Russia's Arctic Dream and Indigenous Disempowerment: Change and Continuity

This chapter argues that while the Arctic has historically remained isolated from international politics and has been characterized instead as peripheral territory, contemporary politics have brought the Arctic into contestation as non-Arctic players increasingly pursue Arctic natural resources. Indigenous rights, like transborder mobilization, have increased across most of the Arctic. However, in Russia, Putin's model of intense resource extraction for economic growth has positioned the Arctic as a central resource base, restricting the ability of Indigenous Peoples in the Russian Arctic to mobilize across space and borders. Reinvigorated colonization of the Arctic has brought collective cultural trauma and environmental degradation. This chapter concludes that the environmental and sociocultural fate of the Arctic is desperate.