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so good morning everyone um and welcome to our seminar on cultural revitalization um this is um the second in a series of seminars on scotland's role and contribution in the changing arctic environment um my name is advanced my name is david anderson and i'm a professor of anthropology at the university of aberdeen i'll be um i'll be chairing this session and we have um four panelists after which we'll have um a um a discussion about scotland's role in the arctic so the outline today is that dr peter louvers project curator of the british museum exhibit arctic culture and climate and honorary research fellow will present followed by dr tamara randspot teaching fellow in the anthropology department and a long-term researcher in the canadian arctic professor peter reed professor of librarianship at robert gordon university and professor donna heddle director of the institute for northern studies at the university of highlands and islands and and member of the eu arctic thematic network on circumpolar archives which you'll be presenting so um i will give a short introduction to the theme of cultural revitalization this will be followed by several eight-minute presentations by each of our our guest speakers after this we have um breakout rooms are time for facilitated discussion with some questions um i if um since i'm sitting in my vehicle if my battery lasts i'll facilitate that if not sending will will facilitate it um and then we'll come back for a conclusion so um i i apologize for the um for the setting it's just that balancing homeschooling and whatnot i've i've chosen this as my soundproof video studio in order to do this this presentation um so what i'll do is i'll start my presentation on culture revitalization so um cultural idolization is a blanket term that i'm i'm giving to this idea that that we can use the histories of colonialism and the histories of our relationships around the world in order to revive cultures and introduce new richness and new insights into northern and circumpolar cultures there's often a discourse about culture loss language loss uh uh language loss in the highlands language loss across the the north and this feeds into this idea of there being peripheries on certain centers and that there are dominant global languages and that there's dominant global cultures and um and then the periphery people just experienced a form of loss what i'd like to do is present a different idea um historically many of these cases that are now viewed from the the metropolitan centuries as peripheries were once centers and indeed scotland um uh was and and will be a center of arctic research and arctic exploration um and um uh the the movement between center and periphery is a historical one and so um by trying to understand um the strengths and the witness richness of cultures in different areas we can understand um the way in which um arctic cultures and antarctic relationships can be strong again so um i'm putting forth this idea of moving beyond cultural loss of trying to think of this idea of what skills and what information we have that can lead to cultural revitalization and so i want to spend my 10 minutes by giving a few examples that will hopefully spark some discussion and debate with our panelists and also with all of you who have joined us here today um i'm going to look at three particular themes um artifacts repatriation of artifacts and digital sharing um then i'm going to talk about enskilment and and finally i'm going to talk about renewed relationships and global citizenship and the way that scottish institutions can can play a powerful role in this so to begin with artifacts repatriation and digital sharing what i'd like to do is talk about the material legacies of colonialism in scotland and how these link to the circumpolar world and i'm going to be doing this through a number of examples a lot of the examples that i'm presenting are examples from the university of aberdeen both from my research and the research of colleagues within other departments um this isn't to say that there aren't another there aren't other examples around scotland it's just putting together the presentation these were the images that i found easiest to access for this this short presentation um the uh there are a number of different ways that we can look at material legacies um we we have archives of photographs glass plate negatives many of us took part in a large pro project in order to digitize glass place uh glass plate negatives and distribute them to communities around the world in this case um a yodak shaman from the nsa river delta and um in was part of a a project funded by the esrc where whereby these fragile um images were were digitized and then put onto websites and sent around the world um number calls in the archaeology department are working on um a site in alaska where um climate change and global warming has led to the the melting out of the permafrost and the exposure being rare and alawic artifacts and so they are engaged in a in a race against time to preserve these artifacts um curate them and then re-um reassemble them and share them with the communities one of my colleagues within the department um bringing this close to home has has worked very closely with the um the hill fort and monument around um benahi um a mountain just outside of aberdeen they've created a digital app which allows school children and tourists to see the the legacies of this particular community and understand the relationships to that community so this idea of looking at material legacies and and the the items that we hold in scotland is about the recovery and curation of artifacts the way that we can use digital technologies in order to share images of these artifacts with communities around the