2025 Mack Lipkin Man and Nature Series Panel Discussion

The 2025 Mack Lipkin Man and Nature Series Panel Discussion was part of the Margaret Mead Film Festival, a three-day celebration of voices and perspectives from around the world, by inviting attendees to explore the richness of human experience as a part of the natural world. 

Moderated by associate director Mary Blair, the panelists Vera Solovyeva and Maidi Eira Andersson shared Indigenous perspectives on kinship with nature, rooted in the traditions of the Arctic. The conversation was followed by a screening of Folktales, a film about a Norwegian folk high school located above the Arctic Circle—weaving another thread in the rich tapestry of how humans, animals, and the environment are deeply entwined in this northern landscape. 

Panelists: 

Dr. Vera Solovyeva, an Indigenous (Sakha) person from the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russian Federation, grew up in a remote Siberian village. She is now a fellow at the Arctic Studies Center (Smithsonian Institution) after receiving her Ph.D. from George Mason University. Her research focuses on how Indigenous peoples preserve and develop their cultures and traditions in a contemporary world that is rapidly changing under the pressure of factors such as globalization and climate change. She is interested in how Indigenous peoples recover lost knowledge and traditions through the study of museum collections.  

She is also a member of the Global Advisory Board of the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice, and Peace. 

Maidi Eira Andersson is a Sámi reindeer herder and board member of the Sámi multi-national reindeer herding association (SSR). She has also served as a media ambassador for her community, the Rans Sámi district, and is also an invited speaker affiliated with the Wild Foundation. 

Moderator: 

Mary E. Blair, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. She leads an interdisciplinary research program on biodiversity informatics and is interested in informing biodiversity conservation under climate change through the lens of a biocultural approach, which explicitly starts with and builds upon local and Indigenous values, knowledge, and needs while recognizing the interplay between the cultural and biological parts of a system. Her research has been funded by prestigious awards from NASA and the National Science Foundation. Her blogs for the New York Times and AMNH’s From the Field Series have reached a global audience, as have her engagements as a storyteller for The Moth. Mary is also a descendant of Indigenous Sámi reindeer herders from Guovdageaidnu (Kautokeino), Sápmi (Finnmark, Norway).