“Last Expedition” (From the History of US-Russian Collaboration in the Study of Indigenous Peoples)

Abstract

Franz Boas’s 1930–31 field trip to Vancouver Island (in which the Soviet/Russian ethnographer Yulia Averkieva was a participant) is perhaps the only known example of collaboration between the Soviet and US ethnographies through the “teacher-student” paradigm. Averkieva studied in an exchange program at Barnard College where Boas taught at the time. For the aging professor, this was the last trip out to the field; whereas for his Soviet student who ventured to study Americas, it was the first and, unfortunately, the only one. The field trip to the native people of Kwakiutl (Kwakw akaʼwakw) was successful. Its goals were accomplished. Drawing on its outcome, both Boas and Averkieva tried to better conceptualize methods of ethnographic fieldwork. Furthermore, this trip raised important issues about the preservation of language and culture of the Kwakiutl, and about saving the endangered society. The article is drawn on Boas’s correspondence kept in the archives of the American Philosophical Society.