Session Title
Spirited Away: Intersecting Perspectives on Relocation and Religion in the Circumpolar North

Session Organizers
Patrick Plattet, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Swiss National Science Foundation;
ffpp1@uaf.edu

Peter Schweitzer, University of Alaska Fairbanks
ffpps@uaf.edu

Session Abstract
How do relocation and resettlement affect the spiritual and religious dimensions of life in the North?  To what extent are population movements and their social consequences affected by religious practices and representations?  Without providing final answers, this session shows the anthropological relevance of diverse and intersecting perspectives on migration and religion.  Papers will highlight this interplay by focusing on multi-layered expressions of relocation, “believing,” rebuilding, and remembering among various Northern communities.  This panel is intended as a contribution to the BOREAS research program of the European Science Foundation (http://www.esf.org/activities/eurocores/programmes/boreas.html).  Two NSF-funded projects under this program, MOVE and NEWREL, are sponsoring this symposium.


Programme:

1.    Introduction, by Patrick Plattet and Peter Schweitzer (10 min.)

2.    Moved by the State: Circumpolar Perspectives on Relocation and Cultural Impacts (20 min.)
Peter Schweitzer, University of Alaska Fairbanks

The 20th century throughout the circumpolar North was characterized by state projects aimed at the regulation of movements of human groups. Indigenous communities were enticed or forced to become sedentary around infrastructural nodes, such as churches, schools, and stores, and the more or less planned movement of a non-indigenous work force to the North was a necessary requirement for the realization of “high-modernism” state projects north of the temperate zones. The paper will provide an overview over these movements and their cultural and spiritual consequences.

3.    Beringian Ghost Towns: Reading the Fragments of a Ruined Past (20 min.)
Tobias Holzlehner, University of Alaska Fairbanks

What becomes of a place when it has been abandoned?  What of the attachment to and the sense of place when one is forcibly removed from the dwelling?  This paper reflects on a case study of forced relocation on the Chukchi Peninsula in Northeastern Russia.  The inhabitants of native coastal villages have been subjected to a forced relocation policy by the Soviet state in the course of the last century that left dozens of coastal settlements and hunting bases deserted. Notions of abandonment and nostalgia are situated in relation to place, while stories and strategies are examined how people come to terms with the ruins of a fragmented past.
   
4.    Living with the Absence of the State in the Magadan Region (20 min.)
Elena Khlinovskaya Rockhill, University of Alberta

The Stalinist industrialisation plan of the 1930s required development of the minerals- and metals-rich Magadan Region of the Russian Northeast, necessitating massive relocation of people first as forced labour, and starting in the 1950s, free labour attracted by state-funded hefty material benefits.  The retreat of the state in the 1990s required initiatives concerning moving much of the population back into the westernpart of Russia.  This paper focuses on state programmes to assist and induce relocation and local responses to these initiatives, using a case study of a “closed down” community where many families remain without any state infrastructure in place.

5.    Whose Church is It? Exploring the Role of Religious Unity in Relocation (20 min.)
Medeia Csoba DeHass, University of Alaska Fairbanks

    – BREAK –

6.    The Effects of Social Change on Religious Life in Magadan (20 min.)
Sasha Antohin, University of Alaska Fairbanks

7.    Sacred and significant places of Itelmen people in Western Kamchatka, Russia (20 min.) Tatiana Degai, University of Alaska Fairbanks

8.    Conflicts of a Higher Order. Religious Grounding and Village Resettlements in Kamchatka (20 min.)
David Koester, University of Alaska Fairbanks

9.    Itinerant religiosities. Pathways to Religious Interactions in Contemporary Kamchatka (20 min.)
Patrick Plattet, Swiss National Science Foundation, University of Alaska Fairbanks

10.    Final Discussion (20 min.)