Keynote Speaker:
Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution
Dr. Igor Krupnik is Curator of Arctic and Northern Ethnology collections and Head of the Ethnology Division at the National Museum of Natural History. Trained as cultural anthropologist and ecologist, Dr. Krupnik has worked for over four decades in indigenous communities in Alaska and Bering Strait region. His area of expertise includes modern cultures, indigenous ecological knowledge, climate change and its impact on the people of the Arctic. He published and co-edited more than 20 books, catalogs, and heritage sourcebooks, and was the lead science curator for the Smithsonian exhibit Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely (2006). In 2012, for his role in building bridges among social and natural scientists, and polar indigenous people he was awarded a medal from the International Arctic Science Committee.
Caroline Cannon
Caroline Cannon, environmental activist and leader in the Inupiat community in Point Hope, Alaska. Ms. Cannon has been an active leader in Point Hope for over 30 years. She is one of the strongest and most consistent voices against the rush to drill in the Arctic seas. She traveled across Alaska and to Washington, D.C. to attend hundreds of industry meetings and federal summits, representing Point Hope’s concerns about what’s at stake and sharing her deep traditional knowledge of the Arctic marine environment. Ms. Cannon is recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize (2012).
Arjun Makhijani
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a think-tank based in the Washington DC area. An electrical engineer specialized in nuclear fusion (UC Berkeley PhD) with expertise in sustainable energy sources, he is author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (IEER Press), the first analysis of a transition to a U.S. economy based completely on renewable energy, without any use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. Dr. Makhijani is the principal editor of Nuclear Wastelands and the principal author of Mending the Ozone Hole, both published by MIT Press. He has visited and spoken at Oberlin before.
