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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 or looked to new or rejuvenated ritual practices.

Identities in Theory and Practice

The complexity of allegiances that any individual or even household could have in Tura in the 1990s is illustrated in the hybridity of cultural practices reflected in the Evenk folk festival in Baikit described in the opening pages of this chapter. Despite these elements of hybridity in contemporary Evenk social practices, indigenous intellectuals often consider identity as something fixed or simply rooted in the past. Considering identity as fluid and in constant negotiation is not a politically strategic stand for groups seeking to lay claim to contested resources or power in various forms. For instance, like Evenk intellectuals, Maya intellectuals are struggling to gain control over the representation of their daily lives and history, and they also invoke an essentialist analytic style in their discourse (Fischer and McKenna Brown 1996: 3). These efforts on the part of indigenous intellectuals are in striking contrast to the predominant contemporary approach among social scientists thinking about issues of identity. Siberian studies has encountered a tension similar to that in Maya studies, where the trend for “foreign” academics has been to avoid essentializing identities, and to instead emphasize multivocality and the various and shifting dynamics of power over time (Anderson 2000; Bloch 2001; Grant 1995a; Rethmann 2001).²

While popular conceptions of identity sometimes homogenize and freeze it as an unchanging element, contemporary social science theories tend to concur that identity is more accurately theorized as ever-changing. In Comaroff and Comaroff’s terms, identity is “both a set of relations and a mode of consciousness” (1992: 54). This concept of identity combines an understanding of how large-scale historical processes of power and situational perspectives mold identities, but it is certainly not the only view of how identity works.

The anthropological research into the formation of identity, and particularly ethnicity, has been widespread since the 1960s (see Eriksen 1993; R. Cohen 1978). Scholars have viewed ethnicity in a range of ways, but there have been two dominant directions of thought: the primordialist and the instrumentalist. Primordialist theorists emphasize the idea of ethnic categories as rooted in a common past or shared heritage and as remaining intact despite cultural contacts (Geertz 1973; Gurvich 1980; Gumilev 1990). While this approach to ethnicity has been sharply criticized by many (see R. Cohen 1978), understanding primordialist concepts of ethnicity can potentially provide important means of understanding consciousness and what one scholar calls the “nature of the stuff on which groups feed” (Eriksen 1993: 55). This is especially the case for indigenous groups worldwide that are increasingly calling upon primordialist theories of identity as they compete with multinational interests over scarce resources (Conklin 1997; Fischer and McKenna Brown 1996).

In contrast to the primordialist approach, the instrumentalist approach, with Abner Cohen (1974) and Fredrik Barth (1969) at the forefront, emphasizes the political aims served by and justifying the maintenance of ethnicity. While Barth focuses on ethnic boundaries and considers them as categorical ascriptions that determine a “most general identity” (1969: 13) and Cohen focuses on ethnic identity as a political tool for securing resources (1974), they both center their analyses on the synchronic nature of ethnic identity. The broader historical and hegemonic processes influencing identity are not central to their discussions.

While thinking of ethnicity as a political tool is particularly useful in situations of “social change” such as the Evenki are experiencing, it is important to understand how and why ethnic identity gets mobilized and reproduced. If one assumes that “ethnicity” is not a primordial category, then how does one explain how it remains salient to a group of people and situationally more or less pertinent in times of social change? As illustrated in the setting of the Evenk folk festival described above, this is a critical question.

Many anthropologists today agree that it is important to avoid an either/or approach to ethnic identity because this disregards important factors potentially influencing the formation of identities (see Bentley 1981). Some research has moved away from an either/or way of thinking about ethnicity and instead looks to situational explanations (see Okamura 1981). By adopting this approach instead of just instrumentalist or primordialist explanations for ethnic identity, research is less restricted by a preconceived model of how ethnicity operates. Adopting a situational perspective can also result, however, in too little attention to the sociostructural aspects of identity. Keyes (1981: 10), for instance, emphasizes the multiple sources for identities and notes that ethnic identity becomes a personal identity only after an individual takes it up from a “public display” or “traffic in symbols.”

