This thesis is about the meeting of two indigenous cultures, the Sami and the Inupiat, on the Alaskan tundra more than a hundred years ago. The Sami were brought over by the U.S. government to train the Inupiat in reindeer herding. It is about their adjustment to each other and to the rapidly modernizing world they found themselves a part of, until the term indigenous became a part of everyday speech ...