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Anthropology
Polly Wiessner, 2011 WINGS Elected Fellow
"Respect opens all doors." — Pauline (Polly) Wiessner
Anthropologist
Born: 1947-12-21
Hometown: Stowe, Vermont
Education: Ph.D., Anthropology
Achievements
Discoveries: Uncovered far ranging social security networks among the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Traveled widely to record the oral historical traditions of 110 tribes among the Enga of Papua New Guinea. Built the Enga Tradition and Transition Centre in Papua New Guinea to return the results of research to the people.
Expeditions: For the past 30 years, field trips to the Kalahari Bushmen and Enga of Papua, New Guinea.
Biography
For over 30 years, Wiessner has carried out studies of the !Kung (Ju/’hoansi) Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, documenting what happens to Bushman populations when inherited social systems of reciprocity become eroded by modernity and must confront participation in a cash economy. She advocates for necessities as wide-ranging as food, water, and educational opportunity. Wiessner’s other area of research has been among the Enga of Highland, New Guinea, where she has studied change in Enga society over 350 years via oral historical traditions as well as researched recent change. She has struggled to understand and help counter the devastation caused by the use of high-powered automatic weapons in tribal warfare. As an anthropologist, her work has concentrated on hunter/gatherers, reciprocity and social networks for reducing risk, medical anthropology, ethnoarchaeology, ethology, ecology, warfare, ritual, exchange and oral history in populations of Highland Papua New Guinea and Southern Africa. She has worked as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Ethology in Germany for 15 years, and is currently a professor at the University of Utah. She has organized and participated in numerous international conferences with a focus on Hunting Gathering societies, and has lectured extensively. Wiessner worked with the Enga Province to build the Enga Take Anda, a vital education center for Enga culture, history, and continuing social networks. She characterizes Facebook as a modern version of the same, saying “The videos and snapshots that people post echo the exchange gifts of the !Kung.
Fun Facts
Favorite Item to have in the field: Salt, Tang, and a hot water bottle
Heroes: John Marshall
Awards and Recognition
University of Utah Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award, 2009; Enga Provincial Government funding for research on Enga oral history and Max Planck society funding for her work in Enga and among the Bushmen.
Publications
Wiessner, P. and A. Tumu, "Historical Vines: Enga Networks of Exchange, Ritual and Warfare in Papua, New Guinea," Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, D.C., 1998.
Wiessner, P. and Wulf Schiefenhovel (eds.) Food and the Status Quest. Berghahn Books, Oxford, 1996.
Wiessner, P. From Inside the Women's House: The lives and traditions of Enga women. A. Kyakas and P. Wiessner, Robert Brown, Brisbane. 1992
Baikal 2008: Life On Thin Ice
Lake Baikal is a long, thin, slightly curved lake situated close to the Russia-Mongolia border in the far east of Siberia. Some 700km long, Baikal is never wider than 80km wide and is as much as 1600m deep in places, making it the deepest lake in the World.
The lake lies on the border between the Irkutsk Region of Russia and the Republic of Buryatia with Irkutsk (the capital of Irkutsk Region) lying a few hours drive to the west and Ulan-Ude (the capital of Buryatia) a day’s drive to the east. The expedition took place between Kultuk (N 51° 43.49’, E 103° 43.60’), a Buryat village at the southern tip of Lake Baikal and Nizhneangarsk (N 55° 48’, E109° 32’), a small airport town at the lake’s northern end.
One of Baikal’s most striking features is Olkhon Island (N 53° 10’, E 107° 20’), which juts into the lake roughly half-way along its length. Olkhon is the largest of Baikal’s islands and a place considered sacred by the Buryat people. Opposite Olkhon is the distinctively shaped Holy Nose Peninsula and Ust-Barguzin (N 53° 25’, E 109° 01’), the largest town on the eastern shore. Ust-Barguzin is situated at the entrance to the Barguzin valley which runs parallel to Lake Baikal for more than 200km, separated from the lake by the Barguzin mountain range. North of Ust-Barguzin the shores of Lake Baikal are mostly uninhabited apart from a few ranger huts and one or two small villages. At the northern end of the lake Severobaykalsk (N 55° 40’ ; E 109° 20’) is a large railway town with a population of around 25,000 people and 30km beyond it the village of Nizhneangarsk which has a small airport.
