Ostrov Vrangelya, lat 71–72°N, long 178°E–177°W, is the largest island in the eastern Soviet Arctic. It has an area of 7 673 km2 and extends approximately 120 km east-west and 60 km north-south (see Fig 1). Five different flags have been raised on it—those of Great Britain, Canada, United States, Imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union—and it has had four different names in English since its first sighting by a white man: Kellett Land, Plover Land, New Columbia, and Wrangel Island. However, since 1924, no nation has disputed Soviet possession of the island.

Plants introduced by man play a very minor role in the flora of the Mackenzie River, delta and are primarily restricted to centres of habitation such as Inuvik, Aklavik, and Reindeer Station (Map 1) (Cody, 1965; Gill, 1971). Within the delta itself, however, a number of introduced species are recurringly present on one geomorphic position, the point bar, which forms the convex section of a meander bend in flood plains and deltas (Fig 1). The Mackenzie delta supports a northerly extension of the boreal forest, and most of the higher levees are occupied by trees, particularly White Spruce Picea glauca. Point bars are constructed of coarser alluvium than other delta landforms, thus they have a drier and warmer soil environment than other locations (Gill, 1972a); vegetation response to this locally ameliorated environment has been such that virtually every point bar in the Mackenzie delta is occupied by a discrete plant community dominated by Balsam Poplar Populus balsamifera (Gill, 1972b). The poplar stands are surprisingly well developed for such a northerly latitude, 68°45′N (Fig 2).

In this instalment of our list, we see that the Hudson's Bay Company, under the shrewd direction of its overseas governor, George Simpson, quickly recovered from its exhausting struggle with the North West Company and, strengthened by amalgamation with its rival in 1821, began vigorously to push into unknown country both west and east. In the east, the Ungava venture was an attempt, mainly unsuccessful, to develop a fur trade in the interior of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. And in the west, the exertions of a few hardy men opened the fur-rich country of the Liard River and its tributaries, the Peel River and the region of the Mackenzie River delta, and crossed the Rocky Mountains to the upper drainage of the Yukon River.

In this paper I review some of the fields in which Lapps are involved in the over-all development, or lack of development, of northern Finland. I shall limit my perspective in two ways: first, I am concerned to document those issues that directly affect the Lapps at present. This present is taken as 1972, since I was in north-east Lapland in 1971–72, carrying out fieldwork among the Skolt Lapps; my view is thus somewhat biassed to the east (Ingold, 1971). Secondly, I am not directly concerned with the position of Lapps in Norway, Sweden, and the Soviet Union. This is not to deny that there exists a great deal in common among Lapps of these different countries. Equally, the fortunes of Lapps have been crucially affected by the different circumstances pertaining in the nation-states which, through history, have been drawn up around them. My subject, then, concerns how Lapps fare, economically, culturally and politically, in the context of modern Finland.

This instalment of our list is dominated by the search for Sir John Franklin's missing North-west Passage expedition (see 1845–48). The search began in 1847 and continued intensively until 1854, when Dr John Rae finally found the first clues regarding the fate of the expedition. An important feature of the search was the large number of sledge expeditions, which set out from the searching ships in spring. By this means, many thousands of kilometres of new coastline were discovered in a relatively short period, mainly during the spring months of 1851 and 1853, and much of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, which was largely unknown before 1850, was added to the map. In nearly every case, the sledges were man-hauled by an officer and six or seven seamen. We are listing all of the searches for Franklin, as we listed all North-west Passage expeditions, including some that did not touch Canadian shores.

Since the time of first contact with Europeans, the social system of the Eskimos of Canada has undergone a severe alteration in its structure and function.1 Under a generally paternal and directive administration, this process of social change has been very disorderly and has produced a continuing state of crisis in present-day Eskimo society. Indications of this state of crisis are the incidences among Eskimos of poverty, unemployment, venereal disease, drunkenness, and juvenile delinquency at rates that are markedly higher than among other Canadians, taken as a group (Rowley, 1972; Economic Council of Canada, 1968, p 121). Further change in Eskimo society is inevitable, but the speed at which change occurs and the directions it will take are controllable. Recognizing this fact, many Eskimos and non-Eskimos see the need for a new and more enlightened northern administration, one that would enable the Eskimos to cope with, adapt to, and share control of the institutions that now shape their lives.

Electoral politics is to politics as university education is to education; a highly visible, formal, and ritualistic process, the function of which is as much symbolic as it is substantial. In Alaska as elsewhere, and for Natives as for other groups, electoral politics is only one dimension of an elaborate wideranging political process. The matter of aboriginal land claims, for example, dominated Alaskan Native politics through the 1960's, but this issue was only peripherally one of electoral politics. However, because Alaskan Natives have not traditionally had access to many political advantages, such as money, property, communication facilities, education, health, and organization, that are available to other groups, voting has been an important means of political influence for them. For these reasons and because electoral behaviour indirectly reflects many non-electoral phenomena, electoral politics is a good point of departure for the study of Native politics in Alaska. This article surveys selected factors that have conditioned Native electoral participation generally, the evolution of Native representation in Alaska's territorial and state legislatures, and collective voting patterns. Two earlier papers (Rogers,1969; Harrison, 1970) have dealt even more selectively with this subject. Together they offer a general introduction to it.

With this instalment, we conclude our presentation of expeditions and historical events in northern Canada. Although we end here at about 1909, we have compiled the list up to 1920, a termination date chosen because the introduction of aircraft to northern Canada at about that time brought very many more persons into the region, and the list, to be continued after that date, would have to be conducted on different principles. We have presented these instalments in Polar Record as a means of preliminary publication, hoping that such appearance would elicit corrections and additions from readers before our work is published in full, not only with the entries seen in these pages, but also with an extensive roster of the names of persons associated with the expeditions described, a list of ships, a topical and regional index, and a supporting bibliography for each entry. Discussion is now going forward with officers of the Human History Division, National Museum of Man, Ottawa, the department that has financed this work, about full publication. We should like to take this opportunity to thank the National Museum of Man for its support, to acknowledge the permission of the Governor and Committee of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose archives we have used, to include hitherto unpublished dates and facts, and to say that we have greatly enjoyed the work of compiling this list and have especially enjoyed corresponding with the many persons who have written to us about it.

The T-3 ice island case involved two trials in the United States of a Mexican-American, Mario Escamilla, for allegedly causing the death of a Negro coworker, Bennie Lightsey, on an ice island then at lat 84°45.8'N, long 106°24.4'W, on the High Seas, about 240 km north of Ellesmere Island on 16 July 1970. A federal judge in Virginia allowed Escamilla's first trail to proceed without definitively deciding on objections to jurisdiction, for he expected a ruling on this point on appeal. Issues raised by that trial are covered elsewhere (Pharand, 1971; Wilkes, 1972).