About the Author

Igor Krupnik is curator of Arctic and Northern Ethnology collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. His areas of expertise include modern cultures, ecological knowledge, and cultural heritage of Arctic people, primarily in Alaska and Siberia; culture change and contact history; human ecology; history of Arctic science and Arctic indigenous studies; and the impact of modern climate change on Arctic residents. He served on the Joint Committee for the International Polar Year 2007-2008 and was instrumental in bringing sociocultural and humanities issues, ecological knowledge, and environmental observations of northern residents to its program. He has published and edited several books and collections and numerous papers, including three volumes on indigenous observations of Arctic environmental change and a recent study of the contact history of the Yupik Eskimo, Yupik Transitions- Change and Survival at Bering Strait, 1900-1960 (with Michael Chlenov).