north and that there are a number of different ways that we can work with this so i presented a little bit of of the idea of scanning glass plate negatives and putting them on 99 online access what i'll talk about in a minute is a new technology of doing three-dimensional scanning and three-dimensional printing which creates proxies of artifacts that are held within museums that can then be reintroduced to communities and used um in in everyday life therefore thereby creating a new way of understanding the culture and the relationships of these artifacts so this is what i'll call in skillmint and this is working together with communities to revive skills and this goes beyond just taking artifacts and bringing them back to communities but but starts a new conversation of reintroducing um ideas legends languages into a community so that they can live and breathe again within those particular places in this particular slide although it's hard to see nanettes reindeer herders in um in yamal peninsula are looking at um 3d printed artifacts they're on the um you could probably see them just a little bit on the table here plastic reproductions of reindeer harness pieces that come from a thousand years ago and these contemporary reindeer herders are trying to study these pieces tell the ethno archaeologists how they might use them and and and actually can put them on to contemporary reindeer and see how they would work within a modern setting um these slides show an interesting project that we were engaged in with the prince of wales northern uh heritage museum in the northwest territories of measuring um a a tent covering that was held within an american museum that was taken from the community about 100 years ago and then working with local seamstresses in order to make a new copy of that in order to recover the technology of how to sew these skins together we we took the seamstresses um to eastern siberia where people still live in conical tents and looked at the way and the stitching that they used there and used um this cross-pollination of knowledge in order to create a new tent that please show in the northwest territories are still using my colleague nancy walker which is working with seal skin and seal skin artifacts in northern canada and also reviving the skills of working with seal skin in order to make clothing finally in terms of renewing relationships um this detailed study and exchange of techniques leads to new conversations and new ways to join scottish scholars scottish institutions scottish museums and archives to source communities and new ways of of getting more information from these source communities so through this um this exchange stories and artifacts become used within um everyday life become part of everyday ceremonies become part of the the strength of these communities to renew other things such as revitalizing language and culture renewed public awareness and respect for indigenous cultures and local cultures and rural cultures and understanding how how these particular cultures can contribute to a vibrant circumpolar landscape and finally this idea of global citizenship that scotland and scottish researchers are using um their our artifacts their skills um their ethnohistorical and archaeological insights in order to to bring about a revival of culture in different places around the world and and start a renew exchange between people just to conclude um this this map which we're using in our ref impacts sort of statements shows um the places where some of our projects within the anthropology project department have been done and it shows the the range of relationships across one um aspect of the um one part of the circumpolar north to the other so with that um very brief introduction about cultural revitalization i'd like to turn the floor over to our panelists so um i guess i wasn't planning that slide i apologize for that um so uh so i'll um i'll call on um dr peter louvers in order to give his um his presentation on arctic culture and climate should i stop sharing my screen i guess okay sorry i'm i'm just trying to figure out uh how to get back onto the okay we can hear you peter um would it help if i didn't share my screen yeah okay um did that for me i'll turn off my video if i know how to do this so you probably have to go to the bottom left to turn on your video there we go um we're looking at your notes right now no this is sorry i'll try one more time sorry guys it's uh i'm also not that yeah okay so um good morning and uh thank you uh david and sanan for the invitation so allow me uh also to acknowledge my question teachers in this presentation i will briefly speak about the recent arctic culture and climate exhibition at the british museum and that just closed last sunday for which i was a project creator alongside dr amber lincoln as lead creator and a much wider team i will then turn briefly to dogs and fish i will conclude with placing cultural revitalization in light of climate change and climate justice the exhibition was envisioned by creator of the americas dr jacob cooper and dr amber ninkel like my own experience with indicious peoples across the globe amber has worked extensively with indigenous peoples these experiences guided us in bringing the arctic to london prefarious collaboration with indigenous communities institutions and individuals and to them we express our gratitude the exhibition addresses climate change through the lens of weather following tim ingled we understand climate as an obstruction generated in models that can be measured whereas weather is a lift experience whether as our arctic conditions teachers and collaborators have emphasized is essential in the arctic for traveling building food materials and ceremonies so where does climate come into play arctic culture and climates addresses