An Interview with Julia Phillips, Part 2

In this episode, we dive into specifics about the author's identity and experience as a white American woman from New York City, observing rural and Indigenous Russians of Kamchatka in their day-to-day lives. We hear her reflections about time spent in rural Kamchatka, traveling with dogsled teams, reindeer herding families, and gathering wild foods. We reflect on circumpolar questions about the ocean’s fish supply after Fukushima, and in the context of a warming Arctic. She shares her observations about the post-Soviet religious environment, including Russian Orthodox religion and shamanism, and her experiences with various modes of transportation, including by Soviet tanks with snowmobile tracks. Her cross-cultural perspective sheds insight on the way educational systems in other parts of the world contrast with, and exceed what many Americans may imagine. In closing, the episode circles back, to the pervasiveness of enforced patriarchal, gender-based expectations and violence in the day-to-day lives of women in the circumpolar north.