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| In one of the showcases of the fascinating, if somewhat outdated, Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, from top to bottom and from left to right, all in ivory: chain in the shape of animals (Icy Cape, Alaska, Western Eskimos,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".
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| E-Book e versione cartacea di grande formato - 16,99 x 24,41 - a colori e in bianco e nero (241 pp., 232 immagini, di cui 106 a colori, 204 note), I ediz. (versione in bianco e nero: https://www.amazon.it/dp/152075048X ) |
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