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#wrangel island
catsofyore · 6 months
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Amazing photo of Allen Crawford and Vic, the Wrangel Island expedition cat in the 1920s. This expedition was an absolute nightmare. Only Vic and her owner, an extraordinary woman named Ada Blackjack, survived. I strongly encourage you to look up Ada! Source.
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jesslovesboats · 5 months
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Hey Tumblr, thought you might enjoy seeing some more pictures of Ada Blackjack!
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EDITED TO ADD: If you like this post, you might also like my previous post about Ada with reading recommendations!
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mapsontheweb · 2 months
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Wrangel island. A land so remote that colonization attempts and territorial claims were made by American and Canadian explorers up until 1926 when the Soviet Union enforced its claim.
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dinosly · 1 month
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The Last Mammoth (2021)
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"As the pyramids rose, the last mammoth mourned." A piece depicting the last of the Wrangel Island wooly mammoths, a little less than 4 000 years ago.
I never posted a solo post about this artwork, and I felt like this would be a good time, enjoy the process!
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jadeseadragon · 5 months
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Top:
Woolly mammoth and muskox remains displayed on Wrangel Island, where mammoths survived until 4,000 years ago.
Bottom:
Wooly mammoth, supposedly filmed on Wrangel Island, Alaska in the early 20th century.
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sitting-on-me-bum · 2 years
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Polar bears move into abandoned Arctic weather station
Photographer Dmitry Kokh discovered polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, while on a trip to Wrangel Island, a Unesco-recognised nature reserve that serves as a refuge to the animals.
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Places to visit…
О́стров Вра́нгеля
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wildlifeanalysis · 11 months
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fairondaisy · 4 months
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hey you ever wonder if eldest daughter helen blackthorn ever wished that she could be free of the responsibility of caring for all her siblings and then felt the guilt of that wish crack her in half as she stood alone in the snowy wilderness of wrangel island
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xtruss · 1 year
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House of Bears: Polar Bears living in an abandoned Weather Station in Kolyuchin. Photograph Dmitry Kokh
Polar Bears Move Into Abandoned Arctic Weather Station – Photo Essay
Photographer Dmitry Kokh Discovered Polar Bears living in an Abandoned Weather Station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, while on a trip to Wrangel Island, a Unesco-recognised Nature Reserve that Serves as a Refuge to the Animals
— Dmitry Kokh | Monday, 31 January 2022
I had dreamed about photographing polar bears for a long time. Some time ago my hobby, wildlife photography, ceased to be just a hobby and turned into a large part of my life. And if you devote so much time to an activity then your goals should be ambitious. Most of all I like to take pictures of large marine animals, whether on land or under water. Not everyone knows, but zoologists classify polar bears as marine mammals since they spend most of their time on ice floes away from land. And their paws even have webbing.
There are only a few places on the planet where polar bears can be found in large numbers. One of them is Russia’s Wrangel Island, a nature reserve under Unesco protection that is often called a polar bear maternity ward. The place is very inaccessible, which may be bad for tourists but is great for the animals.
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Preparations for the expedition to Wrangel took nearly two years, and last August we finally set off for the north of Chukotka on a small ice-class sailing yacht. We proceeded about 2,000km (1,200 miles) along the coast, stopping in deserted bays and photographing grey and humpback whales. We met an incredible number of different birds, several brown bears, sea lions and seals. We went scuba diving in the waters of the Chukchi Sea, which turned out to be full of life. I felt as if I was in a parallel universe. Days and weeks passed. Landscapes changed dozens of times: sunny pebble beaches, steep cliffs, mountains and tundra. Finally, after passing Cape Dezhnev and heading for Wrangel Island, we began to encounter floating sea ice, which was unusual for the time of year. It had been assumed that the ice edge would be much farther north.
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One day, bad weather was expected and the captain approached a small island, Kolyuchin, to take shelter from the storm. Kolyuchin is known for the polar weather station that operated on it in Soviet times. Though the station was closed in 1992, the abandoned village still stands on the island.
The stormy wind and rain and the neglected buildings on the rocky shores all served to make everything happening seem surreal. Suddenly we noticed movement in the windows of the houses.
Someone took out some binoculars and we saw the heads of polar bears. Fog, a place long deserted by people, polar bears – it was the perfect setting.