A recent trend in scholarship related to ethnicity emphasizes that ethnicity is just one of the factors feeding into the formation of identities. Moving from studying ethnicity to studying identity allows for the examination of the ambiguities of identity; the world is not accurately reflected by attempting to divide fixed groups by the rigid boundaries that are often raised in the study of ethnicity. Several authors instead root their analyses of identity in both the concrete historical and contemporary social forces impinging upon identity (Constable 1997; Rosaldo 1980; Gilroy 1987; di Leonardo 1993). These analyses highlight the multiple social forces such as economic position, racial categories, gender, and geography that influence identities, while recognizing the role collective and individual resistance can play in the process of identity formation. Social identities are rarely firmly bounded and more frequently exist in flux, with blurred bounds reflecting hybridity and global cultural transformations (see Bhabha 1994; Appadurai 1996; Ong 1999). From this perspective, identities are not just situational and a matter of “choice” for an individual (see Worsley 1984: 246). Identities are part of larger processes, but they are not just subject to these megaprocesses with humans playing little or no active part.

This approach to thinking about how identities take shape is informed by the important work on post-colonial concepts of nation and power. Much of this work examines how a sense of “nation” is created in contexts in which the frameworks of colonial eras continue to operate in one way or another (see Chatterjee 1993; Mamdani 1996). This work is strongly influenced by “subaltern studies,” a direction in scholarship that has particularly focused on South Asia and sought to write historiography from the perspective of those who have been colonized. Perhaps because of its emphasis on critiquing structural aspects of colonial legacies, this influential school of thought has tended to exclude considerations of the disparate experiences of individuals caught up in nation-building.³ The emphasis on close examinations of groups and a type of sociological homogenizing, with little attention to the interpretations and narratives of individuals who comprise these groups, points to an alternative approach that can be taken to the study of power.

Recent work suggests that how transformations of power are experienced, including during processes of nation-building and “modernity,” depends very much on subject position (Rofel 1999; Lancaster 1988; Abelmann 1997). This subject position is constituted through a range of factors such as ethnicity, generation, class affiliation, profession, and gender, and these factors interweave in various ways to influence how people interpret histories and how they depict their lives. In presenting a discussion of both contemporary designations of identity and the historical roots of Evenk identities, the following sections create frameworks for understanding historical consciousness of individual Evenki who together are reconfiguring what it means to be part of this community.

Local, Newcomer, and Native

Like three-quarters of indigenous Siberians in Russia, the indigenous Siberian population in the Evenk District has been concentrated in rural areas until quite recently (Fondahl 1998: 83; Savoskul 1971). As government support for state sable and fox farms lagged beginning in 1993, the primary means for making a living in this area disappeared. The desperate material circumstances in rural areas resulted in substantial migration to regional centers. Small regional centers such as Tura continued, however, to be populated predominantly by Russians and Ukrainians, as well as a small number of refugees, like those from the civil war in Tadzhikistan.

Figure 2. The Udygir family in an Evenk District village. Photo by the author, 1998.

Over the 1990s, this web of people in the Evenk District made up a population ranging from 20,000 to 26,000 inhabitants in an area more than twice the size of California (see Chapter 2 for a discussion of the drop in population over the 1990s). The population included about 4,000 Evenki and 1,000 other indigenous Siberians such as Sakha, a group with its own neighboring titular district.⁴ In 1999 the Evenk District capital town of Tura had a population of about 6,000 people, of whom about 900 identified as Evenki. As discussed below, however, this was a rapidly changing population. While Tura was not very large, by the late 1990s it had nearly one-third of the total Evenk District population, with a wide range of designations of identities shaped by migration histories, economic standing, and political affiliations.

Terms referring specifically to indigenous Siberians ranged from “aboriginal” (aborigen) to “native”/“indigenous” (korennoi) to “Tungus” (tungus) to more derogatory terms used by both outsiders and Evenki themselves (in self-deprecating moments), such as “dark/dense” (temnyi). Evenki could be included in other categories as well. Each term carried different types of significance depending on context. For instance, few townspeople used the word “aboriginal” in referring to Evenk collective interests unless they were actively involved in indigenous rights politics; this term tended to mark the speaker as engaged with international discourse and having affiliations reaching beyond the town or region. A more common collective term referring to Evenki was “native” (korennoi); this term was a familiar one for most people because it was widely used in Soviet parlance. In official communication and in popular speech, the terms “aboriginal” and “native” could both be used narrowly to indicate just the Evenk population or more broadly to include the Sakha or Kety, the other indigenous groups concentrated in the area.⁵ For instance, in reporting the levels of literacy in the community, the number of children entering preschool, or other numerical facts, the given source would invariably distinguish between the population as a whole and the numbers for the native population.

