Nuutauniq (Moves in Inuit Life): Arctic Transformations and the Politics of Urban Inuit Mobility

ABSTRACT

Today, one in four Inuit live outside of Inuit Nunangat, the Arctic territory incorporating the four northern Inuit land claims regions. With the majority of those Inuit living in cities, the issue of urban Inuit populations is becoming a more prominent focus for policy debate. In this article, I argue that urban Inuit mobility is a historically complex and multilayered phenomenon embedded in, not detached from, the major processes of social transformation affecting Inuit across the Canadian Arctic from the mid-twentieth century on. I use this analysis to explore the diverse formulation of Inuit-specific policy initiatives in Montreal, a task that, I show, is made easier by the Montreal Inuit radio show called Nipivut.     

Evaluating microfossil content of dental calculus from Brazilian sambaquis

To date, limited numbers of dental calculus samples have been analyzed by researchers in diverse parts of the world. The combined analyses of these have provided some general guidelines for the analysis of calculus that is non-destructive to archaeological teeth. There is still a need for a quantitative study of large numbers of calculus samples to establish protocols, assess the level of contamination, evaluate the quantity of microfossils in dental calculus, and to compare analysis results with the literature concerning the biology of calculus formation. We analyzed dental calculus from 53 teeth from four Brazilian sambaquis. Sambaquis are the shell-mounds that were established prehistorically along the Brazilian coast. The analysis of sambaqui dental calculi shows that there are relatively high concentrations of microfossils (phytoliths and starch), mineral fragments, and charcoal in dental calculus. Mineral fragments and charcoal are possibly contaminants. The largest dental calculi have the lowest concentrations of microfossils. Biologically, this is explained by individual variation in calculus formation between people. Importantly, starch is ubiquitous in dental calculus. The starch and phytoliths show that certainly Dioscorea (yam) and Araucaria angustifolia (Paraná pine) were eaten by sambaqui people. Araceae (arum family), Ipomoea batatas (sweet potato) and Zea mays (maize) were probably in their diet.     

Variable nucleotide tandem repeat (VNTR) typing of two palaeopathological cases of lepromatous leprosy from Mediaeval England

Using ancient DNA methods, we have examined in detail two archaeological cases of leprosy from Mediaeval England. The first was a child skeleton with rhino-maxillary changes typical of lepromatous leprosy (LL). The second case was the skeleton of a male adult who showed both typical rhino-maxillary changes and osteitis/periostitis on the leg and foot bones. Bone powder was sampled from both cases and DNA extracts were prepared. These were subjected to a series of polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) specific for regions on the Mycobacterium leprae genome. The repetitive element RLEP was used for confirmation of M. leprae DNA and then three polymorphic regions were successfully amplified and sequenced to determine the number of variable nucleotide tandem repeats (vntr) at these loci. These were the microsatellite regions ML2344 and ML2172 and the minisatellite region ML0058. Genotyping data from the strains preserved within the skeletal remains were compared with those obtained for a reference strain of M. leprae. Variation at these three loci was found between both burials and the reference strain, indicating that vntr typing of LL cases from the archaeological record is a useful way of confirming disease and an additional means of authenticating aDNA data. This demonstrates the feasibility of targeting multiple loci for phylogenetic studies of leprosy strains from archival sources.     

Introduction: Disability Policy as an Emerging Field of Mainstream Public Policy Research and Pedagogy

The purpose of this two-part symposium of the Policy Studies Journal is to broaden theconcept of disability policy from one that has relevance onlyforpeople interested in that substantive area to that of a major field of social policy having ramifications for the study and teaching of public policy broadly construed. The goal is for experiences in disability policy to be regarded in the same way that experiences in Other substantive areas, such as environmental policy, other social services, and civil rights, illustrate broader themes in areas such as public management, policy analysis, or ethics.     

Book reviews

Tsuyoshi Kato. Matriliny and migration: evolving Minangkabau traditions in Indonesia. 267 pp. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982. $28.10.