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The bears walked around the houses and among barrels left on the island a long time ago. There were about 20 animals in sight at the same time, mostly males. The females kept to the side with their cubs, closer to the shores of the island. Barrels are a well-known problem in the Russian Arctic. Back in the days of the USSR, fuel was delivered to the station in them, but it was very expensive to take the barrels back, so they were simply discarded.
It was too dangerous to land on the island that day, so I took pictures from a drone equipped with special low-noise propellers. I also used certain tricks of the trade that allowed me to shoot the animals without disturbing them. After a while, the bears practically ignored the unusual buzzing.
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Later I asked one of Russia’s top polar bear experts, Anatoly Kochnev, what causes the animals’ behaviour – why do they love to sit in the buildings? The biologist, who worked in Chukotka and on the island of Kolyuchin for many years, told me that, first of all, polar bears are very curious by nature, so they always attempt to get through any unlocked window or door. And secondly, unfortunately, these animals were traditionally hunted, and so they use these houses as a form of protection from humans.
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But then he told me something even more interesting. It turns out that bears very rarely appear on the island in such numbers. No one knows why, but once every nine years the floating ice remains near the shore in summer. Consequently, the bears do not travel far to the north with the ice, as usual, and take up residence in the abandoned polar station. We saw proof of this later on when we met almost no bears on Wrangel Island to the north.
Though several months have passed since the expedition, I still sometimes see polar bears in decaying windows before my eyes when falling asleep. And looking at the main photo in my life at the moment, the one named House of Bears, I think that sooner or later all human-made things on Earth will cease to exist – buildings, cars and computers will all meet their end. But life is eternal. These bears will continue to hunt, swim among ice floes and explore islands even when civilization ceases to exist. But life will remain eternal only if we humans finally begin to take care of the planet and the living creatures that need our protection.
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mhaccunoval · 2 years
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nun cho ga...
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froody · 3 months
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Woolly mammoths are like my Roman Empire. I think about them all the time. Their importance to human history, their place in culture thousands of years after their extinction, the way they went extinct with the genetic bottleneck and then the genetic breakdown on Wrangel Island, the way tools, art and shelters were constructed from their bodies even thousands of years after their death. Truly has there ever been a more iconic and fantastic animal? I’m sure they were delicious too.
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jesslovesboats · 6 months
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So You Want To Learn About Ada Blackjack
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Interested in learning more about polar survivor and finalist in the Polar Explorer Showdown Ada Blackjack? You've come to the right place! I am not a professional academic, but I am a librarian and research professional who has been hyperfixating on the Wrangel Island expedition (and its spiritual predecessor, the Canadian Arctic Expedition or CAE) for a hot minute. My current research is more focused on the boys, but Ada is amazing and more people should know about her!
Here's some background info that will be helpful:
The Wrangel Island expedition was organized by Icelandic-Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Stefansson was a skilled survivalist and solo explorer, but also a terrible organizer, an attention seeker, and Not A Particularly Good Guy. In 1913, the Karluk, one of the ships associated with the CAE, was frozen in. Stefansson, a seasoned polar explorer, could have stayed and helped his inexperienced crew cope with the challenges of their situation. Instead, he abandoned them to go on a "hunting trip" with a small group that included his personal secretary and the expedition photographer. The Karluk crew made it to a desolate island between Alaska and Siberia named Wrangel Island, where the survivors lived for many months until their eventual rescue. You can read more about this story in The Ice Master by Jennifer Niven and Empire of Ice and Stone by Buddy Levy!
After abandoning the crew of the Karluk, Stefansson stayed in the Arctic until 1918. As soon as he returned to Canada, he immediately started plotting and scheming to get back in the spotlight. Somewhere along the way, he had the brilliant idea that Canada should claim Wrangel Island, the place where the Karluk survivors were marooned (and a known Russian territory). The Canadian government was not at all interested, and neither was the British government, but he didn't let that stop him!
He gathered a crew of 3 eager young Americans- Fred Maurer (28, a survivor of the Karluk disaster), E. Lorne Knight (28, a veteran of the CAE), and Milton Galle (19, had briefly served as Stefansson's secretary while he was on the lecture circuit, no polar experience), and told them that he wanted to claim Wrangel Island for Canada and set up a colony there. However, since all three were Americans, Stefansson needed to find a Canadian citizen willing to lead the expedition. Enter Allan Crawford (20, university student, no polar experience). These four men would claim Wrangel Island for Canada, a thing the Canadian government did not ask them to do, and set up a colony there, planning to stay for at least a year.
