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ENJOYING A LIFEIN SCIENCE. By P.F. SCHOLANDER. who could challengeand debate him. But at all times he seemed Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1990.226 p., maps, photos, to be the center - which he was! Few of his friends will dispute refs. Hardbound. U.S.$22.95. that he was somewhat self-centered, egotistical,and opinionated; but he was always honest and generous. Early on he set forth his Pete Scholander’s autobiography is really an account of his strong views, not universally popular, on religion, succinctly but enjoyment of life. Science wasa meansto this end. That his science not offensively. This simpleand direct honesty is foundthroughout was brilliant, stimulating, challenging, at if times controversial, made his autobiography, which is quite refreshing in today’s world of for him a rich and rewarding life of accomplishment. Herea chanceis “weasel-wording” and cautious indecision. to share in his exuberanceand enthusiasm. It is impossibleto review His imaginationwas unrestrained. Forexample, just after World each and every scientific endeavor, nor is it necessaryor appropriate, War I1 heproposed to mount a laboratory in an old militarytroop since we are not dealing with a scientific manuscript.We are dealing glider to be landed on remote Prince Patrick Island in the high with away of life. Eachaccount of his scientificand non-scientific Canadian Arctic. This becamemoot when the U.S. Office of Naval “adventures” is simple, brief, and largely understandable to the Research establishedthe Arctic Research Laboratoryat Point Barrow, layman. Each is also accompaniedby his unending enthusiasmand Alaska, where an era of on-site arctic field researchin wasmotion set enjoyment of life, congenial companyand colleagues, good food, principally by its initial investigators, Larry Irving and Pete good drink, and good music. He continuously relatesto people and Scholander. his many friends throughout the world. One of Pete Scholander’s important accomplishments was the His firstand continuing love was the Arctic, first in Norwayand creating ofthe R/V Alpha Helix, which fulfilled his fundamental later in Alaska.But better to understand the Arctic one needs also objective ofhaving a first-rate laboratory ship to conduct to know the Tropics. Indeed, the world was his laboratory. And experimental work, whether inthe Arctic, the Tropics, or even up no topic was immune from his scrutiny. His early yearsNorway in the Amazon. The idea was there fromthe outset; but the nurturing and his early arctic ventures are of rather great historical interest. of it and the selling of itto the funding bureaucracieswas largely His youthwas no doubt influencedby many ofthe leading European through Pete’s initiative and persistence. TheAlpha Helix remains scientists ofour time, such asAhlmann, Bjerknes, Krogh,Mosby, as an investigative tool for future researchers who follow in Pete’s and Ruud. I only wish he had devoted more attention and detail steps. to the fascinating start of his career. But sometimes it was purefun. When at Elgin Field in early World It is quite likely that his early training in medicine providedthe War 11, in an attempt to outwit the minuscule brain ofan alligator, best possible broad scientific backgroundfor his later endeavors Pete and Larry Irving managedto capture one and brought it into in physiology. I suppose medicine in itselfseemed too constrained the laboratory one evening. The next morning, after it had frightened for his temperament,although some of his later work returned sig-the lab attendant, they took it back to its creek and let it go. Why? nificant contributions to medical science in application of the “Just for the hell of it.” methods he had developed. What seemed principally to thwart a There is one rather greatgap in Pete Scholander’s chroniclethat normal career in medicinewas hisinsatiable and unlimited curiosity I must note.This is failureto acknowledge adequately the role in about almost everything. His unique abilitywas to identify simple his life and in his science of his marvelousand charming wife, Susan but meaningful scientific problems, suchthe as rise of sap in trees Irving Scholander. Susanstood by him at all times, from providing or grape vines, the growth of mangroves in a salt water habitat, a congenial home and entertainingPete’s almost continuous stream cold acclimation of the natives of Terra del Fuego and the Aus- of guests to active participation in the field projects.Any account tralian bush, diving seals, Australian pearldivers, supercooled fish, of his life is incomplete without recognition of Susan. I am certain and the composition of gas bubbles in ice. all Pete’s friends and colleagues will join me in affirming this His involvement in the gas bubble studies in Labrador,Norway, judgement. and Greenland shows much about his way of science. In 1954 a In conclusion there are two specialenduring notes that deserve small laboratory was established in Hebron Fjord, Labrador,to study mention. In1979 hewas awarded the Nansen Prize from his boyhood the physiology of bottom fish living in a permanent high arctic Norway and distinguished recognition fromthe old world. In 1989 environment of -1.7 to -1.8OC found in the fjord basin, while the Physiological Research Laboratory at Scripps Institute of Ocean- the body fluidsof these fish remained almost l0Cwarmer! Instead