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This talk will explore how the mechanical all-terrain tracks left on the tundra surface by geological prospectors, military personnel, and industrial workers in the late Soviet Arctic initially alarmed local Indigenous communities, then raised concerns among environmental conservationists, and ultimately became a key argument in transnational efforts to establish one of the first Arctic tundra nature reserves (known as a zapovednik in Russian) on the Taymyr Peninsula in 1978.To trace how these physical imprints on the ground scaled up into a global environmental concern, the author employs a metaphor used by Indigenous Nenets herders, who describe the tundra surface as an animal skin. This corporeal and tactile metaphor resonates with the visionary works on the biosphere that were formative for the academic conceptualization of planetary-level disruptions. The resulting entanglements of the local and the global in the politics of nature protection constitute the core of this research.
Dmitry “Dima” Arzyutov is an anthropologist and historian whose research explores the intersection of Indigenous and academic epistemologies, with a particular emphasis on Siberia. He is currently engaged in two major research projects. The first examines the emergence of the concept of ethnogenesis (Indigenous origin) within Soviet academia and how this framework came to dominate interpretations of Indigenous cultural and social practices. The second project focuses on the environmental and Indigenous history of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago—one of the Soviet Union’s principal nuclear testing sites and the location of the Tsar Bomba detonation. Dr. Arzyutov is the author of numerous articles published in Current Anthropology, British Journal for the History of Science, Museum Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, and other leading academic journals. He is presently completing his book, Northern Book of Origin: Siberian Indigenous Narratives and Metropolitan Ethnogenesis Theories, under contract with the University of Nebraska Press.
Photo from: https://a.d-cd.net/jKAAAgIi9OA-1920.jpg.
