In all of Russia, Victor Lukyanenko’s office at Gorno-Altaisk State University is unique.

“I have it decorated with a Kansas state flag,” he said.

Lukyanenko, head of the university’s foreign language department, is one of the driving forces behind an exchange program that last year sent a delegation of Haskell Indian Nations University instructors and students to the mountainous Altai Republic in Siberia.

The program hopes to use American-Indian philosophies and techniques to help indigenous groups in the Altai Republic monitor the region’s water quality and take on a more active environmental stance.

In the Altai Republic, Lukyanenko said, many people take their water from a creek.

Last week, Lukyanenko and two professors, four students and university president Yury Tabakaev arrived in Lawrence for the start of a three-week stay in the United States. The group spent most of Monday morning touring the Baker Wetlands.

The group will spend most of Wednesday touring and meeting with officials at Kansas University. Today, they are touring the Potawatomi Indian Reservation in Jackson County.

After touring the wetlands and hearing of the controversy about plans to route the South Lawrence Trafficway through the wetlands, Vera Aleinikova, head of the biology and chemistry departments at Gorno-Altaisk State University, said she sided with Haskell’s opposition to the project.

Interpreting for Aleinikova, Lukyanenko said, “The problem in Russia is the same. Industrial interests make decisions without asking the people affected by those decisions. Then, after those actions are taken, it is very difficult to correct.”

Haskell instructor Dan Wildcat, who went to the Altai Republic last year, led the tour of the wetlands.

“There is a metaphor here,” he said. “Because for many years, those who came to this country after Columbus thought the land, like the Indian, had to be controlled, and that once they were controlled, all would benefit. Well, today, we know that is not true.”

The group attended Haskell’s commencement ceremonies Friday, during which Lukyanenko and university president Tabakaev were seated on stage and introduced as honored guests.

“It was very different,” Lukyanenko said, noting that Russian graduations, contrary to Haskell’s, tend to be somber affairs.

“The president, he turned to me and said, ‘We need to make our ceremony more like this,'” Lukyanenko said, chuckling.

On Thursday, the group will be in Bethany College in Lindsborg, meeting with assistant chemistry professor Mikhail Korenman, a former Russian citizen. While there, the group will test water samples from the Altai Republic.