climate change in a more nuanced way through the focus on weather as i mentioned and climate change climate shifts arctic conditions peoples for over 32 000 years have been coping with climate and have made hospital homelands out of ecosystems of ice natural climate shifts taking hundreds if not thousands of years led to the receding barrentrail landmass and raising sea levels human-induced climate change however has been much more recent and rapid and by the way in the the the center one is uh uh this is where david was talking about the sorry then the nanette uh anyways within generation argent pitch oh arctic conditions people have experienced drastic changes and seasonal patterns with erratic weather subsequently weather has become more unpredictable with devastating impact on their lives nonetheless as we have shown in the exhibition our conditions peoples have used four similar strategies throughout history to combat change namely adaptation or anticipation collaboration resistance and innovation they have done this through ingenious technologies which are plentiful to be found in the exhibition this has also become apparent when thinking about revitalization in the exhibition we wanted to leave the visitor with a positive message and press something different than one might expect so we deliberately left out the polar bears on floating ice the masters is that of hope and to let the visitor ponder how they could incorporate arctic people's strategies into their own lives as well as think of ideas for sustainable living to reverse climate change embassy of imagination one of our indigenous collaborators sums this up excellently their installation atikit silapat made of japanese paper purchased by children from two communities in nunafuds northern canada at the end of the exhibition is a testimony to hope and the crucial importance of the future generations taking children out on the land engaging with materials as their elders have done and learning new techniques are paramount in maintaining and re-vitalizing practices and here i deliberately place an emphasis on re and vitalization it is the vitalization of relations with others that is crucial question 2 have been concerned with climate change in a blog for the exhibition entitled docs in the arctic i spoke with abram stewart jr and his son richard i had already spoken with abraham for the ercc eric domes project which david was the lead investigator for in which i worked with kwitchin on their lives with dogs so this is what abram said about the importance of dog teams we can just we can use dog team to go out on the lands to get wood to hunt caribou to go fishing we use dog team for everything that is one of the reasons to start a dog team again we have one dog where we will get pop from my son richard is very interested in driving a dog team the last time i had a dog team was 1980 then i went to work and from that time on we started to have this global warming i remember that i'm still living out on the land and the ways things are going globally it sure don't look too healthy for me not only me but some old people talk about it they say hard times are coming again even way back in the 1960s and 70s i remember our elders telling us that someday you guys are going to have hard times you young people that is something which is happening now so i talked to my boys about stuff like that and telling them that we need to go back and try getting a dog team because it will not be easy to find guests for snowmobiles or trucks from the 1980s back i never seen any change in the weather i remember because may 1980 was the last time i went out on the land with an elder and everything was normal according to the weather right from the start of summer in july we go out on the land and start fishing in order to make dry fish for the winter to feed the dogs the weather is just the right weather it's not too hot nor too cold to dry fish it rains whenever it has to rain the sun shines when it has to shine then into fall autumn their lakes and rivers start freezing up by mid-september with ice all that time we are fishing the weather allows us what normally to do during the seasons without interruption but now due to global warming it only starts freezing up late september into october and then there's still a lot of ice in december there are still small creeks that are running with water the warmer weather also affects fishing when i caught fish it would immediately freeze and so it does not spoil but now when i'm fishing to ducks for the winter food the fists just get spoiled and i have to throw them away it's too warm now these are big changes also when i comes to teaching my children when i am out on the land i need to know whether the ice is safe or when to hunt the fish and caribou two are all on a different time in a different time zone now it's hard to teach anybody about the safety on the land because so much has changed globally richard ape's son agrees and told me with all these changes and things my father is telling me i would not mind to start having a doctor one time i went for wood with a snowmobile and i broke down with the snowmobile we had a couple of pops from one of my dad's dogs of my dad's cabin i walked back to our cabin and hooked up those pups to dark sled with all-time harness and they put that wood out that's what my father means with relying on being reliable i always listen to my elders when they talk about their travels with dog teams i guess you get to see more of the country than with snowmobile so i was always thinking of having a dog team too i always wanted to now so this brings me to the conclusion cultural life vitalization has mostly been discussed in bringing back uh so-called forgotten knowledge and skills and they've those are already alluding to that that have become