The knowledge that got her there had always been there, waiting.

The Research That Finally Asked The Right Questions

For most of the twentieth century, researchers who studied Arctic environments studied them through the lens of Western science: physical measurement, biological taxonomy, ecological modeling.

They counted species, measured temperatures, mapped terrain, and built models of how Arctic ecosystems functioned.

What they were not doing, for most of that century, was asking the people who had lived in those ecosystems for thousands of years what they knew about them.

The shift began in the 1960s and 1970s, largely through the work of anthropologists who had the discipline and the patience to actually live with the communities they were studying.