Arctic Economics

Art and Subsistence at Cape Dorset

Eric Crampton's elegant post on the origins of Inuit print-making at Cape Dorset in Canada: 50 years of Cape Dorset prints . 

His theme is the impetus cross-cultural contact can give to creativity.  There are useful links to a newspaper story on Cape Dorset (on Baffin Island) and on the way its subsistence and artistic economies coexist and complement each other, and to a debate between Tyler Cowen of George Mason and Benjamin Barber of the University of Maryland about what globalization does to culture.

All this, and pretty pictures too.

King Island and the Great Sickness: the Terrible Summer of 1900

In the summer of 1900 King Island was hit hard by disease.  R. Newton Hawley, surgeon on the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, visited the island in July and again in August and published a short account in 1901 (The World's Work, search for "Arctic Cliff Dwellers").

The Bear off Cape Romantzoff in early June, 1900.  About a month before she reached King Island.  Source: U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office.  

King Island and the American fur traders

Americans began trading in the Pacific in the 1780s. Trade was interrupted by Jefferson’s embargo and the War of 1812, but subsequently small American ships crisscrossed the ocean with cargoes of furs from the Pacific Northwest, sandalwood from Hawaii, copper from Chile, ginseng from the U.S. Appalachian Mountains, and silk and tea from China (Old China Trade).

Far to the north, beyond the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea, Eskimos, Chukchis, and Russians traded across the Bering Strait. Furs from America moved west, in exchange for glass beads and iron. Coastal and island Eskimos were active intermediaries.

Briefly, in 1819 and 1820, Americans from the Pacific tested the waters in the Bering Straits: two American brigs, the General San Martin and the Pedlar, explored regional trading opportunities. King Island flits into sight in journals and reports of these visits.

King Island, 1880

In April 2008 I posted on a visit to King Island by the U.S. Revenue Cutter Corwin in 1881 (A Visit to King Island, July 12, 1881). 

The Corwin, under Captain Calvin Hooper, also visited in 1880.  Hooper's report was published in 1881: Report of the Cruise of the U.S. Revenue-Steamer Corwin in the Arctic Ocean .

Hooper supplied his own illustrations - here's his picture of King Island from about four miles to the south:

 

Hooper's description:

Sled dogs to snowmobiles

In the early 1990s, Alaska's Board of Fisheries had to address a controversy over the feeding of subsistence fish to dogs used for commercial purposes.  To provide some background, David Anderson prepared a paper on the use of dog teams in the Yukon River drainage, and their fish consumption, for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Division of Subsistence.    Anderson described the evolving role of dog sledding in the regional economy: The Use of Dog Teams and the Use of Subsistence-caught Fish for Feeding Sled Dogs in the Yukon River Drainage, Alaska.

Coastal Eskimos had been using sled dogs for a long time prior to contact with the West:

"In Western Alaska, 52% of all adults use smokeless tobacco."

That's 52% as opposed to 2% nationally.  "...research of medical charts shows 82 percent of pregnant women in the region use tobacco -- 61 percent chew iqmik [a type of smokeless tobacco, see below - Ben] or a commercial tobacco and 21 percent smoke. Nationally, the smokeless tobacco use rate for pregnant women is under 1 percent."

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Southwest Alaska (Source: Wikipedia)

In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region - the area referred to as "Western Alaska" in the title -  an area with a predominately Yupik Eskimo population - they mix tobacco leaves with "the ash of a fungus (Phellinus igniarius) that grows on birch trees."  The product, called "iqmik" is an unusually potent smokeless tobacco product.  "Researchers believe the ash raises the pH level in the mouth, which increases the dose and enhances delivery of nicotine to the brain. In effect, the user is freebasing nicotine."

Life in Eek

Rural Alaska has one foot in the modern cash economy, and the other in an older subsistence economy.  In the subsistence economy, rural residents hunt, fish, and gather foods and materials.  The economies overlap.  The subsistence economy needs cash for fuel, snowmobiles, ammunition, and other stuff, and some items coming out of the subsistence economy are sold.

Mark Constantine describes life in the remote, Yupik village of Eek in Alaska, for readers in Michigan: Remote Alaskan village hangs onto heritage.  He covers the subsistence economy well, but although the residents of Eek are obviously spending a fair amount of cash, there's not much information about where it comes from.

The 2000 census says the 280 or so residents of Eek had an aggregate income of about $2.5 million.  The article mentions one man who serves in the National Guard and another who works as a village public safety officer.  I can guess that some comes from government jobs in the school or village government, some comes from work in regional commercial fisheries, some from the Alaska Permanent Fund or Alaska Native corporation disbursements, and some from transfer payments.

Hat tip to Grassroots Science.

Cultural disconnects and polar bear management

In Canada, polar bear management is in the hands of the provinces and territories.  In the northern territory of Nunavut, management is shared by the territory and local user groups. 

Martha Dowsley of Lakehead University gives a nice introduction to Canadian polar bear management arrangements in Developing multi-level institutions from top-down ancestors.  In this title, "multi-level" refers to the involvement of different levels of government in polar bear management; "Developing... from top-down ancestors" refers to the evolution of multi-level management from an earlier single-level national or regional management regime.

Dowsley and George Wenzel of McGill, look at joint territorial-local management in Nunavut when the two levels are divided by cultural differences, in "The Time of the Most Polar Bears": A Co-management Conflict in Nunavut.  "Co-management" refers to the shared territorial-local management.  

Here's the (heavily annotated and somewhat reorganized) abstract:                     

Holman (Ulukhaktok) in April

Johanna Wandel, the "Geo-geek," went to Holman, Northwest Territories, in April 2005, and sent back these great pictures: White on White. 

Wandel gets around; here are other photo essays on Iqaluit and Arctic Bay on Baffin Island, ice roads near Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, and Greenland.

The Reindeer Blog

Reindeer herding - involving long migrations and pasturage - has been a way of life for many indigenous Arctic peoples, including the Sami in the Barents region, the Nenets in the Yamal Peninsula, and the people of Chukotka - among others. 

Climate change and economic development have put herders and herds at risk.  Since February 2007 the Reindeer Blog has been covering the topic.