This collaborative research project, PI Peter Schweitzer and PI Tim Heleniak, is the US portion of a larger international collaboration that was conceived under the European Science Foundation, EUROCORES Programme, BOREAS. The full ESF project is a collaboration of researchers from five countries, including the US, Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Finland. These particular projects, which represent a portion of the US NSF contribution to the BOREAS effort, focus on the local and regional context and impacts of state sponsored and implemented resettlement programs, of indigenous and non-indigenous communities, in the Arctic in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Using the tools of economic geography and population geography, the aim of Heleniak's project will be to document and analyze changes in the spatial distribution of economic activity and settlements patterns across the circumpolar North. The project aims to be comparative, spatial, and temporal. A major component of this will be to examine the events of the past decade and a half in the Russian North against the situation in other northern regions. The breakup of the Soviet Union, transition of the Russian economy, and liberalization of society has had profound consequences for the Russian North as well as on relations among northern regions. A question is whether the Russian North is beginning to resemble other northern regions elsewhere or whether the past patterns of development and settlement will remain.
A major component upon which the analysis will be based will be a geodatabase of economic activity and population distribution across the North. Other geodatabases or GIS (geographic information systems) have been compiled on the Arctic or the North that emphasize changes in physical characteristics of northern regions, many emphasizing the impact of climatic change on these regions. The proposed geodatabase would emphasize the economic and human aspects of the circumpolar North and changes in these attributes.
The comparative analysis that the project is taking of the diverse circumpolar migration and resettlements movements will have relevance and intellectual merit for the community of academic researchers interested in circumpolar issues. The combination of the broad comparative approach proposed in this project, along with comparative approaches being undertaken in the other projects at other geographic scales will contribute significantly to our theoretical understanding.
The models of economic and population change developed in this project will have broader impact and relevance for other academics and policy makers dealing with circumpolar issues. The geodatabase of economic and demographic characteristics across the circumpolar North will be of value to both groups as climate change and other factors impact on the North in the decades ahead. In order to enhance these broader impacts, outreach efforts will be undertaken to ensure wide distribution of the data collected and analysis undertaken in the project.
Schweitzer will conduct research among the Residents of Shishmaref, Kivalina, Newtok, and many other coastal communities of Alaska facing erosion and, thus, the loss of their residential areas due to severe storm events and other consequences of a changing climate. The former residents and their descendants of Naukan and Chaplino in Chukotka and of King Island in Alaska preserve strong memories of being relocated almost 50 years ago. The indigenous residents many communities on the Chukchi Peninsula have experienced waves of expansion and contraction of their villages, be it due to the sedentarization of reindeer herders, the mass influx of Russians and other incomers, or their rapid out-migration since 1990. During the summer of 2005, the threat of the closure of an Air Force Base in the vicinity of Fairbanks spurred community protests and scenarios of economic and social decay. At the same time, a good portion of the non-indigenous population of Fairbanks is characterized by having arrived during or after the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the mid-1970s, an event which serves as a dividing line between "old settlers" from "new settlers".
All of the cases mentioned above refer to past and future population movements triggered by outside forces, be they direct state intervention, market forces, or changes in the natural environment. All of them are also characterized by memories of past events and conditions, as well as by speculations about the future, in short by narrative ways of adapting to changing conditions. Notwithstanding these similarities, these and other examples are defined by a number of important differences. Most obviously, Alaska and Chukotka seem to represent two diametrically opposed experiences regarding the role of the state in population movements. While Chukotka has been the frequent recipient of Soviet and post-Soviet forms of social engineering, Alaska seems to have been relatively free from such interventions. A closer look, however, reveals that also in Alaska many small-scale communities have been closed or relocated, for a variety of different reasons. At the same time, large influxes of non-indigenous people occurred during economic boom periods, many of which were either initiated or regulated by the state.
One of the most compelling reasons for conducting this research is that there is hardly any documentation of the diverse relocation phenomena which have characterized Alaska and rural Chukotka throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. The first goal of documenting what has happened and continues to happen is both of scholarly importance, as well as highly relevant to affected communities. The second goal of focusing on four or more case studies will, apart from providing more in-depth documentation, result in a better understanding of the factors which contribute to positive and negative effects of relocation events. This addresses important issues regarding the creation and re-creation of community identity and the importance of "place" in these processes. Another compelling reason for this project is its new, comparative approach. Yet another reason for this study is its emphasis on the people themselves. This project reaches beyond a general history of events and delves into their impacts and perceptions thereof.
(MOVE) addresses the role of the state in community relocations of the 20th and 21st centuries in the Arctic and Subarctic. This includes the movement of small indigenous communities, as well as the creation and closure of larger settlements for the purpose of resource extraction. Both were driven by the geopolitical and economic rationales of colonial powers and affected indigenous communities, as well as non-indigenous settler communities. One of the main goals of the project has been the documentation of the pervasiveness of northern community relocations in the recent past. Apart from filling an academic knowledge gap, this project has had important community outreach functions. In addition, the project has been aimed at understanding the nexus of state policies and community wellbeing. This is particularly timely, given the potential for community relocations in Alaska and elsewhere in the North as a result of climate change. One of the most important ingredients of the success of MOVE has been the relationship between researchers, local communities, and agencies. The team has been working alongside and with community members and planners at the local, state and federal levels in order to better understand the processes of relocation. MOVE has also been supported by both domestic and international research partners, including the University of Maryland, the University of Alberta in Canada, the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland in Finland, and the University of Greenland, working closely with the principal investigators from each of these institutions. Building good relations with local communities and individuals has been absolutely essential and the MOVE researchers have been lucky enough to foster close links with people from the Barents Sea to Bering Strait. Local organizations ranging from Sea Mammal Hunter associations (for example in coastal settlements of Chukotka) to relocation coalitions (e.g., in Shishmaref, Alaska) to regional governments and centers of higher learning (e.g., in western Siberia) have been critical partners in making the research relevant beyond academia, assuring its broader impacts. Regarding the intellectual merit, we consider it most important that the project contributed to an increased awareness and knowledge of the community relocations that had happened throughout the circumpolar North as a result of the colonial state increasing its reach. Since the inception of the project, the likelihood for future community relocations due to environmental degradation has increased, making MOVE both historically and future-orientated, as well as academically and community relevant. Overcoming the simplistic dichotomy of ‘forced’ versus ‘voluntary’ relocations has been a major conceptual and theoretical concern of MOVE. As an alternative, the project proposed to view relocations along a continuum ranging from softer ‘pull’ factors to the predominance of ‘push’. In comparing indigenous and non-indigenous ways of dealing with relocations, strategies of ‘place-making’ have emerged as a unifying factor. Since the mid-1970s, the number of community relocations has drastically declined, which is also a result of community empowerment and the devolution of power. It remains to be seen what the defining characteristics of future relocations – be they climate-induced or not – will be.
