A feature in Plentymag this week features the IPY Project SIKU: Sea Ice Knowledge and Use. "SIKU (the term, appropriately, is also the most common Eskimo/Inuit word for sea ice) is a consortium of projects involving research in more than 20 communities in Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Greenland. While researchers in each country are pursuing their own agendas and using different approaches, they are united under one common theme: recording indigenous knowledge of sea ice. Unlike many traditional research projects, which rely on data and measurements obtained directly by scientists, SIKU researchers are interested in the personal perspectives and observations of Arctic peop...

Shaktoolik, Alaska: Proposed Study on Local Knowledge of Sea Ice and Weather Conditions and Approaches to Adaptation to Climate/Environmental Change Part of IPY project 166: Sea Ice Knowledge and Use (SIKU) Report on the pilot visit, September 2-13, 2007 By Dr. Anja Nicole Stuckenberger, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA The study of Inuit/Iñupiaq cultural knowledge and adaptation to climate/environmental change that I envision as my contribution to the SIKU project will take place in two Arctic communities: the Iñupiat village of Shaktoolik in Norton Sound, Alaska (population 180) and the Inuit villag...

Sea Ice Knowledge Studies in Shishmaref, Alaska Part of IPY project 166: Sea Ice Knowledge and Use (SIKU) by Josh Wisniewski, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, PhD Candidate Department of Anthropology What do Iñupiaq hunters in the Northwest Alaska community of Shishmaref know about sea ice? How do they express knowledge in the context of hunting? And how can we come to know as directly as possible something of what people know about the environment and how they know it in relation to converging and diverging ontological and epistemological structures that shape local knowledge claims? To explore these questions I am c...