ography was named Scholander Hall as anew world recognition. of complexand perhaps unreliablepower machinery at the remote I feel honored and privileged to have had an opportunity to share site, he used the simple expedient of ice and salt to control tem- a small part of Pete Scholander’s exciting and enjoyable life in peratures forthe experimental work. Among the sources ofwere ice science. icebergs, presumably from Greenland. Icebergs contain gas bubbles under pressure. Immediately there was a mercurial rise in Pete’s David C. Nutt curiosity. Could these bubbles be ancient atmosphere trapped when Dogford Road (HC-61 - Box 110) the snow settled onthe Greenland ice cap millennia ago? Etna, New Hampshire 03750 Immediately available fromthe Hebron Fjord work was the tech- W3.A. nology of the physiologist for micro-analysis of respiratory gases. And promptly aboard the R/VBlue Dolphin, analyses ofthe bubble composition weremade. Thisled to further developmentof THE INUPIAT AND ARCTIC ALASKA: AN ETHNOGRAPHY techniques in Norwayand the1958 Greenland icebergdating project, OF DEVELOPMENT. By NORMAN A. CHANCE. Ft. Worth,This: described in chapters 14 and 19. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990. 241 p., maps, photos, figs., A principal feature Pete’sof work that sets him apart from tradi- bib., glossary, index. Softbound. Price not indicated. tional field scientists was his undertaking detailed experimental work on site inthe field, whether inthe Arctic or theTropics, rather than Norman Chance is well knownto students of the Arctic because the traditional way of collecting specimensand data tobe contem- of hisfiist book on the Inupiat, The Eskimo of North Alaska (1966). plated perhaps months later on returnto the home institution. After But his research interests in cultural anthropology tookto otherhim his early venturesto Spitzbergen and Greenland thiswas hisnormal regions. He has conducted studiesin northern Canada, theAmerican way of science. Southwest, and China. This range of experience in comparative A second feature that soon emerged was his “team approach.” development problems gives Chance’s second bookon the Alaska His abilityto attract competent and diverse colleagues would produceInupiat a broaderperspective. Not only does reviewhe changes since much broader and more significant results. And he needed the stimu-his first trip to Kaktovik in 1958 and examine the transformation lation of these colleagues workingon related, or unrelated, projects of the Inupiat hunting and gathering culture under the pressure REVIEWS / 407

of oil and gas development, but he also begins an exploration of yet surprisingly readable backdrop for the book, and the closing, the dynamic relationship between human societies and nature. musically titled “On the Road to KingdomCome,” steps bravely The book’s first section outlines the European and American into the central philosophic issue of seeking an environmental colonial and industrial penetration of areas inhabitedby Inupiat consensus among those who would serve nature and those who in Alaska’s Arctic Slope andevaluates Inuit responsesto this pattern would be servedby it, and those in the middle who are still trying of colonialism. Chance describes the whaling and trading eras andto define “sustainable development.” the changes they brought about in the material culture of the Inupiat,I expect it is difficult to be a tough editor in this financially particularly by introducing new forms of technology and weaponry. unrewarding field,and the collection suffers on occasion from much The middlesection of the book captures the impactof the colonial more emphasis on the first half than the second half of1980% the era on Inupiatliving circumstances ina snapshot of Kaktovikvillage as evidencedby the bibliography and shipping statistics. That said, life in the late 1950s. Chance describes what it was like to grow even if, impossibly, the collection had been started and finished up in sucha time and showshow the Inupiat dealt with economic in the first quarter of year, this fast-breaking events would stillhave changes prior to the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay. begged a “Volume 2.” In recent months further legal challenges The book’s final section explores the situation and prospects to for EARP have supported the Rafferty and Almeda decision,new present-day Inupiat; it is based upon social science research con- environmental assessment legislation has been tabled, and the vast ducted in Alaska during the 1970s and 1980s. The backdrop to eastern and high arctic onshore and offshore has been captured Inupiat social and political developmentis composed of events since in the proposed TFN land claim. Perhapseven more to the point, statehoodformation of state government, discovery of oil at the first Beaufort drilling proposal to be approvedby the new Review Prudhoe Bay in 1968, the successful movementto resolve the Native Board under the Inuvialuit Final Agreement (October 1989) has land claims issue (the Alaska Native Claims SettlementAct of 1971), been quickly followedby the first Beaufort drilling proposal to be which permitted construction of the oil pipeline to proceed, and refused, in ominous terms, under the same agreement 1990).