The transfer of knowledge is a key issue in the North as Indigenous Peoples meet the ongoing need to adapt to cultural and environmental change. In eight essays, experts survey critical issues surrounding the knowledge practices of the Inuit of northern Canada and Greenland and the Northern Sámi of Scandinavia, and the difficulties of transferring that knowledge from one generation to the next. Reflecting the ongoing work of the Research Group Circumpolar Cultures, these multidisciplinary essays offer fresh understandings through history and across geography as scholars analyze cultural, ecological, and political aspects of peoples in transition. Traditions, Traps and Trends is an important book for students and scholars in anthropology and ethnography and for everyone interested in the Circumpolar North.

Contributors: Cunera Buijs, Frédéric Laugrand, Barbara Helen Miller, Thea Olsthoorn, Jarich Oosten, Willem Rasing, Kim van Dam, Nellejet Zorgdrager

Jarich Oosten (1945–2016) was emeritus Professor of the Department of Anthropology at Leiden University and the author of numerous publications.

Jarich Oosten's profile page

Barbara Helen Miller, PhD in Anthropology from Leiden University (the Netherlands) is currently an independent scholar, working in co-operation with the Research Group Circumpolar Cultures. She received the Master of Arts in Psychology of Religion from the Norwich University, Vermont College (Montpelier, Vermont, USA) and the Diploma in Analytical Psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute Zürich (Küsnacht, Switzerland). Her most widely read publication is Connecting and Correcting, A Case Study of Sámi Healers in Porsanger. Leiden: CNWS (2007).

Barbara Helen Miller's profile page

"Traditions, Traps and Trends gives a profound insight into traditional knowledge and what it means to the scholars promoting it. The book will be a most welcome reader within this field."

Kirsten Thisted

“Traditions, Traps and Trends is exceptional in several ways…. [It] reflects the breadth of Indigenous knowledge systems; as it happens here, those of Inuit and Sami. Each contribution provides insight into the complexity and wholeness of these systems by illuminating the values and beliefs that meaningfully animate livelihood and social life.”

George W. Wenzel, Journal of Northern Studies, 2020

This edited collection of essays is based on long-term fieldwork which documents the unique knowledge practices of Inuit in Canada and Greenland and Northern Sami. The authors examine the problems that Inuit and Northern Sami face when trying to pass on aspects of their culture to the younger generation.

David G. Anderson, Chair in The Anthropology of the North, University of Aberdeen