As we've already discussed, while Arctic communities are diverse. They do share many common traits. In this mini-MOOC, we want to explore one of these common traits, the fact that virtually all northern economies are based on natural resources. This applies to both indigenous and non-indigenous or local Northerners. These natural resource-based economies and the people who participate in them are seriously affected by all kinds of outside forces and decisions. Achieving social, cultural, and environmental sustainability with a natural resource-based economy, is a significant challenge. Imagine, once again, that you live in a remote northern community where you work hard to harvest local resources, maybe fish, maybe oil, it depends, that you can sell to the South and exchange for enough money to buy the other things you need. Now, imagine that the price you're getting for that fish or that oil is suddenly cut in half. What would you do? Where would you go for help in a community where almost everyone else was in the same boat as you? As you can imagine, maintaining that sustainable life is always difficult, but it becomes infinitely harder when you are so vulnerable to outside forces, like the price of oil, which is decided by producers in the Middle East and speculators in America, and many other factors that you cannot control. To better understand this phenomenon, we will look at how diverse Arctic communities have interacted with the outside world in order to navigate those external influences in productive ways. We've already gone over the economic regions that stretch across the Arctic and have seen that while they are unique, they have all, in one way or another, faced outside colonization and built their economies on natural resources. With natural resource development comes instability, since outside forces far removed from the northern communities can have Earth-shaking consequences. We've already looked at some of the challenges these regions face as they strive for sustainability. Now, we will dive deeper into the connections between the Arctic communities and the global forces, economic, political, and social, that affect them so profoundly. These interactions and dynamics are not new, but they are changing and intensifying in our increasingly globalized world. Once again, we will start out with the North American Arctic. France, Britain, and Russia colonized present day Canada and Alaska from the 1500s to the 1700s, as part of a larger European colonial project that eventually swallowed up most of the world. Much of the North American colonization was rooted in the fur trade. The Hudson's Bay Company was set up in 1670 to trade with people across a vast swath of Canada. Russian colonization of what is now Alaska was also driven by the fur trade. First caught by indigenous people, Europeans and the Meitei people who emerged as indigenous and European people, intermarried, created ties of trade that connected people in the far-flung corners of the North American Arctic, with European colonial centers in London, Paris, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. By the 20th century, the economy of the North American Arctic shifted from furs to industrial natural resource extraction, specifically fishing, mining, oil, and gas. The Bering Sea is the most productive fishing grounds in the United States, supplying 60 percent of seafood caught in the US waters. Large-scale mines owned and operated by multinational mining companies have been very active in the Canadian Arctic and Alaska. Since 1977, the North Slope of Alaska has been a key source of oil and gas, which has brought great wealth to the state of Alaska, but has also wrought environmental disaster. For instance, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 created enormous oil pollution. Throughout much of their history, the people of the Russian Arctic have often be at the mercy of actions and decisions taken by people elsewhere in Russia and overseas. During the 14th and 15th centuries, Arkhangelsk because Russia's port to the world, though only during the ice-free part of the year, making the northern outpost an important trading hub where Russian and Western traders met. However, Arkhangelsk's prominence waned when Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in 1703, replacing it as Russia's international port. At the same time, the Czar explored Russia's far East. In 1741, Vitus Bering a Danish ship master, crossed the Bering Sea to Alaska and claimed it as the Russian America for Peter the Great. Russia held the territory until 1867, when it sold Alaska to the United States. Russia refused to sell the territory to Britain, which would have made it part of Canada, because they were still angry at Britain over the Crimean War. This decision made the United States into an Arctic state. Events like this remind us that the fate of the Arctic has long been tied to the politics of great powers. During the Soviet regime, development in Siberia took off as the Soviet Union embarked on widespread industrialization of the Russian North to exploit its oil, gas, and mineral reserves. The state used extensive prison labor for this development, which shows how the Russian Arctic was not insulated from the nature of the Soviet regime, even if it was far away from the centers of power in Moscow. Later, the Cold War led to an extraordinary militarization of the North. The whole area was peppered with nuclear weapons and warning systems, and this left its mark on the entire Circumpolar Arctic, including Siberia. Indigenous communities were moved for military and strategic reasons by governments on both sides, in Greenland, North America, and the USSR. The ice cutting across the Bering Strait cutoff indigenous peoples on either side from each other. Military installations created extensive radioactive and chemical pollution. When the Cold War thawed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a completely new alignment of Circumpolar countries emerged, which brought better collaboration among different states, regions, indigenous peoples, researchers, businesses, and other people from around the world. The Barents Region of the Nordic Arctic, which encompasses Northern Norway, Northern Sweden, Northern Finland, and Northwest Russia is divided into a maritime system that runs along the Norwegian coast and a terrestrial system that covers Inland Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. However, it can also be divided between the indigenous Sapmi minority who generally live in the far North and the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish majority of Scandinavian descent. The waters of the maritime system hold exceptionally rich fishing grounds. Twenty percent of the world's cod harvest is caught in the Bering Sea. Norwegians have been selling dried fish to the rest of Europe during Lent for 1,000 years and seafood exports are still a mainstay of the Norwegian economy. However, a great transformation occurred with the discovery of offshore oil and gas in 1969, and while most production is further South than arctic Norway, important new reserves have been found in Northern waters where future production will depend both on Norwegian political decisions and global market prices. Again, this reminds us of just how firmly arctic natural resources are embedded in the global economy. The Saami people have herded reindeer throughout this region for thousands of years and the political and economic decisions made further South in Norway, Sweden, and Finland have deeply impacted their communities. When the Scandinavian countries extended their political reached North in the 17th century, drawing borders across Sapmi, reindeer migration routes were blocked off and up to three monarchs demanded taxes of them. Later, educational policies forced Saami children into residential schools, where Saami language and culture were suppressed. In the 1800s, industrialization arrived in the region when large-scale iron ore mining began in Kiruna and Gallivare, leading to the creation of the [inaudible] socio-technical mega system of mines, towns, rail, power, and defense. Then came hydroelectric power along with railroads that led to the ice-free harbor of Narvik in Norway. Sweden's mineral riches were widely recognized. In fact, it was the desire for Sweden's massive iron ore deposits that prompted the Nazis to occupy Denmark and Norway in April 1940. Today, Sweden is still the most important source of iron ore in the European Union. In the North Atlantic region of the Nordic Arctic, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland have all been colonies or overseas dependencies of the kingdoms of Norway or Denmark for much of their history, and all three territories have strong popular movements seeking full independence. Iceland and the Faroe Islands both enjoyed short histories as independent Viking settler commonwealths, starting in the eighth century. Then in 1035 for the pharaohs and 1262 for Iceland, they submitted to the King of Norway. Iceland achieved home rule in 1904, sovereignty in 1918, and was declared a Republic in 1944. The Faroe Islands gained home rule from the Kingdom of Denmark in 1948. Meanwhile, Greenland was colonized by the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway in 1721, and remained that way until it became an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953. Greenland gained home rule in 1979 and self-rule in 2009. For a long time, these places were deeply dependent on political and economic decisions made mainly in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe. But that is slowly changing.