Among the Evenki in Tura, there are distinctions based on geography and social status. In particular the Katanga Evenki are recognized as having roots outside the Evenk District. The Katanga Evenki arrived from the Katanga region, an area bordering the southeastern present-day Evenk District and the Sakha Republic—several hundred kilometers down the Nizhniaia Tunguska River—in order to assist in administering the fledgling Soviet town in the early 1930s. As the result of the Katanga Evenki’s history of sedentarization and colonial contact, which extended at least fifty years earlier than that of the Illimpei Evenki in the region of Tura, in 1917 the Katanga region already had a small cadre of literate Evenki (Sirina 1995). Historical ties of close affiliation between Katanga Evenki and Soviet structures of power resonate in a number of ways throughout this book, but particularly in women’s narratives in Chapters 3 and 4.

There are also distinctions between Baikit and Illimpei Evenki. In the 1920s when Soviet linguists were creating writing systems for a number of indigenous Siberians, they often chose between several dialects of a language to designate which one would become the official dialect for adoption in textbooks and other written materials.⁶ In creating an alphabet for the Evenki in the Evenk District, linguists chose the Baikit dialect, a dialect of Evenk historically spoken by Evenki from the southern area of the Evenk District, south of the Podkamennaia River in the Baikit region (Boitseva 1971: 146; Nedjalkov 1997). This has had long-lasting effects in terms of social stratification among Evenki in the Evenk District because those with the more southern, Baikit, “Sha-type” dialect were able to study the language in their own dialect, while those with the northern, Illimpei, “Kha-type” dialect could not. In favoring the Baikit dialect, Soviet linguists created an internal hierarchy of dialects among Evenki. In the late 1990s, Evenk intellectuals in Tura frequently discussed the problem of “literary” Evenk being considered more prestigious than the local dialect found in the Illimpei region surrounding Tura (Pikunova 1999).

Throughout the 1990s the term “Russian” (russkii) was used colloquially by both Evenki and others to refer to non-indigenous Siberians—whether Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, or Estonian—who were considered sufficiently European in origin. Furthermore, to be “Russian” indicated that one belonged to a social category associated with patterns of privilege; to be Russian was not to belong to the indigenous community. Within the category of Russian, a number of distinctions were also made, depending on multiple factors. For example, those Russians whose ancestors had lived for several generations in Siberia could also be referred to as “Siberians,” sibiriaki; historically sibiriaki are known for an “attitude of tolerance” (Czaplicka 1926: 490–92). In contrast, the term “newcomers” (priezzhii) was used to refer to those Russians who were induced by high pay and benefits to come to the area and planned to stay only for a few years.⁷ Throughout 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 herding was central to the Evenk way of life. Reindeer were held as common property of the band, but individuals sometimes also owned select reindeer (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 646–47). In contrast to many other reindeer herding peoples, the Evenki had completely domesticated reindeer. The reindeer milk that women collected was an important dietary supplement, and in the winter they stored frozen blocks of milk in the ground for extended periods. Men generally hunted wild reindeer and used the domesticated ones for transportation by riding the reindeer itself with a saddle. In the early twentieth century, Evenki began using reindeer sledges, but earlier they only used sledges pulled by people.

Although the Evenki had no permanent political leaders, there was a clan assembly (sagdagul), generally consisting of grown men, and sometimes women, who were heads of households (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 644). This assembly dealt with socioeconomic issues such as the adoption of children, territorial disputes, and punishments for infringements of proper conduct. Evenk oral tradition also relates that as influential members of the community, shamans sometimes acted as leaders in times of intergroup conflict.

