An Ethnographic Investigation of the Cultural and Social Adaptation of a New Immigrant Russian Community in Delta Junction,Alaska.

University Of Alaska Fairbanks Campus, Fairbanks AK

Investigators

Abstract

This is an EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project to do ethnographic research among the ex-Soviet immigrant settlers living in the Delta Junction area of Alaska, self-designated "Delta Russians." The project is an interdisciplinary social cultural investigation of the migration history, food procurement strategies, material culture, and worldview of this diasporic Russian community in Alaska. The Delta Russians are a rapidly growing community, ranging in population from 3,000-3,500, with large extended family households that exploit diverse and abundant wild resources as well as supplementing their food with crop cultivation and animal husbandry and their incomes with the domestic production of goods for the local market. Although 20th century Russian migration to Alasksa has been the subject of social science research, this work has focused on Old Believer populations, a religious sect that fractured from their Far East Russian roots in the 19th Century to settle in California and then again in the 20th Century to settle in Alaska, this project is will be the first time that new Russian settlers have been the subject of social science research. More importantly, this research builds on the recommendations from other scholars in the discipline to begin working with immigrant diasporas soon after they arrive in order to understand the full range of adaptation strategies employed toward settlement. The Delta Russians provide a unique opportunity for the research team to investigate "a human ecological niche emerging in real time and in a [established]social context."