Author: Wilson, Elana

Source: Sibirica, Volume 6, Number 2, Autumn 2007 , pp. 26-50(25)

Abstract:

This article illustrates ways in which a Canadian international development team attempted to legitimate the transfer of natural resource management and economic development models from the Canadian to the Russian North by positing the notion of fundamental similarities between Canadian and Russian northern indigenous peoples. Drawing upon interviews and my participation in the development project, I demonstrate ways in which Russian northern leaders responded to these supposed shared features and describe how the definition of indigenous was debated by Canadian and Russian project participants. Namely, indigenous project participants disagreed over whether indigenousness was rooted in descent or activity and what kind of economic future (mainstream market-oriented or rooted in subsistence practices) could sustain indigenous peoples. I conclude that indigenousness as a unity discourse may facilitate good international politics, but does not serve as an unproblematic mechanism for knowledge transfer and crosscultural communication on a level closer to home.

Keywords: ARCTIC; CANADA; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; INDIGENOUS; INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT; KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER; RUSSIA

DOI: 10.3167/sib.2007.060202

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