Protecting the Arctic: Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Survival (Studies in Environmental Anthropology , Vol 3)

171 Pages·1998·1.87 MB·English

by  Mark Nuttall

Protecting the Arctic
Studies in Environmental Anthropology
Edited by Roy Ellen, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
This series is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monograph studies on particular issues
in particular places which, are sensitive to both socio-cultural and ecological factors (i.e.
sea level rise and rain forest depletion). Emphasis will be placed on the perception of the
environment, indigenous knowledge and the ethnography of environmental issues. While
basically anthropological, the series will consider works from authors working in
adjacent fields.
Volume 1 A Place Against Time
Land and Environment in Papua New Guinea
Paul Sillitoe
Volume 2 People, Land and Water
William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster
Volume 3 Protecting the Arctic
Mark Nuttall
Volumes in Preparation
Volume 4 Transforming the Indonesian Uplands
Tania Murray Li
This book is part of a series. The publisher will accept continuation orders which may
be cancelled at any time and which provide for automatic billing and shipping of each
title in the series upon publication. Please write for details.
Protecting the Arctic
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND CULTURAL SURVIVAL
Mark Nuttall
Copyright © 1998 The Gordon and Breach Publishing Group.
First published in 1998 by Gordon and Breach
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Nuttall, Mark Protecting the Artic: indigenous
peoples and cultural survival—(Studies in environmental anthropology; v. 3) 1. Arctic peoples 2.
Indigenous peoples—Arctic regions 3. Arctic peoples—Political activity 4. Natural resources—
Arctic regions 5. Arctic regions—Civilization I. Title 306′.089′ 944
ISBN 0-203-98928-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 9057023555 (Print Edition) PB
Table of Contents

Map—Physical Features of the Arctic vi

1 Indigenous Peoples and the Arctic Environment 1
2 Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development 18
3 Sustaining Environmental Co-operation 37
4 Ways of Knowing, Ways of Acting: The Claim for Indigenous Environmental 56

Knowledge
5 Hunting and the Right to Development: The Case of Aboriginal Subsistence 77

Whaling
6 Cultural Preservation through Cultural Presentation: Indigenous Peoples and 99

Arctic Tourism
7 Constructing Indigenous Environmentalism 119

Afterword: Cultural Survival and Cultural Diversity 141
Bibliography 143
Index 155
Physical Features of the Arctic

Chapter 1
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE
ARCTIC ENVIRONMENT
In recent years concern over global warming, atmospheric pollution, ozone depletion,
overfishing and uncontrolled resource extraction has focused international attention on
the Arctic as a critical zone for global environmental change. Thé global quest for natural
resources, the expansion of capitalist markets and the influence of transnational practices
on the periphery has resulted in an internationalisation of the circumpolar north. The
anthropogenic causes and consequences of environmental change and degradation
demonstrates how regional environmental change in the Arctic cannot be viewed in
isolation, but must be seen in relation to global change and global processes.
Development and the threat of irreversible environmental damage has precipitated intense
debate about the correct use of natural resources and proper ways forward for Arctic
environmental protection. Indigenous peoples’ organisations, environmentalists and,
more recently, national governments, have stressed the need to implement appropriate
resource management policies and environmental protection strategies. Yet science-based
resource management systems designed to safeguard wildlife and the Arctic environment
have, for the most part, ignored indigenous perspectives.
This book illustrates some of the ways indigenous peoples have mobilised themselves
to take political action on Arctic environmental and sustainable development issues.
While these issues are of urgent concern to indigenous peoples throughout the Arctic, this
book discusses them with particular emphasis on Alaska and Greenland. These are two
areas I have come to know through fieldwork and research and I draw on some of my
ethnographic experiences and first-hand knowledge in the chapters that follow. While the
geographical focus may be somewhat limited, the topics I discuss and the themes I
explore are nonetheless generic. It would be difficult to go into detail about the particular
situations of every indigenous group and to cover every region of the circumpolar north
in a thorough and comparative way. My aim is to both stimulate debate and to lay the
groundwork for future research and analysis. With specific reference to the Inuit this
book illustrates how, in setting out to protect the Arctic environment, develop strategies
for sustainable development and gain international recognition as resource
conservationists, indigenous peoples make claims that their own forms of resource
management not only have relevence in an Arctic regional context, but provide models
for the inclusion of indigenous values and environmental knowledge in the design,
negotiation and implementation of global environmental policy.
While they have environmental concerns, indigenous peoples nonetheless argue that
resource development in the Arctic is not wholly incompatible with its protection. With
few choices available on which to base the economic development of many circumpolar
communities, indigenous peoples are increasingly involved with the extraction of non-
renewable resources. To ensure a workable participatory approach to the sustainable
Protecting the Arctic 2
management of resources indigenous knowledge is being incorporated into the design of
environmental projects and the implementation of environmental policy. Indigenous
groups have begun to outline and put into practice their own environmental strategies and
policies to safeguard the future of resource harvesting, while indigenous peoples’
organisations see themselves in the vanguard of indigenous human and environmental
rights not only in the circumpolar north, but worldwide.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND CULTURAL SURVIVAL
The Arctic and sub-Arctic regions are homelands for diverse groups of indigenous
peoples, each having their own distinctive cultures and languages, histories and
economies ranging from reindeer herding, subsistence seal hunting and sheep farming to
more commercial pursuits such as industrial fishing, salmon canning, timber production,
oil-related business or financial enterprise. In Alaska they are known as Inupiat and
Yup’ik Eskimos, Alutiiq and Athabascans; in Greenland they are the Kalaallit and
Inughuit; in northern Fennoscandia the Saami; and in the Russian North the 26 so-called
‘Northern Minorities’ include the Chukchi, Evens, Evenks, Nenets, Nivkhi, Saami,
Sakhas and Khants. Often, in their own languages these names mean simply ‘the people’
and they are the original inhabitants of northern tundra, forest and coast. As they enter the
21st century the indigenous peoples of the circumpolar north will continue to rely on
natural resources for their economic and cultural survival, but they are increasingly tied
to global networks of production and exchange and subject to the consequences of
globalisation and modernity. Technology, industrial development, environmental
problems, social change, immigration and tourism all pose threats to traditional lands,
livelihoods and cultures. In response indigenous groups have fought for and, in some
cases, have achieved increasing political power and self-determination, as well as a
degree of control over resource development and management.
Article 1 of the International Labour Organisation’s ‘Convention concerning
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries’ (ILO No. 169) defines
indigenous peoples as
people who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from
the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to
which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the
establishment of present State boundaries and who, irrespective of their
legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and
political institutions.
Furthermore, the ILO Convention states that ‘self-identification as indigenous or tribal
shall be regarded as a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the
provisions of this Convention apply’. In other words, being indigenous is what people
can regard themselves as being (or not being). It is a socially constructed identity with
reference to putative similarity or difference (Jenkins 1996, 1997). The flexibility of this
definition of indigenous peoples allows for many different groups already identified in
ethnic terms to claim the right to be recognised as indigenous populations, be they