Felicity Aston – Expedition Leader, photographer, videographer
Felicity has over 10 years experience of both taking part in and planning overseas expeditions. After spending three years with the British Antarctic Survey, Felicity was part of the first all-female team to complete the Polar Challenge (a 360-mile endurance race across Arctic Canada) and has led winter expeditions to Norway, Siberia and Iceland. Felicity is an established travel writer and photographer whose words and pictures regularly appear in a number of UK magazines including Trail and Geographical as well as Rough Guide publications. She has spoken about her experiences at venues and events across the UK including the NEC Outdoor Show and the Royal Geographical Society.
Jenny Pugh – Expedition Participant, videographer
Jenny runs an outdoor and expedition first aid training business and is a complementary health practitioner. She has been climbing, mountaineering and adventuring in remote parts of the world for the last 10 years. She has traversed Asia, from Turkey to Hong Kong, climbing in many isolated regions along the way and has explored new climbing routes in the remote granite valleys of the South Sinai.
Nikolai Alexeev – Interpreter. (Traveled with the expedition for 9 days from Listvyanka to Olkhon to enable interviews with locals in Buryat villages.)
The primary aim of the expedition was to traverse the length of Lake Baikal from Kultuk in the south to Severobaykalsk in the north, travelling over the winter lake ice by foot, ski and kite. We would be the first all-female expedition to cross the lake but the real purpose of our journey was to make a short film about Lake Baikal to be shown at film festivals across the UK in 2009. We intended the film to focus on the beauty of the visually spectacular frozen lake and the cultural importance of Lake Baikal to the Buryat people. Despite its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, very few people in Britain, Europe and the United States know anything about Lake Baikal. This is a pity as Baikal is a truly unique place. It contains over one fifth of the entire planet’s fresh water, harbours species of flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth and in winter freezes with a completely transparent layer of ice to create an unforgettable natural spectacle. Baikal deserves to be recognised and cherished as one of the World’s most precious natural treasures. We hope that our film will make more people aware of the wonderful peculiarities of Lake Baikal as we believe that the greater the international public awareness of Lake Baikal, the greater the likelihood that it will be protected and preserved in the future.
On the 27th March 2008 we walked into Severobaikalsk having spent the last 30 days walking the length of Lake Baikal from Kultuk in the south. Along the way we had recorded over 16 hours of film footage, which we will now work on to produce a short film. We hope to have the film finished within the year, ready for the 2009 film festivals that take place annually across the UK.
In addition we will be presenting several illustrated lectures over the next year to showcase Baikal. Already the photography from the trip has caused a lot of interest – people just cannot believe the ice!
During our journey we met a range of people for whom Lake Baikal is central to their life and their heritage. We were touched by how readily both Russians and Buryats living on the lake opened up their homes and lives to help us understand customs and traditions. We intend to work hard to ensure that our film does them justice.
Milbry Polk, 2010 WINGS Elected Fellow
"Find your passion, get connected, keep learning and questioning." — Milbry Catherine Polk
Founder, Wings WorldQuest/Writer
Hometown: Palisades, New York
Education: BA Anthropology Harvard University
Achievements
Discoveries: The long history of women explorers.
Expeditions: Western Desert, Egypt, Greenland, India, Tibet, Alaska, Saudi Arabia, Yemen Prince William Sound, Alaska; Western Desert of Egypt (National Geographic); Yemen; Southern Sudan; Saudi Arabia; Iran; Pakistan; Burma; John River, Alaska; Nepal; Brazilian coast; Greenland, Baffin Island (Students on Ice), Devon Island (Adventure Canada), India (American Museum of Natural History); Chinese Tibet, Andaman Sea.
Biography
Milbry Polk is the Co-Founder of Wings WorldQuest, the preeminent organization supporting women explorers throughout the world. She is the author/editor of a dozen books including; Women of Discovery, The looting of the Iraqi Museum, Baghdad, Egyptian Mummies, has contributed chapters to several books including the recent The Great Explorers (2010), and she is the reviews editor for The Explorers Journal. She lectures frequently and serves on the boards of museums, theater, news and arts organizations. Her photographs have been exhibited widely and she has been published in numerous magazines. Her own explorations have been in the Middle East and Asia and more recently in the Arctic and Tibet. She is a Fellow of Wings WorldQuest, The Explorers Club, The Royal Geographical Society and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
Visit Milbry's Website... www.milbrypolk.com
Follow the Blog Brave New World!