nearly lost or scarce due to colonial practices in indigenous lands and lives certainly the examples that i prefer provided here are addressing colonial histories yet here i also want to argue that climate change needs to be brought back into the equation hence when we speak about re-vitalization it implies the return of vitality of the lands with climate change such a vitality is under threats air water and land pollution due to resource extraction projects and unsustainable industrial enterprises directly affect revitalization initiatives changing weather patterns as abram mentioned have dire consequences for these initiatives furthermore dogs like indigenous peoples rely on healthy fish and other animals for food thus revitalization initiatives subsequently immediately are also a call for climate justice they concern their rights for healthy seas land rivers to ensure the well-being of indigenous communities in the generations to come they concern social and political action or to conclude with the embassy of imagination they are calling for reciprocal global action in solidarity during this time of transformation perhaps one can consider this as a revitalization in the arctic and elsewhere uh thank you thank you so much peter stop sharing screen so um the um the next panelist will be dr tamara randspot so i'll um invite tamara up thanks david i'm just gonna make my attempt at the screen sharing [Music] can you see that okay can someone give me a yes yes it looks good okay perfect thank you um well good morning um and thanks very much um peter for that presentation um today i would like to speak briefly about my own experience as a researcher engaging with local movements of cultural revitalization in a small northern community and just sharing some of my sort of reflections and stories that i hope might um illuminate the possibilities for us as researchers so i conducted my doctoral field work in dawson city um in the yukon which is actually about as close as you can get to the arctic whilst technically being sub-arctic um so it's a small town just south of the arctic circle um bordering on alaska in northwest canada um and it's home to the tron de quichen first nation and those who've heard of dawson city have likely done so because it was the center of the klondike gold rush of the late 19th century and so my research was also part of the arctic domes project um and it was examining the role of music in human animal relations so i spent a year um in and around dawson working with the trondequichen heritage department and having the great privilege of getting to know and spend time with a lot of trendy christian citizens so one particular aspect of the research that emerged during my field work is the story of the han songs and this is a story that i'd like to share today um sort of with a view to the notion that research that focuses on musical practices in the arctic um and the place of musical practices in movements of cultural revitalization can help to tell a different story about colonialism and disruption in the north um a story that highlights the agency and the resilience of arctic communities sort of moving beyond this idea of a cultural loss as david mentioned in his introduction um so this particular story is is much longer and more complex than i have the time to do justice to today um but in brief um following this massive influx of newcomers to the territory in the 19th century um gold stampeders missionaries and government officials who were looking to demarcate that national border between the yukon and alaska this border was finally established in 1903 and the significant impact that newcomers were having on trundekwitchin and their land was compounded by this border so all of a sudden trandequitchin found their traditional territory bisected which was limiting their seasonal subsistence movements and fracturing kinship ties and so people were suddenly faced with this dilemma of having to choose to settle either on the canadian or the american side of this new border so there are several versions of the story but as it's often told trendy question chief chief isaac saw the tremendous impact that this influx of people was having not only was their land being ripped open but federal federal statutes have been imposed that were disrupting cultural practices for example potlatch was banned um and several elders told me stories about drums being burnt in the region and trying to quitting has long been recognized by their neighbors and in academic literature for their prowess as singers and dancers but these violent colonial forces were threatening to disrupt this so sometime around 1912 chief isaac was invited by um alaskan kin to a potlatch um in alaska and he took all of his people's songs and dances which are referred to as the han songs and there he left them for safe keeping with the understanding that one day they would be returned so this was a temporary measure undertaken by the community to protect their songs until such a time that they had weathered the storm of newcomers and were ready for their songs to come home so these songs and dances remained in alaska forgotten by many throughout the 20th century and which was a dark time for trondik um the residential school system run by the anglican church took trying to chin children from their homes and sent them to residential schools hundreds of kilometers away where they were forbidden from speaking their language or engaging in any displays of of their home culture and the traumas of these schools held long after the children left which ensured that one of the most damaging legacies among many um is this sort of profound stigma and and sense of shame when it came to trondik which in culture and language and this coupled with over a century of other invasive policies and institutions