A Study in Arctic Alaska of Relations between Cold War Bio-medicine, Indigenous Politics, and Circumpolar Health

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary In this project, the researcher will peruse Alaskan archival collections and conduct interviews at the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow to study the emergence of circumpolar health. The need to understand circumpolar health, meaning how the Arctic environment impacted human bodies and minds, came about as Cold War tensions rose in the United States, which resulted in Alaska taking on a new strategic importance. From its inception, circumpolar health was entangled in the processes of American colonialism in Alaska and was instrumental in generating sustained scientific interest in Alaska Native peoples. It also became a site from which Alaska Native peoples made claims for autonomy, articulated their health demands, and critiqued the policies of the American state. The researcher will share the results of this study at academic conferences and in peer-reviewed historical journals. The project will culminate in the publication of a book with an academic press. Any oral histories produced over the course of this research are to be donated to an appropriate library collection and thereby contribute to the broader aim of increasing the representation of Native Alaskan voices in the Alaskan archival record. Technical Summary This project will explain the construction of circumpolar health through three key periods, during the early Cold War, the 1960s and 1970s when the U.S. government began to rapidly expand Alaska's public health infrastructure, and in the 1980s when Alaskan circumpolar health movement became institutionalized locally through academic institutions and scientific organizations. At each stage, the researcher will consider how the imperatives of Cold War politics, the aims of biomedicine, and the priorities of Alaska Native peoples interacted to shape the development of circumpolar health. The study builds upon work in the history of Cold War science that have shown how science and technology became tools for militarizing and industrializing Arctic regions during the Cold War. It adopts an innovative approach. By contrast with existing histories, it focuses on Native Alaskans' agency as Cold War historical actors and traces their role in altering the power dynamics of circumpolar health research over time. It situates Alaska as a site where Cold War biomedical knowledge was actually produced, beginning as knowledge made about the Arctic, and transitioning to knowledge made in the Arctic. The project will also reflect on the ways that historical antecedents have shaped the ethics and practice of contemporary Arctic biomedical research.