Fun Facts
Favorite Item to have in the field: Camera, Bandana, Rope, Baggies
Heroes: Alexander the Great, all Wings Fellows
Awards and Recognition
2010 Fellow, Wings WorldQuest 2007 Women’s Environmental Leadership Award, Unity College, Maine 2005 Honorary Fellow, FRCGS (Hon) The Royal Canadian Geographical Society 2005 Arden Seminars Scholarship 2003 Leader of the 21st Century, WomensENews.org 1986 Outstanding Woman of the Year 1979 Robert Flaherty New York State Arts Grant (Film)
Publications
The Great Explorers (Thames and Hudson 2010) Contributor “Marianne North”
Norwegian National Schools Curriculum contributor 2009
Pennsylvania SSAT Contributor 2007-2010
Discovery Talk “Explorers” Card Game (US GAMES 2008)
The Quest (Lulu 2008) novel/ paintings by Cynthia James
They Lived to Tell the Tale (Explorers Club and Lyons Press 2007) Contributor
Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives (Rocky Mountain Books, 2007) Contributor
Explorers Journal Reviews and Contributing Editor (1998-present)
The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad Co-Editor (2005 Abrams)
“100 Best First Person Exploration Books of 20th Century” The Explorers Journal
As Told at the Explorers Club by George Plimpton (Lyons Press 2003) contributor
Exploration Series Editor (Chelsea House Publications 2004) Gertrude Bell, Alexandra David-Neel, Sylvia Earle, Mary Kingsley, Annie Alexander, Sue Hendrickson
Frauen erkunden die Welt (National Geographic/Friederking & Thaler 2004)
Women of Discovery Calendar (Rizzoli) 2003
Women of Discovery (Clarkson Potter, 2001)
Library Journal Award Best Books of 2001
School Library Journal Best Books 2002
Egyptian Mummies (Dutton/Penguin. 1997)
Margaret A. Edwards Award 1998 Best Books
YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers 1998
The History of Arabian Transportation Cambridge Univ Press
"Legacy" Public Television series on World History RESEARCHER (1982)
"ROLLOVER" Feature Film SCRIPT CONSULTANT (1979)
"MARGARET MEAD; PORTRAIT OF A FRIEND" Film by Rouch and Marshall (1979)
Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, 2003 Women of Discovery Humanity Award
"Be true to yourself, be persistent and flexible, laugh, learn from others, share information with others. Never give in to fear." — Anna Curtenius Roosevelt
Archaeologist and professor
Born: 1946-01-01
Hometown: Evanston, IL
Education: PhD in Anthropology
Achievements
Discoveries: Early projectile points in the Cavern of the Painted Rock, Brazil
Expeditions: Venezuela, Brazil, Central African Republic, Peru
Biography
Dr. Anna C. Roosevelt is an anthropologist interested in human ecology and evolution. She earned her B.A. degree in History from Stanford University in 1968, and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia in 1977. She has authored numerous books, monographs, and scientific articles on archaeological topics, and serves on various editorial boards including Latin American Antiquity. Dr. Roosevelt's research focuses on the changing relationship of humans and their environments. Since 1983, she has conducted a research project in the Brazilian Amazon, where she is perhaps best known for her discoveries at Pedra Pintada, a site first occupied 11,000 years ago by some of the earliest Americans. Professor Roosevelt specializes in two main geographic areas, the Middle Amazon and the Congo Basin. In the Amazon, she works at multiple sites, including those in Paraguay and Brazil. Her Congo Basin research is in Bayanga in the southwestern Central African Republic, and in the western Democratic Republic of the Congo. For 25 years, she has studied long-term human-environmental interaction in the tropics with funding from National Science Foundation, National Endowment for Humanities, Fulbright Commission, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the University of Illinois. Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Royal Geographical Society, she was awarded a 5-year MacArthur Fellowship for her interdisciplinary research. She holds the Explorers Medal, Society of Women Geographers' Gold Medal, Order of Rio Branco and Bettendorf medals (Brazil), and honorary doctorates from Mt. Holyoke and Northeastern University, Boston.
Fun Facts
Favorite Item to have in the field: My 1971 Pentax camera
Heroes: My great aunt, Ethel R. Derby
Jane Goodall, 2007 Women of Discovery Lifetime Achievement Award
""As thy days, so shall thy strength be," (Deuteronomy 33:25)" — Jane Goodall
Scientist, environmentalist and conservation education promoter/activist
Born: 1934-01-01
Hometown: Bournemouth, UK
Education: PhD in Ethology
Achievements
Discoveries: That chimpanzees make and use tools. This discovery redefined the relationship between humans and non-humans. Dr. Goodall has radically changed the field of primatology both in terms of how chimps are studied and by observing how similar to human beings they are.