“Shaman” is a term widely used in north Asian languages to indicate healers with varying degrees of spiritual abilities and leadership power (Humphrey 1994c: 206). The term itself may have evolved from the Sanskrit word sramana, a common designation for a Buddhist monk in ancient sacred texts (Mironov and Shirokogoroff 1924).¹⁵ The Russian language incorporated the term “shaman” from the Tungusic speaking peoples in the seventeenth century. In the Evenk version of shamanism, shamans interact with the spiritual world, which the Evenki believe to be composed of three elements: the middle earth, where people live; the upper world of the supreme god and other gods; and the underworld, where the spirits of the dead reside (Forsyth 1992: 54). It is possible that at one time the Evenki had, as Caroline Humphrey describes for the “inner Asian hinterland”—southern Siberia and northern Mongolia—two types of shamanism that differed according to how they represented social reproduction (1994c: 198–99). Humphrey terms one type “patriarchal” because she views it as focused on the continuation of patrilineal clans through shamanic influence over the symbolic reproduction of the patrilineal lineage. Humphrey calls the other type “transformational” because it was involved in all the forces in the world—natural phenomenon, humans, animals, and manufactured things. This second type of shaman manifested his or her power through the trance, while the first type would conduct sacred rites and was a diviner but could not master spirits or enter a trance.

Among the Evenki, the powers of the shaman could be inherited by men and women, but they were more commonly found among men. Shamans were recognized as arbiters between the spirit, animal, and human worlds; they were given the task of performing sacrifices of the unusual white-colored reindeer at ritual events such as weddings and funerals and the advent of the hunting season. Because the ability to smith iron was associated with the spirit world, shamans often adorned their skin clothing with animal representations of the spirit world made from iron. Then, as today, however, people were connected to the spirit and animal worlds through daily practices, not just through the medium of a shaman. In maintaining reciprocal relationships with spirit and animal worlds, a balance was maintained. These relationships continue to include feeding the hearth fire morsels of fat or a splash of vodka, killing animals at prescribed times, and respecting certain animals—like bears—thought to be closely related to humans. Many Evenki believe that these prescribed interactions with spirit and animal worlds ensure today, as in the past, that one’s household will be safe and healthy and that disregarding these relationships can, and historically could, mean dire consequences for individuals or whole clans (Anisimov 1950).

According to ethnographic accounts dating from the nineteenth century and more recently (Mordvinov 1860; Kytmanov 1927; Shirokogoroff 1933; Dolgikh 1960; Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964; Karlov 1982), the clan as the basic unit of Evenk social organization underwent various changes even before the radical reorganization implemented by the Soviets in the 1930s (as discussed later in this chapter). Although there is no written record prior to the seventeenth century, oral tradition holds that for most of the year Evenki lived in small bands consisting of two or three families that belonged to one or two interrelated clans (Tugolukov 1988: 525). In summer several bands would gather in camps of about a dozen tents and engage in exchange of trade goods such as tobacco and pelts. At this time parents also arranged marriages for their children, an arrangement that usually involved an exchange of reindeer between the families.

Vasilevich and Smoliak argue (1964: 645) that by the seventeenth century ownership of reindeer among the Evenki was delineated by individual families, and that these were “economically speaking” considerably separate from clans. These individual families accrued varying numbers of reindeer and apparently fought with one another over territory. In the same period, the development of trade relations with Russians, the depletion of the sable population, and the rapid Russian occupation of land contributed to the breakdown of former Evenk clan relationships. Evenki moved about as they lost control of land they had formerly used for subsistence activities, and this movement resulted in the creation of new communities consisting both of Evenki from different clans and of various other ethnic groups, including Kety and Sakha. Vasilevich and Smoliak (1964: 645) write that until the Russian Revolution these new communities engaged in collective labor instead of labor being based on the former framework within the joint family or clan.

Whether or not this ideal communal arrangement depicted by Vasilevich and Smoliak existed, there is evidence that in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries the increasing role of trade and taxation was causing internal strife among Evenki and between Evenki and other groups. From the seventeenth century onward, tsarist policy engaged Cossacks in collecting taxes, or iasak, in the form of furs from indigenous Siberians throughout Russia (Slezkine 1994: 13). As early as 1614, one group of Cossacks known as the Mangazeia imposed a fur tax on Evenki living in central Siberia near the Nizhniaia Tunguska River, and by 1623 nearly all the Evenki living near the Enisei River were paying tax in furs (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 623). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tsarist policies moved more toward trade and Christianization among the Evenki.

