EKKHS: Mission Statement
The purposes of the society:
To gather, preserve, advance and disseminate knowledge about various Arctic and Antarctic explorations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
To maintain facilities to maintain, store, preserve and display literature pertaining to exploration, and to make such literature and historical files available to the general public for research purposes.
To provide facilities to maintain, store, preserve and display various artifacts and records of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
To maintain liason with museums, libraries, foundations, historical societies, colleges, universities, government agencies and other organizations involved in Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
To sponsor and financially assist future exploration in the Arctic, Antarctic, the oceans, wilderness and outer space.
To consult and engage in research with experts, archivists and curators of museums, historical societies and libraries having similar or related interests.
Victor Edwin Stewart: Last amended March 19, 1999
A Manifesto- For Sustainable Heroes:
"When the critics of academic historians say that we fail to give youth examples of heroism, they are, alas, right. Yet the conventional Western heroes either affirm the wrong faith entirely, as in the faith in guns and violence. Or, they serve solely as individual examples of courage and determination attached to no particular principle. Because their values are of conquest and domination, or because they are attached to no particular values at all, traditional Western heroes do not come near qualifying as sustainable heroes.
Sustainability in a hero means, very concretely, providing inspiration that sustains the spirit and the soul. "...a commitment to fair treatment of the vulnerable has moved people of decency to action, and the record of those actions is an important part of our heritage. It is part of our heritage that , quite literally, sustains our faith and our spirits."
Patricia Nelson Limerick; Saratoga Springs, NY: September 1995