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NORMA
Short Title: Northern Material Culture, Then and Now (NORMA) Project URL: http://nsidc.org/eloka/partners.html Proposal URL: http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=201 Perhaps the most lasting product of the scientific output from the 1st International Polar Year (IPY) are the encyclopaedic ethnological reports resulting from expeditions to Pt. Barrow, Alaska and Fort Chimo in the Ungava District (now northern Quebec). Together, John Murdoch's Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition (1892) and Turner's Ethnology of the Ungava District (1894) form the intellectual bedrock of northern native studies in their respected regions. These publications are likely the only research results from the original IPY which still are consulted routinely by researchers. The volumes have limitations as ethnological studies; they provide a comprehensive and valuable review of the material culture of Barrow's Inupiat residents and the Inuit and Innu of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula at the time of the first IPY. Both books are highly regarded by contemporary northern native community members across Alaska's North Slope and throughout the Eastern Canadian Arctic. We propose a modern version of these ethnological collecting projects. Using the categories developed by Murdoch and Turner, with a few additions (e.g. communications equipment, navigation devices), the project will document modern equivalents of the items Murdoch collected, how they are manufactured or obtained, and their uses. Photographic (digital) and written documentation will require modest expenditures. It is possible that much of the documentation can be accomplished as part of the school curriculum, involving students with Elders, or as part of a summer/after school program. It could also provide excellent material for science fair projects. A number of educators have expressed interest in incorporating the data collection process into broader educational endeavours. This idea builds on an existing exchange program between a Barrow, Alaska classroom, and in one in Munich, Germany. The idea can be used by any two classes or schools (at least one Northern), and we are planning to facilitate the finding of partners and exchange of ideas through the website. The idea is that two groups of children will be writing about themselves (including the material culture of their community) and asking about their partners. On one hand this will make them aware about their own culture and the differences of the other, and on the other hand it will open their minds to respect people of the other culture. So we will have junior ethnologists exploring the others on their own level. In the Barrow/Munich collaboration, the plans are for a focus on Alaska in English and Geography classes in Munich for several months, culminating in a presentation for parents. The materials exchanged would then be analyzed by older students (12 & 13th year) under the supervision of an ethnologist, ultimately leading to a book from children to children on the two cultures. While we do not expect most school pairs to go this far, the general idea can be used at a more limited scale by individual teachers. If there is interest on the part of a museum (The Anchorage Museum or the Smithsonian Institution where the original IPY collections are held) and funding is obtained for conservation and curation costs, then in addition to documentation, the project could collect examples of reasonably sized items (i.e. no airplanes or front-end loaders), with a view to an exhibition on technology, then and now. This exhibit would be designed so that at least part of it could travel widely, including to Northern communities. Small teaching collections for classroom use will be obtained. The project also will attempt to duplicate photographs, ethnographic and otherwise, taken by the 1st IPY expedition in the Barrow area and in Kujjuaqq (and at other IPY stations if there is interest). Sturm and his colleagues (2001), as well as many others, have demonstrated that comparative analyses of photographs taken at the same locations over periods of generations are productive in assessing long-term landscape changes.