decimated the han language such that by the early 1990s it was and continues to be critically endangered but in the early 1990s um we saw the beginnings of efforts to revitalize the hound language and as part of these early revitalization endeavors a group of toronto and elders and youth traveled to alaska to meet with the descendants of those who had attended this potlatch and it was this trip that instigated the beginning of the process of the han songs and dances coming back to the community and being relearned and over the last decade many of the songs have come back in a variety of forums sometimes they were taught in their entirety and other times they were pieced together through collaboration of elders who had sort of fragments of songs in their memories and these songs continue to have huge significance outside just the realm of of performance so for trying to question um as for many indigenous arctic communities music is profoundly linked to cultural revitalization via language subsistence practices self-governance sovereignty land rights and so many more matters of urgency um you know and i think peter's presentation um showed us that really nicely um so engaging with or even being aware of musical practices can be really critical for researchers with an interest in cultural revitalization because music is very often the site of such movements and it illuminates so many other critical aspects of life in these communities so my hope is that is that the story of the han songs can demonstrate how we as researchers have opportunities and responsibilities um to engage with and bolster existing um local movements of cultural revitalization because in doing so we can we can play a part in telling a different story about these communities not a story of kind of a passive subjection to these external forces of colonialism but a story about active and powerful resistance and resilience so i'd just like to finish with a short reflection on my experience with just that wherein by kind of enmeshing myself within the movements that were ongoing in the trondequitchin community and by working within the heritage department um i was able to play a a small role in their efforts to revitalize and regain um some of what um as they say in the toronto christian community um has not been lost but has been sleeping so the salmon song is a song that was composed in 2012 by the local singing group the han singers and this was the first new han song written in over a century and it was written in response to declining king salmon runs in the yukon river so trondik took action by voluntarily foregoing their rights to subsistence fishing in order to help the salmon stocks replenish but this song was a way to to maintain that relationship in order to sort of ensure that the people in the salmon didn't forget about each other so this use of singing as a means of of communicating with the land and with its inhabitants was a key aspect of my research and this was a practice that was undertaken in a in a formal group context as with the salmon song but also on a personal level by toronto christian citizens out on the land hunting fishing gathering on their own so um a young toronto christian citizen called allison who i became friends with over the course of my time in dawson told me many times about the songs that she wrote while loose hunting so one for example was a song that came to her following a successful harvest and she had forgotten to bring an offering to leave for her moose which is the practice within traditional trantequitchin law so she sang her moose's song um to say thank you instead and alison gave me the great privilege of of allowing me to collaborate with her in making recordings of her um drumming and singing several of her songs including this moose song which we've now deposited in the tron de christian heritage collections and these songs embody um not only the strength and and the resilience of toronto generations but they also hold these windows into trying to question relationships with the land into their fights to revitalize their language and their culture and by looking a little bit closer at some of these musical practices and musical histories in these small arctic communities we can help to to bolster these movements and to tell the stories of people's struggles to reclaim their cultural strength and and their cultural health having fought so hard to to protect and maintain what they could in the face of great resistance over the last few centuries um thank you very much thank you so much uh tamara that was fascinating um i'll um i'll now call on professor peter reed professor of librarianship at robert gordon university thank you very much david can someone let me know if you can see that okay looks good yes okay it's super uh thank you very much for the invitation to come and speak this morning um i'm going to talk about a project that we are currently leading um at robert gordon university and called northward um its official name is um story tagging but northward is the branding and marketing name that we'll be um using um throughout it so i'll stick with that um today um this is a project that's funded as part of the northern proliferation and arctic programme um we're looking um at culture and heritage i guess and storytelling um with a twist are connected with digital technologies which has already been alluded to in the and the introduction and what we're trying to do is use them as a vehicle to help support the the visibility the marketing the reach of creative practitioners working in um remote or peripheral um areas so we're not just um a cultural heritage project we're much more about trying to support and sustain um creative practitioners and artisans working in these areas we are a partnership of a number of organizations led