The Russian Orthodox Church and Shifting Relations of Control

While prior to the Soviet era most interaction between indigenous peoples and Europeans was connected to trade, even as early as the seventeenth century missionaries sought out converts among indigenous Siberians. Russian Orthodox Church schools were also expanding their efforts in Siberia by the eighteenth century, but they attracted few indigenous Siberian students (Bazanov 1936). One of the largest church efforts resulted in twenty elementary schools being set up in Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands in the mid-1700s; these lasted until the 1780s (Sgibnev, 3–4, cited in Forsyth 1992: 142). These schools largely served a Russian settler population, however, and did not actively seek to incorporate indigenous Siberians.

As for many other indigenous Siberians, the establishment of Russian Orthodox missions had little impact on the daily lives of the Evenki in central Siberia. In 1754 a Russian Orthodox mission was established on the banks of the Enisei River in Turukhansk, a town about 360 miles downstream from present-day Tura along the Nizhniaia Tunguska River. It appears that for years the mission took little interest in the surrounding populations of indigenous Siberians in the region. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the church was becoming involved in the budding systems of surveillance and control of indigenous Siberian populations that were to become fully developed in the Soviet era. From 1862 to 1915, the central Siberian region fell under the Enisei diocese (Eniseiskii dukhovnyi konsistorii), and those Orthodox missionaries working in Turukhansk Territory were instructed to keep records ranging from their daily activities to a registry of births, deaths, and baptisms (Anderson and Orekhova 2002: 97). One document in the Evenk District archive collection dated December 1855 lists the Tungus newcomers to the area and a count of those who were “believers” in Russian Orthodoxy.¹⁶ A September 1855 account notes marriage dates for members of the indigenous population along with information about their trade partners in Turukhansk.¹⁷ Archival documents suggest that relations between clergy and native peoples were often strained because of inordinate charges for ritual services and the clergy’s disdain for native ritual practices; there were some exceptions, however (see Anderson and Orekhova 2002). This region served as a point of exile for priests in disfavor with the church hierarchy.¹⁸

While the church did not avidly promote conversion, it gained some converts through its role as an interlocutor between the Russian government and the indigenous population. Thus by the mid-eighteenth century, tribute requirements for indigenous Siberians were reduced if they converted to Russian Orthodoxy. For instance, in November 1855 a priest sent a request to Irkutsk that tribute not be demanded from a certain “Tungus” for a period of three years because he had converted. Even with this inducement, however, few members of the indigenous population converted.¹⁹

In 1868 the Russian Orthodox Synod announced the possibility for clergy to receive a medal of “Saint Ann, of the third order” for good works dealing with education in general. In August of that year the Turukhansk church received word from the Enisei diocese that they should open a seminary and a school for indigenous students.²⁰ In the same period, missionaries were sent out from Turukhansk to outlying regions, including to what are today towns in the Evenk District. In 1892 one of these missions founded Saint Basil’s church in Essei, the most northern village in the Evenk District, which is located on the border with the present-day Sakha Republic (see Anderson and Orekhova 2002). Although in 1913 the priest counted 1,562 Evenki and 1,328 Iakuty (Sakha) who lived in the region, few were drawn to attend church or send their children to school there. Although the mission was nearly abandoned by the time the Soviets arrived in the early 1920s, its former presence was recalled by several Evenki and Sakha living in Tura in the early 1990s.²¹ One woman recalled that in her childhood her grandparents kept a Rus-sian Orthodox icon beside the shamanic bundles and talismans safeguarded in their chum in the taiga.

