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domenica 7 luglio 2024

167. THE HUMAN AND GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCES IN THE ARCTIC, PRIORITIES AND PERSPECTIVES: AN INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE, PART III - and last -: The Arctic Peoples, between Europe, Asia, America; The Etno-Anthropological and Geographical Studies From: QUI BASE ARTICA DIRIGIBILE ITALIA, SVALBARD. DALLA TERRA DEGLI ORSI POLARI UNA RASSEGNA E UN INVENTARIO CULTURALE DEI POPOLI DEL GRANDE NORD

 

 In one of the showcases of the fascinating, if somewhat outdated, Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, from top to bottom and from left to right, all in ivory: chain in the shape of animals (Icy Cape, Alaska, Western Eskimos, collected by Captain Beechey, 1826); knife and fish (Captain Lyon, 1884); ornamental bow drill (walrus, engraved) for making fire (Alaska, Kotzebue Sound, Beechey, 1826); netting needle, Western Eskimos (Beechey, 1826); walrus tusk (Eskimos, Baffin Island, 1925) (© Franco Pelliccioni)

[Paper read on the 15 May 1997 at the International Workshop held at Ny Ålesund (Spitsbergen Island, Svalbard), during the Official Opening of the Italian Arctic Base of the CNR "Dirigibile Italia"]

The Arctic Peoples, between Europe, Asia, America

 The peoples living in the Arctic, apart from single differentiations and particular life-rhythms, show an amazing background homogeneity.

We can, therefore, refer to a well definitive cultural cluster, that of the Arctic Peoples; the Sami Hætta speaks about a "circumpolar culture".

The basis of these cultures has adopted, not only ergological and survival systems (based on hunting, fishing and, in Eurasia, reindeers breeding), but also control mechanisms, that try to protect and to keep the unity of the group, at a family level, as well as at a collective level. And with the contemporary presence of cultural features and elements that, to an external observer, could result "strange" or terrible.

The linguistic families of Boreal peoples, that live the immense expanses of tundra or taigà of the Great North, group themselves in three big entities: Paleo-Asiatic, Ural-Altic, Eskimo (Inuit)-Aleuts.

The rigid climatic conditions of the Circumpolar area for centuries have prevented to the white people and their mass culture to penetrate deep into the Arctic.

The only historical example that comes straight away into my mind concerns the two Viking settlements in Southern Greenland, that didn't outlive the swift climate deterioration.

Also, because they found themselves in a sudden and violent collision with the Inuit, that were pushing through their territory. At a whole the demographic consistence of Circumarctic autochthonous peoples is around almost eight hundred thousand individuals: 600,000 Northern Siberians and Northern Russians, besides 100,000 Inuit (Eskimos) and 55,000 Sami (Lapps).

The Etno-Anthropological and Geographical Studies

The Cinderella of Arctic studies is personified by the sciences that here I represent, the ethno-socio-anthropological and geographical-ones.

As in 1994 it was evident, during my field-work in this archipelago. My research has been the first in the history of the islands.

In spite of the fact the Svalbard have been, for long time, an unicum in the world, an authentic, outstanding social and cultural laboratory (not at all "utilized"), in which life-styles and cultures, ideologies, strongly antithetical economic systems have had the chance to pacifically coexist among themselves, for decades.

As a matter of fact, the studies belonging to the exact and natural sciences have always been more privileged, here and elsewhere.

I remind that the seed of an Arctic Science has been laid down by Martens, an Hamburg surgeon, who in 1671 made the first botanical collections in the island of Spitsbergen.

 William Scoresby Jr. (1789-1857), engraving from 1821


Instead, An Account of the Arctic Regions, of 1820, written by the whaler Scoresby, formed an authentic, imposing summa of the knowledges there were up to that moment.

For time reasons, that I know unbreakable, is not possible for me, now, going on in speaking on ethno-anthropological matters, as I wished.

That of today afternoon is necessarily only one very modest introduction to a review of the human and geographical sciences in the Arctic, job whose integral layout has a wider extension.

As it is possible to see in the summary has been handed to you together with my paper.

There I have had the possibility to deal with scientific priorities, of single Arctic regions, as well as through focusing numerous problematic areas that are part of my discipline (in its different specializations) and of the geographical sciences.

If it will be still allowed me, I would like only to conclude in hinting to an aspect I believe extremely useful and important for the same future of Italian Arctic research: that concerning scientific popularization, that in parallel should follow any scientific activities, and of this be of support, in order to establish a favourable attitude and an informed consent to our Arctic activities.

The Italian public opinion could, as it happened with other enterprises carried out in distant regions, the space, or recently for Himalaya and Antarctic, be sensitized, in acquiring better knowledge and interest for activities of an "apparent" exotic taste.

Such an informative-cognitive input could act in future on two levels:

a) as a moral support to the activity of our scientists in the Arctic;

b) as a precious fly-wheel and propeller, towards mass media and political administrators, for further and more profitable involvements in Arctic research activities.

In a complex world like the one we are living in, where nevertheless everything remains emotionally, still for so many, too many... absolutely flat and grey, solicitations of this kind could draw an unexpected, but welcome, wave of consent and interest, tickled by a taste for adventure and the "different".

The same famous Malaurie discloses how the support given to him by an attentive public opinion was also owed to the numerous interviews and presences, granted and made, on newspapers, radio and television.

Also, if he was well aware of the fact that not all his university colleagues, afterwards, were going to agree on this!

He maintains, likewise, that "vulgariser, ce n'est pas abaisser (...) A la télévision, les films sont des moyens d'éducation et de communication aussi importants et nécessaires que le livre. Je reste convaincu que, par-delà mes séminaires aux Hautes Etudes, il est une plus grande université: celle du public. Et il convient toujours de faire appel à son intelligence".

From: QUI BASE ARTICA DIRIGIBILE ITALIA, SVALBARD. DALLA TERRA DEGLI ORSI POLARI UNA RASSEGNA E UN INVENTARIO CULTURALE DEI POPOLI DEL GRANDE NORD



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