Stefansson promised the men that he would hire Indigenous hunters, cooks, and seamstresses to travel with them. However, only Ada Blackjack agreed to go. Ada was a petite 23 year old Iñupiat woman, a survivor of an abusive marriage, and a single mother with a sick son. She was uncomfortable being the only woman and the only Indigenous person in the group, but she needed the money to pay her son's medical expenses. She joined these 4 men (and a cat named Vic) and traveled to Wrangel Island in 1921.
And… you'll have to pick up a book to find out what happens next!
I highly, HIGHLY recommend the book Ada Blackjack by Jennifer Niven. It's meticulously researched and absolutely stunning! Please read it, fall in love with (some of) these people, and join me in Wrangel Island hell.
If you don't have time to read a book but still want the whole story, this Atlas Obscura article is excellent.
Want to read Ada's diary? It's digitized and available through Dartmouth Special Collections, along with a bunch of incredible photos!
Stefansson also wrote a book called The Adventure of Wrangel Island, and every time I think about it, it makes me want to throw up. He's an unreliable narrator, but there are some good pictures.
I hope you've enjoyed learning about Ada! PLEASE read the Niven book, I promise you won't regret it. If you have any questions I will do my best to answer them!
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moths-daily · 3 months
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hiiii love this blog have you done the arctic woolly bear moth :^)
Moth Of The Day #276
Artcic Woolly Bear Moth
Gynaephora groenlandica
From the erebidae family. They can be found in Canada, Greenland and Wrangel Island.
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Image sources: [1] [2] [3]
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mostly-mundane-atla · 22 days
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Inupiaq Books
This post was inspired by learning about and daydreaming about visiting Birchbark Books, a Native-owned bookstore in Minneapolis, so there will be some links to buy the books they have on this list.
Starting Things Off with Two Inupiaq Poets
Joan Naviyuk Kane, whose available collections include:
Hyperboreal
Black Milk Carbon
The Cormorant Hunter's Wife
She also wrote Dark Traffic, but this site doesn't seem to carry any copies
Dg Nanouk Okpik, whose available collections include
Blood Snow
Corpse Whale
Fictionalized Accounts of Historical Events
A Line of Driftwood: the Ada Blackjack Story by Diane Glancy, also available at Birchwood Books, is a fictionalized account of Ada Blackjack's experience surviving the explorers she was working with on Wrangel Island, based on historical records and Blackjack's own diary.
Goodbye, My Island by Rie Muñoz is a historical fiction aimed at younger readers with little knowledge of the Inupiat about a little girl living on King Island. Reads a lot like an American Girl book in case anyone wants to relive that nostalgia
Blessing's Bead by Debby Dahl Edwardson is a Young Adult historical fiction novel about hardships faced by two generations of girls in the same family, 70 years apart. One reviewer pointed out that the second part of the book, set in the 1980s, is written in Village English, so that might be a new experience for some of you
Photography
Menadelook: and Inupiaq Teacher's Photographs of Alaska Village Life, 1907-1932 edited by Eileen Norbert is, exactly as the title suggests, a collection of documentary photographs depicting village life in early 20th century Alaska.
Nuvuk, the Northernmost: Altered Land, Altered Lives in Barrow, Alaska by David James Inulak Lume is another collection of documentary photographs published in 2013, with a focus on the wildlife and negative effects of climate change
Guidebooks (i only found one specifically Inupiaq)
Plants That We Eat/Nauriat Niģiñaqtuat: from the Traditional Wisdom of Iñupiat Elders of Northwest Alaska by Anore Jones is a guide to Alaskan vegetation that in Inupiat have subsisted on for generations upon generations with info on how to identify them and how they were traditionally used.
Anthropology
Kuuvangmiut Subsistence: Traditional Eskimo Life in the Latter Twentieth Century by Douglas B. Anderson et al details traditional lifestyles and subsistance customs of the Kobuk River Inupiat
Life at the Swift Water Place: Northwest Alaska at the Threshold of European Contact by Douglas D. Anderson and Wanni W. Anderson: a multidisciplinary study of a specific Kobuk River group, the Amilgaqtau Yaagmiut, at the very beginning of European and Asian trade.