Evenki and Trade in the Early Twentieth Century

The Russian Orthodox Church briefly located in Essei was strategically established along one of the major routes traversed by Sakha and Evenki in the course of their yearly trade. In the Soviet period, the 1926 Household Census of the Arctic North (Pokhoziaistvennaia perepis’ pripoliarnogo Severa) also took note of the key role that trade played in the life of indigenous Siberians in the region. In particular the census carefully documented the degree to which various indigenous Siberians, including the Evenki, were acquainted with Russian goods. In the early twentieth century, Evenki in this region attended an annual fair where they encountered Russians and traded sable pelts and fish for textiles and beads, metal, guns, and foodstuffs, including tea, sugar, salt, flour, and vodka.²²

In addition to Russian Orthodox and Russian trader influences, over time the Evenki have had a wide range of cultural contacts. For instance, in the late 1990s collections at the Evenk District Regional History Museum (hereafter Evenk District Museum) reflected the longstanding Evenk trade links with China. Artifacts on exhibit included Evenk garments with buttons and ornamentation made from Chinese coins dating from the eighteenth century. Trade ties with the neighboring Sakha were also evident in the museum’s collection of ornate silverwork and iron acquired by Evenki to create buttons, tools, sled details, and icons. The Evenki have a long-standing interaction with the Sakha, historically a sizable seminomadic group living to the north and northeast of Lake Baikal. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Sakha already lived as pastoralists with semipermanent residences. They had considerable knowledge of metal forging, and unlike the Evenki, they could make metal out of iron ore (Forsyth 1992: 56). Since this metal was particularly prized by the Evenki, those living in regions bordering the present-day Sakha Republic would travel ten to forty days to trade with the Sakha. As one elderly Evenk woman described to me, intermarriage between Sakha and Evenki in these same neighboring regions was also common. In her mother’s youth, in the 1940s, people would travel days to arrange marriages between Evenki and Sakha.

For hundreds of years the Evenki have interacted with different groups, including with representatives of established nation-states. Only with the onset of the Soviet era in the North, however, did Evenki begin to experience a radical transformation of their way of life.

“Modernization,” Sedentarization, and Sovietization

Evenk lives within Russia today have significantly changed from how they were lived even fifty years ago. Forced sedentarization began in the 1930s when Soviet cadres fundamentally reorganized production among indigenous Siberian groups. As among other indigenous Siberian groups like the Nivkhi (Grant 1995a: 91), Soviet cadres introduced what were called “simplest hunting units” arteli for short, and convinced Evenki to combine their reindeer herds into larger collective groups for “production.” This new organization of herding was meant to create joint use of herding equipment and techniques, but it was also meant to diminish the ties of clan-based social organization. One source claims that by 1937 through the “voluntary socialization” of reindeer herding there were thirty-two of these arteli in the Evenk District and eighty-six percent of the entire Evenk population was involved (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 652). My interview material suggests that this wide scale collectivization was not particularly voluntary and probably did not encompass as much of the reindeer as officially recorded. One woman said that when Soviet officials targeted her father’s herd of 600 reindeer in the early 1930s he first attempted to hide them in another area of the taiga before he finally gave in and relinquished them during the state’s wholesale collectivization of reindeer a few years later (see Chapter 3). David Anderson points out that, with their specialized knowledge of the environment of the region and its rugged valleys, herders were able to hide portions of their herds while offering up some for the official count (2000: 47).

Soviet agencies charged with the task of collectivization intensified their efforts in the late 1930s in converting former arteli into kolkhozy (kollektivnye khoziaistva), or collective herding enterprises, in which many of the original Evenk herders remained primarily in charge of their former herds with minimal direction from the state. With the changes in organization, reindeer herding units came to be called “brigades.” As discussed further in Chapter 3, by the late 1930s and in a reorganization in the late 1950s to the 1960s, indigenous Siberian men were consolidated in state cooperatives where they continued to herd reindeer, hunt, or fish and turn over the end products to the state. This pattern officially continued until 1992 with the breakup of the Soviet system of state-organized production. In the post-Soviet era, Evenk clans vied for decollectivized land and control over herding and hunting territories, and by 1998 most of these had been predominantly claimed. As David Anderson notes (2000: 160–70), however, in some areas the decollectivization or privatization of state cooperatives has not taken hold because of local circumstances where territory bounded by the earlier Soviet state designations has continued to be politically beneficial for many.

In some cases in the Evenk District, clans have recently established claims to territory that formerly included Soviet villages. In conjunction with collectivization of herding and the restructuring of social relations, in the early 1930s these villages began to be targeted as “lacking prospects” or “inefficient” (neperspektivnye); they were gradually shut off from the broader network of Soviet bureaucracy by the 1950s. By the end of World War II, one half of the former settlements established in the Evenk District in the early twentieth century no longer existed. In the Illimpei region alone the small enclaves of Vivi, Amovsk, Agata, and Kochumdeisk were officially closed and lost their doctor’s assistants, veterinarians, and trading posts, all frequented by Evenki. In the 1990s, however, many families continued to return seasonally to these areas to fish and hunt.