by ourselves rgu but involving also university of the highlands and islands um causeway coast um in northern ireland university of ulster um and then in scandinavia or the nordic regions we have and region westerbotton in sweden um the quarken municipality which is a swedish speaking um municipality on the gulf of bothnia in finland um and rozero national park um in russia so those those are our partners um i'll primarily be talking about the work that we are doing um at robert gordon and the work that i've been involved in in the last um nine months the project has um five different um work packages i've highlighted four of them um there and the fifth is obviously the the communication and dissemination and package and one is connected with creating a digital platform um that will help support these creative and practitioners in northern communities um the second is the story collecting part the third is the creative commissions working with these artisans um and practitioners in the north and it's those two elements in the middle that i'll talk more about um in the succeeding slides and then the final um work package is really bringing together all of the preceding elements the platform the stories and the creatives to develop something that is um sustainable and long-lasting and durable to support um those creative practitioners their work their marketing um and their sales it's really the story collecting part that um i've been most particularly involved in because that's the area that i'm interested in um and have done work in in the the past and particularly links between scotland and norway at the heart of it um my colleague rachel ironside and i believe um fundamentally that stories are just wonderful things um they are wonderful ways to communicate um our past and to help us and help inform our understanding um of the the present and they interact they interest us um they inspire us they enchant us they tell us about who we are the environment that um we live in um in the park that i'm looking at um we're covering part of the highlands and islands and the murray first basin and the northern isles and that's the the focus of the story collecting process that we've been going through um in the last six months um and it's been a a fascinating um experience one of the things that i think has been revealing to us and one of the lessons that i think we've learned is that methods really matter um in this um and there's been a lot of discussion across the and the partners about the working methods for collecting stories what might work in scotland doesn't necessarily work in in finland or russia and so on so we've all developed our own um methods um of working and these are some of the the guidelines and tips and um methods that we've put together and for the ones that we've collected um at our gu each partner is tasked with collecting 30 um stories and i think we're probably neither of 45 um that we've we've gathered um they come in all um shapes and sizes legend folklore historical events in language and dialect i've been interested to hear about the revitalization of language that's been mentioned um already because that's something that's been i'm very evident in the things that we've been um we've been looking at we've been very open-minded in terms of um hearing from communities working with um organizations heritage groups museums archives individuals and in the areas that we're all task d with collecting stories and we've been as i say incredibly open-minded about what his story is and what it means just before christmas um we ran an online workshop um called yulin kluty dumplings and we used um christmas and hogmanay as the focus for that uh and we used it as a story collecting um method um and it was incredibly successful with about 35 participants we got a good number of stories inevitably the original plan was for these to be actual face-to-face um events but circumstances obviously um precluded that so we've we've had to adapt as we've we've gone on we've as i say collected around 35 45 stories and and we will make selections to to move forward with our um partners as we move into the next phase of it um some incredibly interesting stories lots that i'd never um had before um and often things that have um highlighted links across the the northern region and this guising story um from halloween um up in shetland has strong links to the pharaohs to iceland to parts of norway um as well and all of that has been extremely interesting so it's been really rewarding to to do this i think at the heart of it the most important thing is that the partners have worked together with their communities and they know them best and they have engaged with them and we've used a variety of different formats as i mentioned earlier the importance of the common principles around data collection um has been significant but we've had pragmatic variation um in that so there's been flexibility um around particular cultural sensitivities um in the region and indeed language has been um a fairly significant part of that the next phase is this engaging with creative practitioners and i'll just say very briefly a little about that um we're in the process of about to start a commissioning process um whereby various creative practitioners and artisan um artisans will be able to apply for small grants to develop new products inspired by these stories eventually this will all become a bank of stories um on which which can be drawn on and a marketing platform um for these um these businesses so this is revitalization perhaps in a slightly different um context and just um finally in that i think we're looking really um with some interest at how these creative practitioners and artisan and producers um will engage with this um how they will take the stories of their area um of