Upside Down: Seasons Among the Nunamiut by Margaret B. Blackman is a collection of essays reflecting on almost 20 years of anthropological fieldwork focused on the Nunamiut of Anuktuvuk Pass: the traditional culture and the adaption to new technology.
Nonfiction
Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement by Dan O'Neill is about Project Chariot. In an attempt to find peaceful uses of wartime technology, Edward Teller planned to drop six nukes on the Inupiaq village of Point Hope, officially to build a harbor but it can't be ignored that the US government wanted to know the effects radiation had on humans and animals. The scope is wider than the Inupiat people involved and their resistance to the project, but as it is no small part of this lesser discussed moment of history, it only feels right to include this
Fifty Miles From Tomorrow: a Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William L. Iģģiaģruk Hensley is an autobiography following the author's tradition upbringing, pursuit of an education, and his part in the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act, where he and other Alaska Native activists had to teach themselves United States Law to best lobby the government for land and financial compensation as reparations for colonization.
Sadie Bower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman by Margaret B. Blackman is a biography of the titular Sadie Bower Neakok, a beloved public figure of Utqiagvik, former Barrow. Neakok grew up one of ten children of an Inupiaq woman named Asianggataq, and the first white settler to live in Utqiagvik/Barrow, Charles Bower. She used the out-of-state college education she received to aid her community as a teacher, a wellfare worker, and advocate who won the right for Native languages to be used in court when defendants couldn't speak English, and more.
Folktales and Oral Histories
Folktales of the Riverine and Costal Iñupiat/Unipchallu Uqaqtuallu Kuungmiuñļu Taģiuģmiuñļu edited by Wanni W. Anderson and Ruth Tatqaviñ Sampson, transcribed by Angeline Ipiiļik Newlin and translated by Michael Qakiq Atorak is a collection of eleven Inupiaq folktales in English and the original Inupiaq.
The Dall Sheep Dinner Guest: Iñupiaq Narratives of Northwest Alaska by Wanni W. Anderson is a collection of Kobuk River Inupiaq folktales and oral histories collected from Inupiat storytellers and accompanied by Anderson's own essays explaining cultural context. Unlike the other two collections of traditional stories mentioned on this list, this one is only written in English.
Ugiuvangmiut Quliapyuit/King Island Tales: Eskimo Historu and Legends from Bering Strait compiled and edited by Lawrence D. Kaplan, collected by Gertrude Analoak, Margaret Seeganna, and Mary Alexander, and translated and transcribed by Gertrude Analoak and Margaret Seeganna is another collection of folktales and oral history. Focusing on the Ugiuvangmiut, this one also contains introductions to provide cultural context and stories written in both english and the original Inupiaq.
The Winter Walk by Loretta Outwater Cox is an oral history about a pregnant widow journeying home with her two children having to survive the harsh winter the entire way. This is often recommended with a similar book detailing Athabascan survival called Two Old Women.
Dictionaries and Language Books
Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary by Donald H. Webster and Wilfred Zibell, with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster, is an older Inupiaq to English dictionary. It predates the standardization of Inupiaq spelling, uses some outdated and even offensive language that was considered correct at the time of its publication, and the free pdf provided by UAF seems to be missing some pages. In spite of this it is still a useful resource. The words are organized by subject matter rather than alphabetically, each entry indicating if it's specific to any one dialect, and the illustrations are quite charming.
Let's Learn Eskimo by Donald H. Webster with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster makes a great companion to the Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary, going over grammar and sentence structure rather than translations. The tables of pronouns are especially helpful in my opinion.
Ilisaqativut.org also has some helpful tools and materials and recommendations for learning the Inupiat language with links to buy physical books, download free pdfs, and look through searchable online versions
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whencyclopedia · 5 months
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Woolly Mammoth
The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, is an extinct herbivore related to elephants who trudged across the steppe-tundras of Eurasia and North America from around 300,000 years ago until their numbers seriously dropped from around 11,000 years ago. A few last stragglers survived into the Holocene on island refuges off the coast of Siberia and Alaska. One of these - Wrangel Island - harboured the last known group of mammoths until around 3,700 years ago.
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