In restructuring and consolidating the settlements, the Soviets not only streamlined production (and the supply of “producers” with foodstuffs) but also forced indigenous peoples into closer interaction with the central bureaucracies. This effort to consolidate villages and towns and resettle populations was part of a broader trend repeated throughout Russia in the 1960s as sovkhozy (sovetskie khoziaistva), or state agricultural cooperatives, replaced the kolkhozy (Pallot 1989). In the sovkhozy, reindeer herds were fully collectivized and became the property of the state, entirely supervised by government-appointed specialists; this contrasted to the former kolkhozy, where there was minimal direction from the state.²³ The 1960s resettlement policy, repeated in the 1970s and 1980s in some regions of Siberia, displaced Evenki from traditional areas of herding, hunting, and fishing. It also led to a loss of skilled and administrative positions that Evenki had held in the small enclaves because newcomers occupied many of these jobs in the consolidated towns.²⁴ While in 1932 Evenki comprised 81.9 percent of the Evenk District population, by the late 1990s they comprised just under 15 percent of the population.²⁵ The influx of newcomers into the Evenk District followed a trajectory similar to that in other regions of Siberia (Grant 1995a: 120–30; Bogoslovskaia 1993; Habeck 1997).

Identities, Education, and the Politics of Language

The policies noted above led to radical shifts in Evenk social organization and cultural practices from the 1920s to 1990s. A particularly strong reminder of this legacy is the decreasing number of Evenk language speakers at the onset of the twenty-first century. Many Evenk intellectuals argue that language is critical to the revitalization of Evenk cultural knowledge (Monakhova 1999: 44). Recent statistics indicate, however, that today knowledge of Evenk language is not a primary signifier of Evenk identity. For instance, according to the 1989 Soviet census, of the 29,901 people who recognized themselves as Evenki, only 9,075 said they considered Evenk as their native language (Gos. kom. RSFSR po stat. 1991: 141). In the mid-1990s in Tura, it was extremely rare for Evenki under thirty-five to speak Evenk fluently. As inmigration from outlying villages intensified, however, this situation shifted somewhat in the late 1990s.²⁶ Aside from language, there is a wide range of factors that continues to shape Evenk identities. The line between “Russian” and “Evenk,” for instance, is delineated in part as a strategy for pursuing resources available to members of each group. In everyday life, however, there are myriad ways in which these spheres are fused and intertwined, and language is one of these.

As Humphrey notes in her insightful work on ethnic identity and “chat” among the Buriat (1994b), everyday speech reflects borrowings between spheres; this is certainly the case with Russian and Evenk language usage. The Soviet era especially left its imprint in terms of technical and bureaucratic vocabulary borrowed from Russian. For example, in the Evenk sentence “Sobraniela upakt sagdyl kolkhoznikil eimeicheityn” (“All the adult kolkhoz members came to the meeting” or “Na sobranie prishli vse vzroslye kolkhozniki” in Russian), the word for “kolkhoz members” would be expressed in Evenk using a Russian root kolkhoznik, with an Evenk suffix, -il. There is also borrowing in the other direction, from Evenk into Russian, and this is most common for terms specifically associated with traditional Evenk subsistence practices or clothing. For instance, the Evenk word for tall boots sewn out of reindeer hide and sinew, untal, is used by Russian speakers and supplemented with Russian suffixes to produce, for example, unty.²⁷ These small, but illustrative linguistic examples reflect the widespread cultural hybridity that continues in many forms in the North.