legendary folklore people places landscape whatever and translate that into um a commission as part of the um the project in this um and i suppose this is connected with the um the the issue of working with partners in in different regions and countries there's obviously been lots of very practical um issues that we've had to iron out um about submitting tenders and copyright and and so on and that's been important to work through but the final messages there has been such real enthusiasm across the partner areas with the community organizations with the heritage groups and with the creative practitioners and ultimately i'm i think we're going to come out with something that is incredibly durable and has legacy and beyond the life of the project so that's um a very short overview of northward and what we've been doing so thank you very much thank you so much that was fascinating um i'll um i'll now turn the floor over to donna huddle please director of the institute of northern studies at the university of highlands and islands okay you still have your your mute on donna hello david i'm just wondering if you can see my slides as yet i can see the slides it's it's in the edit view yeah that's fine we can see it fine yeah there we go you should be able to see me now yep that's great and you can see me on the video as well i'm having a slight problem with my uh system here at the moment but i am getting there looks good sorry i'm just having a slight frankl with this good old scottish word there aha there we go well um holy dunya it's lovely to be asked along today to talk about cafe which is the circumpolar archives folklore and ethnography network it's a thematic network for the university of the arctic which focuses upon um how archival collections ethnographic field work and study of folklore enrich the representation of communications across the circumpolar region and its peoples and its main focus is really looking at things like digitizations of manuscripts photographs that sort of thing um sound recordings material objects everything really um that tells us the story of the north um and we're also very interested in improving access to collections and making it possible to share connections with host communities um and so on um our research is really looking at examining best practices of digital sharing and the ethical questions that these technologies pose um we're very interested in looking at creating a forum for discussing the roles of these archives in cultural revival as well as collaborating to create innovative ways for archival materials to reach wider audiences and of course with changes in technology we're very happily in the position to do just that as you can see there you can see the members that we have uh their international members the polar libraries colloquy scotland the university of aberdeen which leads the network the university of the highlands and islands norway uit the arctic university of norway there the pharaoh islands the university of the theo islands russian federation northern arctic federal university and so on film colleagues in finland sweden iceland and the united states of america join us too so we're quite an extensive network concerned and how did we start well i suppose really the first thing was the um move to the next slide okay there we are it's the turku network meeting on the 6th of may 2018. that was the first network meeting and we discussed making a formal application to the university of the arctic to become a thematic network and we also identified various opportunities for future conferences and meetings and so on uh we then had another meeting on the 6th of april 2019 in santiago de confastella and excitingly um at the stockholm university of the arctic meeting on the 19th of september our network was actually approved so there we are having it approved there so what is it that we're actually doing then well one thing that's been very interesting in the past year or so the advent of code is the chance to reflect on our practices what we're dealing with are quite fragile things and peter and david have said about this earlier too we're dealing with fragile things narratives folklore and so on they're a bit like footprints in the snow they're fragile and easily lost if they're not preserved in the right way so over this period of time we've asked ourselves lots of questions about how we gather and collect these narratives and folklores for example we've asked ourselves quite simple questions what is a story who tells a story and who owns them where are stories how can we find them and how should stories be shared and one of the most important thing is the actual collecting and curation of stories and it's important to consider when we reflect on this our own agendas it's important to consider how the presentation of a collection of stories can be influenced by the values and ideologies of the curator for example and the way a collection of stories is created can also shape the way that these stories and information are used and as such an archive of stories doesn't just create knowledge it shapes knowledge ieg women's stories uh not being represented they're represented fully because of systematic exclusion from archives shapes the way that history and women's stories from the past are told so an important question to ask and it get it also touches on what we said earlier indigenous languages is whose stories get told and whose voices get left out and personally i'm very encouraged by use of dialects and indigenous languages um to collect stories in their original form and of course our network's all about digitization so what are the values of the digitization process then well physical archives have space constraints that's quite an obvious one a remark to make that digital archives may help to