Ernest Sipes

Ernest Sipes is an author and researcher living in Saudi Arabia and a specialist on the Indigenous Peoples of the United States, Canada, Russia and the Brazilian Amazon Basin. Sipes has also published on the impact of progressive Napoleonic era French political and social reforms reproduced by Russia in Alaska.

Biography

Personal life

Ernest Sipes was born in Fairbanks, Alaska on October 14, 1957. He was raised in North Pole, Alaska. Sipes' father served in World War II as a Drill Instructor in the United States Army. Sipes' mother died in 1967, and his father remarried in 1969.

Sipes grew up with Athabascans and Inuit Natives. He is known as one of a very few non G'wichin Indians to have lived on the Venetie Indian Reservation in the 1990s. While living on the reservation he was noted as having some abilities as a hunter, harvesting bear and moose with tribesmen from the village. He worked as a Mental Health Counselor in Fairbanks, Alaska for over 16 years, was briefly employed in the State of Alaska Department of Administration and has since been working as an English teacher in Saudi Arabia.

Sipes was married in 2000 to a member of the Wai-Wai tribe from NE Brasil. He was divorced in 2008. He currently lives in Saudi Arabia.

Education

Sipes graduated from High School in 1976. He attended both the University of Alaska and Brigham Young University. He graduated from college with a B.A. in British Literature from Brigham Young University in 1991. Sipes completed a teaching degree while attending Brigham Young and taught high school English Literature courses in Hawaii and was a substitute teacher in Alaska during the 1990s.

Expeditions

Hawaii

Sipes says he worked drilling water wells on the island of Oahu in 1988 while attending Brigham Young University, which involved field work. While surveying in the Makaha Valley he discovered several burial mounds of ancient Hawaiians which were reported to the University of Hawaii Manoa.

Amazon River basin

In February, 1998 he transported a FOLBOT collapsible kayak to Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon and ascended the river 200 miles. On this expedition, Sipes was by all accounts the first outsider to paddle up the Camanai River, where after contacting the Waimiri-Atroari Indians he was forced to leave the tribal area. In March, 1999 Sipes made the first documented attempt to walk overland between the two major rivers of South America, namely the Amazonas (Solimoes) and Rio Negro river systems. After six days and walking thirty miles, east of the Japura River he contracted Dengue Fever in a swamp and abandoned the trek. In May, 2000 he and his Wai Wai wife Marineth (Natchee) and a two man crew attempted to enter Guyana from the south by traveling north on the Mapura River, but were stopped by waterfalls when the boat swamped near the equator. In February, 2002 he contacted the Pacaja Indians off the Xingu River which was documented in Brazzil magazine in 2004.

Egypt

Sipes visited Egypt to research the ancient caravan routes of northwest Egypt in 2001, 2003, 2004 and in March 2008. He led approximately ten overland expeditions from Siwa to the various abandoned oases in the western desert, documenting the sites for publication. In May 2004 he is reported to have walked alone from the Egyptian border several miles into Libya following a camel track while searching for an unnamed abandoned oasis after his Bedouin guide refused to accompany him due the possibility of arrest.

Congo

In December, 2005 Sipes made the first ascent by kayak in the Likouala District of the Ubangui River and the Ibenga River in the Republic of Congo. At the time of this trip several different factions of rebels were active along the Ubangui River, which constitutes the border between the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. Little information is available about this remote area which is not accessible by road. In 2006, Mr. Sipes worked for the United States Embassy in the Republic of Congo preparing two security reports. The first report documented security issues in the Likoluala District between ROC and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was completed under the direction of U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Mark Beidlingmaier. In the second report, prepared at the request of then U.S. Ambassador Robert Weisberg, Sipes completed the first English language security report on the CFCO railroad operating between Point Noire and Brazzaville.

Georgia

Over August–September 2008, Sipes traveled to the Republic of Georgia during the period of the Russian invasion of the South Ossetian War. While in the country he was in the town of Gori at the time of the pull-out of the Russian army and wrote an article documenting the event for Georgia Today, Georgia's largest circulation English language journal.

Publications

Ernest Sipes's work has been published in History Today magazine (United Kingdom) and Brazzil magazine (Brazil and United States). He has also published a book with Hancock House publishers (Canada). The majority of Sipes' published work focuses on Native Americans and South American Indians. Sipes has pioneered several areas of research focusing on Indigenous Peoples.^{[citation needed]} He has also published original research in 1998 and 2007 which documented the impact of the institution of serfdom as applied to Alaskan Natives by the Russians. In 2003, Sipes produced the first scholarly account of the current living conditions and conducted limited anthropological fieldwork with the Poticru Tribe of the Xingu River.

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  TOP: Abandoned oasis located near the Egyptian/Libyan border on the ancient caravan route MIDDLE-BOTTOM: Interior of Roman era tombs

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  Two sets of Indian created petroglyphs discovered along the Amazon River TOP: Near Mount Alegre BOTTOM: Xingu River Estato Para, Brasil

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  Members of Pygmy tribe near Bolomo, Republic of Congo

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  On Libyan Border, March, 2003

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  Ubangui River, Central African Republic

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  Sipes with destroyed Russian BTR-70 during South Ossetian War

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  Order of Mission issued by U.S. Embassy, Republic of Congo, November, 2006

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  Sipes with Tahrir Square protesters, Cairo, Egypt Nov-Dec, 2011

Bibliography

• Sipes, Ernest. Into the Savage Land. Hancock House Publishers, Surrey B.C., Canada, 2007.
  • Review:
• "Traders and Soldiers in Russian America".(the Russian-American Company instituted enlightenment ideals in dealings with Alaskan Native Americans) History Today (UK), August,1998: 38-44. online link
  • cited by Grinev in Acta Slavica Iaponica (in Russian)
• Sipes, Ernest "Brazilian Indians: What FUNAI Won't Tell You". Brazzil Magazine (Brazil and U.S.) August, 2003.

http://www.brazzillog.com/2003/html/news/articles/aug03/p118aug03.htm

• Sipes Ernest "Is the Russian Bear Back in Georgia?". Georgia Today, Republic of Georgia, 29 August 2008.

http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h348/georgiatoday/georgiatodaycom-1.jpg

http://www.georgiatoday.ge/article_details.php?id=5633