Colonial Push and Pull: Toward a Typology of Circumpolar Relocations and Resettlements

This paper attempts to provide a first summary of relocation and resettlement events and experiences in the circumpolar North during the 20th century. While the North has seen population movements for millennia—ranging from aboriginal settlement episodes to seasonal subsistence movement—the character of population movements changed significantly with the advent of colonial powers and the integration of arctic and subarctic regions into southern states. Now, the rational for population concentrations and dispersals was no longer defined locally but in administrative centers outside of the North. While the ambition of this paper is to deal with (colonial) state-induced population movements—primarily relocations and resettlements—throughout the North, most attention will be given to a comparison of these processes in Alaska and Chukotka. During most of the previous century, these two regions seem to represent two diametrically opposed kinds of experiences regarding the role of the state in these population movements. While Chukotka has been the frequent recipient of Soviet and post-Soviet forms of social engineering, Alaska seems to have been relatively free from such interventions. At the end, this paper attempts to overcome simplistic models based on the dichotomy of forced vs. voluntary relocation events and provide a continuum of types characteristic for Alaska and Chukotka (as well as for the North in general), and discuss the socio-cultural impacts of these types. Finally, while the emphasis is on developments during the 20th century, this paper will contribute to ongoing discussions about future relocations and resettlements due to climate and environmental change.