alleviate some of these issues but it shouldn't be forgotten that they can also be limited by material constraint such as server space the time the curator and the size of the metadata on it and of course it's always it's also important to articulate whose stories are being told it's also important to consider how story archives can be made findable how do you know they're there how can you make them accessible how can you reach the people that you want to reach you've got a range of audiences that you need to reach um and this requires consideration of the metadata associated with story archives again we need to consider the curator's bias and ideology in relation to how metadata is formed and of course written and audio presentation of stories differs written is not the same as audio it's slower and tends to be filtered to a greater extent in terms of curation and oral stories tend to be quicker and are defined by the way they're spoken the tropes the traditions and the language so the format of a story can influence the way it's told how stories will be formatted it's an important aspect to consider and we have to give thought to how we can do that and digitization does allow us to look at different forms of collecting stories that can be visual they can be oral they can be written looking at all sorts of things um and in the west written stories tend to be prioritized and can be more sustainable than audio visual however the sustainability of oral storytelling is important and should also be considered in particular cultural consideration is important when thinking about story collection and cult and curation for instance imposing written formats on oral traditions may be seen as colonial by some cultures and can therefore have political implications in addition not all information can be written down um and can only be shared through visual audio or performative means and i'm thinking here about work i've done myself with herring girls um in the north of iceland where we we record this as many years ago now we actually recorded made videos of them and in many cases it's what wasn't said and what was hinted at that made the enriched the actual product that we have so we have to think about the preservation too what are we preserving who are we to see what should we preserve not all cultures and communities and individuals value preservation so we need to ask if preservation is important and valued sometimes it's helpful to forget and preservation is often seen as an inherently good thing but some people may not want aspects of the past or the culture preserved it's also important to consider with preservation the difference between a library which is current and an archive which is historic and of course preservation comes with its own responsibilities and a range of ethical and moral considerations which are very important to the work of the network indeed and the network has produced a vast amount of journals and materials and so on in this short period of time that it's really been existing it's the most impressive range of work and i urge you to have a look at the page and the university of aberdeen if you'd like to find more about it but when it comes to scotland and the arctic we think about the relationships that we have and the future relationships that we can have for research i'm sitting here in orkney and the northern isles of course have a historically long relationship with the arctic we have the stories of the thin poke for example who are clearly inuit coming in their skin covered uh canoes down to the northern isles uh wearing their the clothes that they're wearing and so on that's a strong strand in the poplar orton shetland but we also orton is the last place to get fresh water on the way to the arctic it was the last staging post for many uh expeditions to the arctic so we have these strong historical connections but we also have um connections to do with arctic uh sea passages uh in the modern day to do with links to the arctic and of course with wheeling as well in the arctic so that's our past but what can our future be well i think our future could be very much about taking stories and the material that we work on in the cafe network and making it into a valuable and sustainable resource for communities to revitalize them and give them ownership and we're just working at ins on the project at the moment looking at museums and how they deal with sami culture and how they present that and how we can represent that if i can use the word there in a better way that would accurately reflect how the sami see their own culture um and i think that's the way forward for research between scotland and the arctic it's a very comparative um thing in point of fact and i think it's something that will be incredibly valuable in the future and also i think that you will find ourselves in this strange new world but there are opportunities there there are still opportunities to preserve the footprints in the snow and finally at the end of the day we're really asking ourselves the question what is north and i'd like to finish by just showing you um latest book from the institute for northern studies which has many members from uh the cafe network represented in it and we ask ourselves the question what is not because at the end of the day um these are the questions that we are asking ourselves this is what we're all about what is north from a point of view of uh um it could be climate it could be folklore it could be well-being it could be all of these things but at the end of the day we seek the north and in the words of alfred lord tennyson dark and true and tender is the north thank you very much thank you so much for an inspiring talk and and for introducing your book so um um now i i guess we'll um um we'll move on to our facilitated discussion you