Between Racial Anthropology and Cultural Relativism: Dina Brodskaia-Jochelson’s 'Topographic Study' of Indigenous Siberian Women’s Bodies during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902)

• In Event: Migration and Indigeneity in the Russian Empire and the Post-Soviet Sphere: Geopolitical Migration Policies and Racialized Indigenous Populations

Abstract

This paper examines Dina Brodskaia-Jochelson’s (1864–1943) anthropometric and photographic studies of Indigenous women in eastern Siberia and the Far East during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902). A trained physician and anthropologist, Brodskaia conducted fieldwork together with her husband, former political exile Vladimir Jochelson, traveling by dog sleds from the Okhotsk port of Gizhiga to Kolyma. Although the overall expedition agenda was shaped by the leading anthropologist Franz Boas, Brodskaia’s work racialized and scientifically objectified Native Siberian women’s bodies, elevating her own status within the global academia. As the proposed paper argues, Brodskaia intentionally used her gender to gain access to Native women, thereby navigating, reproducing, and challenging colonial tropes of Europeanness and indigeneity.

Author

• Anna Smelova, Georgetown U