My dissertation was based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Russia from September 1995 to December 1996, supported by a 1995-96 Fulbright Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and an IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board) Individual Advanced Research Fellowship. I spent five of those months in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but the other nine months were spent in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. I was based in the capital city of Anadyr', and made a two-month trip to the village of Snezhnoe.

    The topic of my dissertation research was political and social activism among the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. All across the Russian North, from the border with Finland to the Bering Strait, live several different groups of non-Russian indigenous peoples. The Soviet government classified them into 26 distinct categories (effectively eliminating the public identity of some groups in the process by lumping them in with others), and labeled them the Less-Numerous Peoples of the North (sometimes translated as the "Small" Peoples of the North).  Russians, Ukrainians, and other nationalities of the former Soviet Union who live in the Russian North started out as immigrants to these areas. The Russian colonization of the North began in the time of Peter the Great, and was pursued most intensively during the Soviet period. For an excellent account of the fascinating history of the Lesser-Numbered Peoples of the North, I recommend Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine's book, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the small peoples of the North  (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1994).
 

Taking advantage of Gorbachev's policies of glasnost' (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction), and influenced by the activities of indigenous groups around the world, intellectual leaders from among the Northern peoples created the Association of Less-Numerous Peoples of the North at a congress held in the Kremlin in Moscow in 1990. In my research, I interviewed some of these leaders in Moscow, and then focused my attention on researching how this movement of indigenous peoples in Russia was playing out in one particular region of the North, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.

I returned to Chukotka in the summer and fall of 1998 to begin a new project: researching the effects of Russia's privatization program on villages with state reindeer farms. As these farms were reorganized and "privatized," it had a tremendous impact on social life in these villages. I spent part of the time in Anadyr' discussing these issues with administrators, and part of the time back in the village of Snezhnoe. In the summer and fall of 2000, now as a Fellow with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, I made another research trip to Chukotka. This time I added a new dimension to my research, the rodovaia obshchina ("clan commune" or "community"), a new form of local self-government. Obshchiny have been cropping up all over the Russian North, but they are less common in Chukotka. I traveled to one of Chukotka's few obshchiny, "Kaiettyn," located in Bilibinskii district (Chukotka's farthest west district). You can learn more about Kaiettyn on the Kaiettyn page of this site (see the main index page).

I returned to Chukotka for my fourth research trip March through May 2001, intending to go back for a longer visit to Kaiettyn. As usual in Chukotka, transportation was a problem, and I never made it back to the village. However, I was able to attend the Regional Congress of Indigenous Peoples in Anadyr', as well as the Bilibinskii District Congress of Indigenous Peoples in Keperveem, a village not far from the city of Bilibino. At both congresses, indigenous residents were excitedly discussing the new federal law on obshchina that was passed in July 2001, and many were planning to establish new obshchiny, or revive old ones.

I published a book based on my research in Chukotka titled The Predicament of Chukotka's Indigenous Movement: Post-Soviet Activism in the Russian Far North ( Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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