(June legislation to distribute federal lands in Alaska (Alaska National The ongoing impacts of theExxon Valdez are washing ashore, just Interest Lands Conservation Actof 1980), including protection of at the time northerners are ready to makeown difficulttheir tradeoffs subsistence hunting rightsof Alaska Natives. These form the context between royalties and environmental damage. for establishment on the Arctic Slopeof a strong local (borough) Ray Lemberg creates for the readera seamless backdrop of the government, a wealthy for-profit regional corporation (ASRC), a decade of the arctic EARP - the 1980s’ hammering-out of how locally controlled school district, and other institutions that have to do a risk assessment. He admirably overcomes his in-depth drawn the Inupiat into a complex web of political and economic knowledge as a technical expert to the Beaufort Sea Panel giveto interdependence. the reader the perhaps dangerousfeeling of having grasped the whole Chance concludes the bookby linking the Inupiat story to two bolt of fabric, from nature of risk to the final necessary compromise. fundamental human problems of the late 20th century- “the for- He sets out the slim prospectsof “risk” as a numerical probability midable unequal distribution of productive wealth”“ecological and being established with confidence for arctic projects in the first deterioration.” He points to an emerging class division between instance and,if established, satisfying the demand for reassurance Inupiat corporate and government elites and the people,a division in the secondplace. Many of us have seen environmental assessment spawned by the competitive cash and commodities economy, whichpanels aspireto dealsensibly with the risk and clean-upof a medium- contradicts values of sharing in Inupiat culture. He is troubledby sized disaster, onlyto return again and again to the feared “worst the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, whichby despoiling Alaska waters case scenario” and the wish for reassurance that a) it will never, and lands symbolizes the threatof resource development to tradi- never happen, and b) when it does, it will be cleaned up swiftly. tional Inupiat subsistence pursuits. His is a poignant account of Robert Dryden provides, with barely sub-surfaced anger,vivid a the Inupiat’s painful struggle to exercise control over their fate, account of the seemingly endless, ultimately frustrated and surely attempts that make them part of the process while producing wasteful reviews of the aborted Arctic Pilot Project. The cost of outcomes that often erode Inupiat cultural life. the bookis well worth having this compressedhistory, and thelessons Chance sensitively illustrates the dilemmas facing the Alaska to be learned, on this unique liquid natural gas project. Surely the Inupiat and makes their experiencerelevant. The balance heachieves challenge is to do more effective environmentalreviews, not simply in this slim volume recommends it to specialist and generalistalike. more environmental reviews. Robert Lake was no doubt given the task to describe the physical Gerald A. McBeath environment of the Arctic in 50 pages or less; amazingly, he suc- Department of Political Science ceeded, andeven contributed a spare page to BrianSmiley’s “Marine University of Alaska Fairbanks Mammals and Ice-Breakers” - a co-habitation risk summarized Fairbanks, Alaska 99701 as “collisions, interference, and contamination.” USA. Peter Jull’s accusatory tone in describing lack of Inuit partici- pation in environmental decisionsis wisely tempered by his concern THECHALLENGE OF ARCTIC SHIPPING: SCIENCE, there has been a “too-readybelief that negotiating processes would ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND HUMANVALUES. be problem-freeif only Inuitwere in charge.” He is a prophet who Edited by DAVID L. VANDERZWAAG and CYNTHIA LAMSON. should return from Upper Coomera Australia and provide further Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press,1990. insights of this order. 288 p., 11 maps, bib., index. Hardbound. Cdn$34.95. The environmental reviews of the Arctic Pilot Project and the Beaufort oil proposals are referencedextensively, cuing thereader’s The co-editorshipof Cynthia Lamson and David Vanderzwaag interest in a future comparisonof the EARPprocesses oldand new, is a familiar touch in this collection, having inducedexcellent con- federal and territorial. What role the proposed Northern Accord tributions - a few from new sources and several with a strong process will set up for carrying out or responding to environmental message beyond the conveyance of information. The title is rather reviews remains to be seen. In a second volume, David Marshall more literal than lyrical comparedto an earlier offeringby the same would have a new lode to mine on federal environmentalreviews. team, Northern Decision Making:A Drifting Net in a RestlessSea. John Donihee and Heather Myers have also staked a byclaim way The latter title should, I suggest, be used by them for a second of their prescient title “Coming of Age: Territorial Review.” The volume, in which they and their contributors reflect on environ- level of influence of the Territorial Government on environmental mental decision making in the North in the 1990s. reviews under land claims and under a Northern Accord is very The first and last chapters convincingly display the particular much a question mark- and Donihee and Myers have established strengths of each editor. The opening provides a densely factual their credentials to define it for us.