E. M. Beekman (tr.). The poison tree. Selected writings of Rimphius on the natural history of the Indies. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. (Library of the Indies.) $20.

Nigel Phillips. Sijobang: sung narrative poetry of West Sumatra, xi, 255 pp. Cambridge, etc: Cambridge University Press, 1981. (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, I.) £22.50.

Bernd Nothofer. Dialektatlas von Zentral‐Java. vi, 32 pp., 337 maps. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1981. DM 64.

Marlene van Doom and cthers (ed.). Improving access to Indonesian collections in the Netherlands: contributions to a survey of Dutch library and documentation activities in the field of Indonesian studies. Edited by Mavlene van Doorn, Irene Farjon, Ciska Pattipilohy, Gerard J Telkamp. [iv], 78 pp. Leiden: Centre for the History of European Expansion (University of Leiden) in cooperation with the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen for the Contactgroep Documentatie Indonesie, 1981. (Intercon‐tinenta, No. 2.)

Leo Suryadinata. Eminent Indonesian Chinese: biographical sketches. Revised edition. 218 pp. Singapore: Gunung Agung, 1981.

A. Ed. Schmidgall‐Tellings and Alan M Stevens. Contemporary Indonesian‐English dictionary: a supplement to the standard Indonesian dictionaries with particular concentration on new words₃ expressions, and meanings, xv, 388 pp. Athens, Ohio, etc: Ohio University Press, [^C1981].

Peter B R Carey (tr.). Babad Dipanagara. An account of the outbreak of the Java War (1825–30). “ The Surdkarta court version of the Babad Dipanagara with translations into English and Indonesian Malay, lxxiii, 344 pp., front., 4 plates, map. Kuala Lumpur: printed for the Council of the M.B.R.A.S. by Art Printing Works Sdn. Bhd., 1981. (Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Monograph No. 9.) M$55.     

Experimental study of aqueous fluid infiltration into quartzite: implications for the kinetics of fluid redistribution and grain growth driven by interfacial energy reduction

To investigate the kinetics of interfacial energy‐driven fluid infiltration, experiments were carried out in a quartzite–water system at 621–925°C and 0.8 GPa. Infiltration couples were made by juxtaposing presynthesized dry quartzite cylinders and fluid reservoirs. The infiltration process was confirmed by the presence of pores at the quartzite grain edges. As predicted from theoretical considerations and previous experiments, wetting fluids such as pure water and NaCl aqueous solution infiltrated into quartzite, whereas nonwetting CO₂‐rich fluids did not. Newly precipitated quartz layers at the surfaces of the infiltrated sample proved that infiltration took place by a dissolution–precipitation mechanism. The enhancement of grain growth by fluid infiltration was observed over the entire range of experimental temperatures. The fluid fraction, gauged by the porosity of the run products, increases at the infiltration front and then decreases towards the fluid reservoir to form a high‐porosity zone with a maximum porosity of 2.3–2.9%. As infiltration proceeds, the high‐porosity zone advances like a travelling wave. This porosity wave is probably caused by a grain curvature gradient resulting from preferential grain growth in the infiltrated part of the quartzite, perhaps combined with other factors. The infiltration kinetics were modelled with a steady‐state diffusion model over the high‐porosity zone. The solubility difference between dissolving and precipitating grains was deduced to be 2 × 10^?2?3 × 10^?1 wt %. The experimentally obtained infiltration rate of aqueous fluid in the steady‐state diffusion regime (2 ± 0.5 × 10^?8 m sec^?1 at 823°C) is much faster than the estimated metamorphic fluid flux rates, so that interfacial energy‐driven fluid redistribution in quartz‐rich layers could significantly contribute to the fluid flux in high‐grade metamorphism, at least over a short distance. Cathodoluminescence observations of the run products revealed that the grain growth of quartzite in the presence of fluid proceeds extensively, which would promote the chemical equilibration between fluid and rock more effectively than would volume diffusion in quartz crystals.