Native 'land claims', Russian style

In Russia, as in Canada, Native peoples are attempting to gain greater control over their homelands. In the last decade, legislation at both the federal and sub-federal (provincial, republican, etc.) level has sanctioned the transfer of land to Native 'possession', though not ownership, for the pursuit of traditional activities. This paper surveys the legislative basis that authorizes the creation of Native 'communes' (obshchinas) and their territorialization. After examining how the process works in theory, it examines the paths taken, and obstacles met, in establishing obshchinas in three Native communities in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia).     

Organisational Capacity for Engaging with Indigenous Australians

Community capacity building is a common goal for programmes and policies involving Indigenous peoples, but it relies heavily on organisational capacity to work effectively in intercultural settings. This paper reviews the organisational capacity of the senior leaders of Australian Red Cross and institutional efforts to build a culturally appropriate and respectful organisation. It reports results from a survey of the organisation's leadership team and follow‐up interviews undertaken in 2010, reviews the challenges facing the organisation in working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and considers institutional progress in building internal capacity to lead change in working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. The paper concludes with discussion of wider implications of this research.     

RECENT RESULTS OF NEOLITHIC RESEARCH IN MOLDAVIA (USSR)

Summary. The area north of the Black Sea, from the Danube to the Caucasus, was a zone of interaction between farming populations and indigenous Mesolithic groups which acquired pottery and elements of stock-breeding. Recent research in Soviet Moldavia, at the western end of this area, has clarified the nature of contacts between farming groups of Balkan origin and local groups centred on the Dnestr and Bug.     

Natural and Unnatural Disasters: Responding with Respect for Indigenous Rights and Knowledges

A key challenge for contemporary democratic societies is how to respond to disasters in ways that foster just and sustainable outcomes that build resilience, respect human rights, and foster economic, social, and cultural well‐being in reasonable timeframes and at reasonable costs. In many places experiencing rapid environmental change, indigenous people continue to exercise some level of self‐governance and autonomy, but they also face the burden of rapid social change and hostile or ambiguous policy settings. Drawing largely on experience in northern Australia, this paper argues that state policies can compound and contribute to vulnerability of indigenous groups to both natural and policy‐driven disasters in many places. State‐sponsored programmes that fail to respect indigenous rights and fail to acknowledge the relevance of indigenous knowledge to both social and environmental recovery entrench patterns of racialised disadvantage and marginalisation and set in train future vulnerabilities and disasters. The paper advocates an approach to risk assessment, preparation, and recovery that prioritises partnerships based on recognition, respect, and explicit commitment to justice. The alternatives are to continue prioritising short‐term expediencies and opportunistic pursuit of integration, or subverting indigenous rights and the knowledge systems that underpin them. This paper argues such alternatives are not only unethical, but also ineffective.     

THE HOPE HERAKLES RECONSIDERED

Summary. The Hope Herakles, hitherto thought to be a Roman copy of a statue by Skopas, is here shown to be a pastiche. The head is tentatively recognised as a classicising portrait, while the body type, having come down to us in a variety of reproductions carrying a different head, is associated with the Argive School of the late 5th c BC. A dating of the latter's prototype close to the plague of 429 as well as the Attic provenance of some of the copies suggest a possible connection with Hageladas'Herakles Alexikakos at Melite.     

WHO INVENTED THE CLAW CHISEL?

Summary. Part I discusses the problem of the introduction of the claw chisel in stone masonry and sculpture. This tool was thought to have been invented in 6th-century Greece for the needs of marble carving. The detection of its traces on a tomb of 7th-century Egypt in soft limestone, however, now suggests not only that the Greeks borrowed it from the Egyptians but also that it was not originally a marbleworker's tool. Part II deals with both the tomb and career of an Egyptian official designated Nespeqashuty D in order to place into a chronological framework one of the earliest securely dated attestations for the use of the claw chisel in Egyptian art. Both parts are intended to place the impact of Egypt on Greece into sharper focus.     

TWO STATUES OF HERCULES IN THE FORUM BOARIUM IN ROME

Summary. This paper is concerned with two statues of Hercules associated with his cult in the Forum Boarium in Rome. First, the gilded bronze in the Conservatori Museum, usually thought to have been the cult image, carried from Greece, of a late Hellenistic rotunda, is here dated to the first–second centuries AD and considered an independent dedication standing in the Forum. Second, the Julio-Claudian marble seated Hercules in the Palazzo Altemps is discussed in relation to the so-called Invictus type reproduced in the minor arts of the first to second centuries AD. In addition, we speculate on its possible inspiration from a prototype of the 430s BC in South Italy.