Reindeer Traditions of Beringia: The 1905 Frank Churchill Photographic Collections | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

Reindeer Traditions of Beringia: The 1905 Frank Churchill Photographic Collections (Funding Opportunity Number P16AS00071) is a National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Department of the Interior notice announcing the agency's intent to fund a specific project without competition. It is explicitly not a request for applications. The planned recipient is the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the NPS anticipated awarding a total of $80,000 with no cost share required. The agreement was structured as a CESU task agreement under statutory authority 54 USC 100703, tied to CFDA 15.945 (Cooperative Research and Training Programs). The expected period of performance ran from June 1, 2016 through September 30, 2019, for a three-year project.

The core purpose of the project is to use a historic photographic archive housed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC to better understand the shared reindeer herding history of "Beringia," the Alaska-Chukotka region connected culturally and historically across the Bering Strait. The photo set comes from Indian Agent Frank Churchill's 1905 journey through Alaska, traveling between the Alaska Peninsula and Barrow and also stopping at East Cape in Chukotka while aboard the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear. The project centers on carefully documenting what is actually depicted in the photographs by combining two approaches: traditional archival research and community-based photo elicitation interviews (showing photos to people and recording what they recognize, remember, or can infer from lived experience and community knowledge). By pairing paper archives with oral histories, the work aims to produce the first thorough, end-to-end review and documentation of the Churchill 1905 collection, including identifying locations, dates, individuals, and activities shown.

Beyond cataloging and identification, the research is designed to use the photographs and interviews as a window into broader early 20th century reindeer herding patterns in Alaska and across the strait. That includes documenting daily practices of herding, the organization of herding stations, and the extent to which Alaska reindeer herding traditions and techniques were influenced by, borrowed from, or otherwise connected to Chukchi herding practices. A related goal is to examine interaction and relationships between Alaskan herders and Chukchi herders, including the role the U.S. government played through programs such as the U.S. Reindeer Service. The geographic focus reflects where the photographs were taken and aligns closely with areas where reindeer stations were administered by 1904, extending from the Kuskokwim River north through Norton Sound, St. Lawrence Island, the Seward Peninsula, Kotzebue Sound, and up to Point Hope and Barrow, with the additional Chukotka connection at East Cape.

The project is organized into three major, interconnected stages that are intended to run in parallel rather than as a strict sequence, with each part informing the others through ongoing feedback loops. The first stage is archival research, conducted primarily in the Churchill photo holdings and related records. The second stage is fieldwork with Bering Strait and northwest Alaska residents using photo elicitation and/or oral history interviews to capture identifications, narratives, and cultural context that may not exist in written records. The third stage focuses on sharing the results back to communities and to the broader public through outreach products designed to support knowledge sharing and "visual repatriation," following models used in prior museum-community collaborations. Community recommendations are expected to shape the research design as it proceeds, and the specific communities involved are to be guided by the content and geographic distribution of the photographs themselves.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks responsibilities are detailed and emphasize both scholarship and community partnership. Two co-Primary Investigators, Amber Lincoln and Patrick Plattet, are named to lead the work over the life of the project. They are tasked with researching the photographs and associated archives at NMAI, as well as related materials at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art. They are also expected to cross-reference and reconcile what is found in the photo archive with other major source collections, including Sheldon Jackson reports, U.S. National Archives reindeer records located in Seattle, the Alaska State Library Historical Collection, and the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service photographic collection. A practical objective of this cross-checking is to correctly identify dates, places, and people depicted in the historic images. The investigators must also identify interested communities and subject-matter experts in northwest Alaska, and then conduct interviews and photo elicitation sessions as fieldwork. Informants are to be compensated at $30 per hour for their time, reflecting a concrete plan for ethical engagement and acknowledgement of local expertise.

A distinctive component of the research plan is a linguistic analysis of vocabulary lists to identify words that may have been shared, transferred, or adopted by Alaskan reindeer herders from Chukchi herders. This language-focused work is meant to provide another line of evidence about intercultural contact, knowledge exchange, and the mechanisms through which herding practices traveled, alongside the roles that institutions and government programs played in shaping those interactions. In terms of outputs, the co-PIs are required to create a traveling photo/audio listening exhibition that pairs selected significant photographs from the Churchill 1905 collection with descriptive audio clips drawn from the interviews. The exhibition is planned to stay 2 to 3 days in at least three participating communities in northwest Alaska, and it will be accompanied by a pamphlet summarizing the main findings. To strengthen cross-strait accessibility and future use in Russia, the exhibition products and materials are also planned to be translated into Russian and made available for display in Chukotka, including potentially during a future Beringia Days event or as a traveling exhibition there. The exhibit showings are not treated as one-way presentations; they are also intended as opportunities to gather additional information from visitors, which would be incorporated into the final report. The researchers also commit to publishing at least two peer-reviewed articles that document both the findings and the methodological structure, ensuring the work contributes to academic literature as well as community knowledge.

The NPS role is framed as facilitation, coordination, and dissemination. The agency is expected to act as a liaison between the university team and potentially interested or knowledgeable individuals and groups in the Beringia region. Where possible, NPS will help with logistics, including making agreements for the use of government housing and other support, and provide technical assistance and safety briefings appropriate for the remote and challenging field setting. NPS will also use the Shared Beringian Heritage program's contacts in Alaska and Russia, especially within Native communities, to help inform communities and organizations about the project and to support broad dissemination of project activities and results. Planned communication channels include the NPS Shared Beringian Heritage Program website and the Alaska National Parks Facebook page, as well as a project-specific distribution plan intended to prioritize reaching the Bering Strait region communities first.

Finally, the notice explains why the award is being made without full and open competition. The Department of the Interior requires written justification for single-source awards, and multiple allowable criteria exist under policy. In this case, the justification cited is that the agreement is being issued under an existing CESU task agreement mechanism and that the work had already been competed earlier under a master agreement (P13AC01025) in 2013. In practical terms, that means this announcement serves as a transparency notice about a planned cooperative agreement for a defined research-and-outreach effort, rather than an open call for new applicants.

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