this book the term “Russian” is used to refer to the European population in the area; I use the term “Russian” in order to reflect the widespread use of this term as a collective noun in the Evenk District. Where appropriate the other, more specific designations of identity are noted.8
Aside from binary distinctions between Russians and natives, there were several other categories of belonging in Tura in the 1990s. Azeri and Tadzhik refugees, who totaled about one hundred people in 1998, were excluded from the category “Russian,” and instead they were often collectively referred to as “blacks” (chernye). This terminology was adopted from urban areas of Russia, where in the 1990s members of the dominant Russian population frequently derisively referred to people of non-European origin, and particularly those from Central Asia, as “blacks” (Lemon 1995). The few Tatars in Tura were also usually separated from the Russians semantically and simply called Tatary.
There were also inclusive terms invoked by community members. For instance, those recognized as rooted in the community were often termed simply “locals” (mestnye) or “ours” (nash). In the common situation in which passengers were patiently waiting for days at the Krasnoiarsk airport for a flight home, people from the region would gather together as the Evenkiitsy, or “Evenk District people”; it was also common for people from Tura to identify each other as Turintsy. Yet another term that was less widely used, but growing in usage, was rossiianin, meaning “a citizen of Russia” (see Balzer 1999: xiv).9 This inclusive term was most often used in formal civic settings, such as in newspapers or public addresses. Others would also invoke it, however, especially in seeking a way to represent collective needs or desires. For instance, the Evenk poet Nikolai Oegir writes in the poem cited in the epigraph to this chapter: “I—am a rossiianin! A title that like all in Russia, I proudly answer to” (1989: 26).
As was the case across the North in Russia in the 1990s (see Kerttula 2000; Rethmann 2001; Fondahl 1993), the Tura community was divided (or combined) along a number of lines. Local, newcomer, native, Russian, and black could intersect in various ways. For instance, you could theoretically be referred to in one situation as “black,” and yet in another be considered “local.” Newcomers would not be referred to as “locals,” but they could be considered as Evenkiitsy, or from Evenkiia. As will be further discussed in this and subsequent chapters, these categories were activated in relational terms and were invoked in shifting ways, depending on circumstances and who was talking to whom.
Evenki Past and Present
As historically nomadic reindeer herders, the Evenki were not always concentrated in government-designated regions like the Evenk District. The Evenki are thought to have originated in the steppes of present-day Mongolia; in fact, today there are nearly as many Evenki in China and Mongolia combined as in the Russian Federation. In Russia the Evenki comprise one of the larger indigenous Siberian groups; the Evenk population consists of about 30,000 people and stretches from the banks of the Enisei River in central Siberia to the Amur River region in the Russian Far East, an area encompassing nearly five time zones.10 Along with this extensive settlement, at least three distinct dialects of Evenk, a Tunguso-Manchurian branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages, have evolved over time (Nedjalkov 1997).
For decades scholars have debated the origins of the Evenki, as defined by a set of ethnological, physical, and linguistic traits. Sergei Shirokogoroff, probably the most renowned Siberianist in the twentieth century, argued that some time in the end of the second-century B.C. ancestors of the Chinese displaced the Evenki into present-day Russia from the Yellow and Blue River Basins in China (1919). Other scholars have drawn on evidence of similarities in dwelling types, clothing, and artistic styles to support an interpretation that Evenki have closer ties to the ancient Neolithic population of the Baikal region than to populations in second-century-B.C. China (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 623). Scholars do agree that the Evenk language reflects connections with both Turkic and Mongolian languages; very likely the Evenki as a distinct ethnic group emerged out of the mixing of Turkic-related groups from the north of Siberia with groups that formed in more southern regions.
Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, some Evenki began to migrate north to occupy regions such as what is today the Evenk Autonomous District. Few other groups sought to live in the relatively harsh climate, where snow is on the ground from early September to late May and winter temperatures average -40 to -50 degrees Celsius for four months of the year. Evenki were drawn, however, to a habitat that offered ample opportunity for hunting and fishing and was ideal for reindeer, which could feed off the plentiful lichen found in the tundra and taiga. Today Evenk populations can be found throughout the areas that they historically occupied—from the shores of the Enisei River to Lake Baikal and beyond to the Amur River, in addition to northern Mongolia. As was the case prior to the first Russian incursions into central and eastern Siberia in the seventeenth century, the Evenki continue to share this vast area of nearly two million square miles with many other groups, including the Eveny, Kety, Sakha, and Buriat Mongols.11
Figure 3. Father and children herding in the Russian Far East, circa 1901. Image #1589, AMNH, Department of Library Services.
Russian and Soviet government ethnic designations have had a significant impact on the configuration of Evenk identities in the twentieth century. In the pre-Soviet period ethnographers often classified the Evenki along with the Eveny as belonging to the “Tungus” people (Shirokogoroff 1933; Habeck 1997).12 In the seventeenth century, the Tungus were counted as possibly numbering as many as 36,000 people (Dolgikh 1960: 617). The 1897 Russian census counted 64,500 Tungus; more than one half of them (33,500) were living in the southern Siberian area near Lake Baikal and were engaged in agriculture (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 621). By 1928 those peoples who had been referred to collectively as Tungus began to be referred to by Soviet authors specifically as “Evenki” and “Eveny,” that is, according to the ethnonyms supposedly recognized by each group. Based on his extensive research in a herding community in the Taimyr, north of the Evenk District, David Anderson argues (2000: 98–109) that these categories are, in fact, quite fluid. The way in which these groups, as well as other native groups, were officially renamed by the Soviet state indicates how naming is part of administrative prerogatives. These are more closely linked to state methods of categorizing and controlling than necessarily to local realities at a given point in time.13
Kinship, Leadership, Ownership
A brief overview of the historical social organization of the Evenki provides a foundation for considering the influence Russian and Soviet systems of knowledge had on Evenk cultural practices. The Evenki historically practiced clan exogamy, and generally one herding group, or band, consisting of one or two extended family groups belonging to the same clan, herded 50–100 reindeer (Shirokogoroff 1933: 246). Each family group tended to consist of a man, a woman, several children, older relatives—usually the man’s parents—and occasionally young couples. Thus a typical family group comprised those sharing a reindeer skin tent, or chum, and generally consisted of three generations (Monakhova 1999).14 Members of a given family group slept in one tent; meals were shared between family groups, and herding activities were undertaken as a band. Men generally hunted, trapped, and oversaw reindeer herding and breeding. Children were expected to take part in all these activities, but full responsibilities only came with adulthood (Strakach 1962). Women generally cared for young children, prepared meals, sewed, tended young reindeer, and milked does. Some women, however, also took part in hunting and herding. Among Evenki living in the area north of Lake Baikal, women dominated herding activities, while men were largely occupied with hunting (Fondahl 1998: 28). In the area of the present-day Evenk District, women typically were responsible for cooking, sewing, and other household activities, in addition to hunting, fishing, trapping, and managing the reindeer herding and responsibilities of relocating camp when men were off hunting (Monakhova 1999: 35–36).
Reindeer
