The following chapters seek to provide a portrait of power dynamics in a Siberian community in the 1990s and the myriad ways that people were renegotiating relationships with the state and within their communities with the transformation of the former Soviet Union. Drawing on these sources, I do not seek to create an exact representation of an enclosed community but instead to provide a dynamic portrait of a community with internal contradictions, individuals with a range of allegiances, and alliances in transformation. Evenki themselves have recently written their own versions of contemporary life and local history (Amosov 1998; Monakhova 1999; Shchapeva 1994), and prominent Evenk author Alitet Nemtushkin has depicted Evenk lives in literature for decades.18 While I have chosen to write about identities in flux, this is just one of many ethnographies that could have been written based on the complex and vibrant lives of central Siberian Evenki in the 1990s.
Chapter 1 carries the reader through analyses of “identity” as a concept and the ways Evenk identities have taken shape historically. Chapter 2 moves to an overview of Tura as a central Siberian town crosscut by a range of social divisions, particularly illustrated through the portraits of five households. Evenk women’s narratives on residential schooling form the crux of Chapter 3, laying the foundation for understanding the way in which Soviet collective culture has informed Evenk identities and resulted in distinct understandings of power among women. In this chapter, I also examine dynamics of power and resistance through the prism of residential schooling accounts. Chapter 4 builds around the narratives of young Evenk women who recently completed their education in the residential school. This chapter considers how generational differences are significant in discussing relationships to the residential school and how the context of emerging market relations influences the place of residential schooling in women’s lives. Chapters 5 and 6 shift to the residential school itself, with Chapter 5 focusing on daily life in the school and Chapter 6 shifting to Evenk intellectuals’ efforts to transform the institution. Chapter 7 looks toward another important institution in the landscape of Soviet and post-Soviet social life, the museum, to reflect on intergenerational tensions around the way material culture is invoked to represent Evenk identities. The last and concluding chapter revisits ideas about Soviet and post-Soviet collective identities and about shifting hierarchies of power in this central Siberian town.
Chapter 1
Central Peripheries and Peripheral Centers: Evenki Crafting Identities over Time
| Rossiia | Russia |
| … | … |
| Κ grudi ty nas, Rossiia, prizhimala, | Russia, you held us tight to your breast, |
| Kogda zloi dukh vsiu zemliu szhech’ khotel. | When an evil spirit wanted to scorch the land, |
| I ot bedy soboiu prikryvala. | You shielded us yourself. |
| Takov uzh, vidno, materi udel. | Such was the motherland’s destiny. |
| Zemlia moia! | My homeland! |
| Prizhmus’ k tebe shchekoiu. | I press my cheek to yours. |
| Ia zdravitsu tebe provozglashu. | I call you my friend. |
| Ia—rossiianin! | I—am a rossiianin! |
| Zvanie takoe, | A title that |
| Kak vse ν Rossii, gordo ia noshu. | Like all in Russia, I proudly answer to. |
—Nikolai Oegir, Ewnk poet. Paths leading to the Spring: Poems
I was first drawn into the lives of Evenki in the summer of 1992, when I arrived in Tura after a journey of nearly three days by train into central Siberia, from Moscow to Krasnoiarsk, followed by a two-hour flight to Tura. On the flight north, I was fortunate to be accompanied by a local storyteller and teacher who had been introduced to me while she was visiting her sister back in Moscow, four time zones away. As we exited the plane, I followed her instructions to throw a coin into the first body of water we encountered, a stream. This gesture “for the spirits” (dukham) would ensure that I was welcomed in Evenkiia, as people living there commonly refer to the Evenk District. After just a few days in the capital of Tura, I had barely oriented myself when I was whisked off in an entourage of young men and women who were flying by helicopter to the town of Baikit.1 Their folk dance troupe, Osiktakan (“Stars”), was scheduled to perform as the highlight of the biannual Evenk folk festival, Evenkiiskie Zori (Evenkiiskie Dawns).
When we arrived in Baikit and piled out of the massive orange and blue helicopter, the festivities began. There were several reindeer tethered near the makeshift outdoor stage, and children took turns sitting on these. It turned out these reindeer had been flown in from a nearby herding brigade that I was to visit in the coming weeks. Several women set up tables to display and sell their handiwork—an array of sable hats, wolverine slippers, and fine reindeer-skin boots with beadwork edging. The festival was orchestrated by the director of the local House of Culture, an institution that played an important role in the social lives of many Soviet citizens, but especially those living in rural areas. After three days of festivities, we waited at the edge of town for our helicopter home to Tura and listened to Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” blaring from the speakers into the recently outfitted discotheque. On the flight home, the head of the Evenk Department of Culture praised the members of Osiktakan for their part in making the festival a success.
My research in this region coincided with a wide effort to reaffirm Evenk identity and to simultaneously make sense of additional components of identities—Soviet, Siberian, rossiianin [citizen of Russia], Russian, aboriginal and others—for individuals, households, and even folk dance troupes. From my very first days in Evenkiia, I became aware that Evenk identity was not something fixed or understood singularly by the array of people calling themselves Evenki. I also learned that this entity of “Evenk identity” was something very much contested and variously mobilized in the post-Soviet setting. In this chapter I consider broad issues of identity both historically and in the contemporary period in order to explore some of the themes that are invoked as Evenki reimagine what the contours of their community will be in the post-Soviet era. The first section focuses on theoretical reflections on “identity” and “ethnic identity.” In the second section, I consider the origins of the Evenki as a group and their history of migration to what is today the Evenk District. In the final section, I consider some of the ways identities were being reconfigured in the Evenk District in the 1990s as some Evenki sought to guarantee educational opportunity