Expeditions: Olduvai Gorge, Bombe National Park, Tanzania to study wild chimpanzees; Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro crater to study hyenas and wild dogs.
Biography
Jane Goodall is the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees, having closely observed their behavior for the past quarter century in the jungles of the Gombe Game Reserve in Africa, living in the chimps' environment and gaining their confidence. Her observations and discoveries are intemationally heralded. Her research and writing have made, and are making, revolutionary inroads into scientific thinking regarding the evolution of humans. Dr. Goodall received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1965. She has been the Scientific Director of the Gombe Stream Research Center since 1967. In 1984, Jane Goodall received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize for "helping millions of people understand the importance of wildlife conservation to life on this planet." Her other awards and international recognitions fill pages. Her scientific articles have appeared in many issues of National Geographic, as well as multiple additional internationally known scientific journals. Dr. Goodall has also written two books, "Wild Chimpanzees" and "In The Shadow of Man." She pleads to thousands of people throughout the world on behalf of her career-long sponsor, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation. Jane Goodall attributes her dedication and insight to her work and her mission in life to her mother, internationally known author Vanne Goodall. In 1985, Jane Goodall's twenty-five years of anthropological and conservation research was published, helping us all to better understand the relationship between all creatures. She has now devoted over thirty years to her mission. Dr. Goodall has expanded her global outreach with the founding of the Jane Goodall Institute based in Ridgefield, CT. She now teaches and encourages young people to appreciate the conversation of chimpanzees and all creatures great and small.
Fun Facts
Favorite Item to have in the field: Paper, pencil and binoculars
Heroes: Prof. Muhammad Yunus, inventor of the conept of microcredit; Dr. Rick Asselta, Wheelchair athlete, cancer survivor and coordinator of JGI's Roots & Shoots university programs; Dr. Fred Mednick, Founder of Teachers Without Borders; and Mr. Percy Schmeiser, Canadian farmer and farmers' rights activist.
Sveva Gallmann, 2006 Women of Discovery Field Award
""Dreaming is great--but act on your dreams. They will be tomorrow's reality."" — Sveva Gallmann
Anthropologist, oral historian, educator, project coordinator
Born: 1980-01-01
Hometown: Near Nairobi, Kenya
Education: MA Medical Anthropology, New College, Oxford, England
Achievements
Discoveries: The Samburu spiritual healer Mzee Lemarkat and a Pokot herbalist Mama Langeta. Through them, I have uncovered many secrets of life.
Expeditions: Researching how native plants are used for healing by working with indigenous peoples in the Rift Valley region; expeditions with camels through East Africa exploring the secrets of life through spiritual and herbal healing.
Biography
Sveva Gallmann, a Kenyan ethnobotanist, has been honored for her field research on how native plants are used for healing. A native speaker of several Kenyan tribal languages, Ms. Gallmann currently coordinates the 4th Generation Project, an African heritage initiative that reinforces relationships among younger and elder tribe members and helps keep alive traditional wisdom through oral history. Ms. Gallmann lives in the Laikipia district of northern Kenya among the Pokot, a pastoral tribe of practitioners in the ancient use of herbs. Ms. Gallmann's interest in preserving knowledge of healing traditions has inspired her to develop a project to safeguard the knowledge of medicinal plants through oral history. The Four Generations Project is aimed at staunching the gradual loss of traditional tribal knowledge and encouraging a reconnection with, and respect for, the natural environment. The project inspires youth to share the wisdom of their elders. Sveva Gallmann graduated in Human Sciences at New College, Oxford, in 2002, winning the Wilmer Crowther award for best overall achievement in the Honour School. She has now returned to Ol ari Nyiro to help her mother in their shared pledge to protect and preserve the conservancy for the future. She divides her time between Kenya and the UK and has recently been busy initiating the Great Rift Valley Music Festival. Ms. Gallmann has had wide ranging experience all over the world, from a year spent volunteerig in a leprosarium in India, to dolphin rehabilitation in the Red Sea. She has addressed the State of the World Forum in Belfast, and the Conference of Spiritual and Religious Leaders in Geneva. Her most recent undertaking, the Four Generations Project, researches and preserves rituals, songs and traditions of the local tribes, encouraging children to re-discover and revere their heritage.
Fun Facts
Favorite Item to have in the field: Head lamp, dictaphone, cameras, sparklers, colored pens.
Heroes: Elie Cross