For this episode, we’re going to focus on indigenous perspectives in the Arctic. Even though we often think of the Arctic as an inhospitable place, humans have actually lived in this region for a very long time. Recent archaeological findings show that human beings inhabited the Arctic as far back as 40,000 years ago, maybe longer. Today, there are dozens of indigenous groups in the circumpolar north -- the Inuit, the Sámi, the Nenets and many more -- and in the last several centuries, almost all of those indigenous groups have been impacted by colonization. As just one example of that: although the Arctic is currently divided into eight countries, there are different indigenous nations with long histories in all of these areas that pre-date our current national boundaries. In other words, if we drew the map of the Arctic from the perspectives of the various indigenous groups, our whole definition of what this region is would be very different.