Change 

Assessment and Adaptation. Cambridge, UK: 

Cambridge University Press and UNESCO Publishing. 

298 pages. 

Taylor, William, J. Bayarsaikhan, T. Tuvshinjargal, 

S. Bender, M. Tromp, J. Clark, K. Bryce Lowry, 

J-K. Houle, D. Staszewski, J. Whitworth, W. 

Fitzhugh, and N. Boivin

2018 Origins of Equine Dentistry. Proceedings of 

the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 

of America, 115(29): E6707-E6715. doi:10.1073/

pnas.1721189115.

This newsletter was edited by William Fitzhugh, 

Igor Krupnik, Stephen Loring, Aron Crowell, Dawn 

Biddison and Nancy Shorey. 

Designed and produced by Chelsi Slotten, 

Nancy Shorey and Igor Chechushkov
Penalty for Private Use $300

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