While it did not necessarily preclude affiliation with a range of identities, knowledge of Evenk language was a definite indicator of Evenk identity in the 1990s; it was quite unusual for those without at least one Evenk parent to take an interest in Evenk language.²⁸ While those who knew Evenk were viewed as “true” (nastoiashchie) Evenki, many younger Evenki considered themselves to be Evenki but did not know the language. As discussed in Chapter 2, while some households had a type of primordial perspective on their alliance with either Russian or Evenk spheres of symbolic capital, many had complex kinship and social ties rooting them in both spheres. The Evenki in Tura employed a sort of “prospiospect,” to borrow a phrase from Ward Goodenough (see Wolcott 1989), a stance of shifting identities in the context of multiple influences.²⁹ Each person had a prospiospect that was not just “Evenk” or “Russian” but an amalgamation of a range of experience. Particularly in instances of social mobility, such as education, individuals drew on a sense of identity as fluid and as something that could be transformed for instrumental purposes.

Given that possibilities for pursuing education were expanded if one was considered “indigenous,” in the realm of education identities tended to be especially fluid. In the 1990s entitlements for “indigenous peoples” (korennye narody) seeking higher education continued to exist at a number of levels. While places in Russia’s elite institutions—the Moscow State University, the Peoples’ Friendship University of the Russian Federation, and the Leningrad State University—were the most sought after, there were slots reserved in regional institutions as well.³⁰ Slots were generally reserved for a set number of students from specific administrative areas, including the Evenk District, and were available for students majoring in humanities and increasingly in social sciences and medicine.

In 1993 the elastic nature of identities in the Evenk District was underscored when students in Tura were applying for university. In the first instance, a young woman, usually self-identifying as Russian, was accepted to study at a major university in Moscow at the expense of the Russian government. Given that the Russian government allotted the Evenk District five slots in Moscow universities for “peoples of the North” (that is, indigenous Siberians), this hopeful student successfully emphasized her previously downplayed Evenk heritage—her grandmother was “pure” (chistaia) Evenki and her mother considered herself one-half Evenki. Although neither the student nor her mother spoke Evenk, they mobilized this aspect of their multidimensional identities to secure educational opportunity. In a second instance, a member of one of the few remaining “German” households, in which both parents were of German descent, was admitted to study in a university in Moscow in one of the slots reserved for peoples of the North.

Typically degrees of authentic ethnic identity were not the deciding factor in granting opportunities for higher education. The real focus was on the likelihood that the young people who were given this opportunity would return to these regions that suffered from the loss of highly trained newcomers. Those considered sufficiently local, not newcomers that is, became “peoples of the North” for the purposes of sending students for academic training that could later result in fortifying local professional ranks. Thus regional administrations selecting students for scholarships chose to reinterpret central government affirmative action policies to suit local needs.

In the cases where Evenk families moved out of the district, usually to the southern city of Krasnoiarsk, students would often return to the Evenk District to take qualifying exams for the university. Sometimes the students had never attended elementary or high school in the district but would arrive for the exams in early summer. By taking entrance exams in the Evenk District as “peoples of the North,” students were automatically considered for the reserved slots in the institutions of higher learning. They could take the exams in the southern cities, their primary residences, but then they would not be able to vie for the reserved slots. Only in rare cases did students choose to study in disciplines or institutions in which there were no special allotments for indigenous Siberians.

What it means to be Evenki has transformed significantly over the past fifty years as Evenki have come under the purview of the state and now find themselves in a post-Soviet state with new configurations of power. Evenk identities have not just been defined, however, in a top-down manner; Evenki have also been active participants in negotiating situational identities. In addition to these renegotiations around ethnic identity, in the Soviet and post-Soviet era other aspects of identity have also been significant. As the next section discusses, Soviet identity was “performed” in contexts like the House of Culture. For many, the House of Culture was a site embodying Soviet cultural practice, and in the 1990s it was also the site for government-sponsored cultural revitalization programs and a meeting place for the new religious organizations taking root in Tura.

The House of Culture and Ritual Life Reassessed

State-sponsored “cultural work” (kul’turnaia rabota) was central to the Soviet project extending throughout Siberia (Bloch and Kendall 2004). These state-supported cultural revitalization efforts often are reminiscent of similar efforts across the world in which invoking tradition is closely linked to legitimating state or regional power (Handler 1988; Watson 1995; Kaplan 1994). In the context of an indigenous community in the 1990s, however, state-sponsored cultural revitalization, or “cultural invention” (Linnekin 1991; Conklin 1997), was not simply the Soviet state’s construction of a distinct indigenous identity as something to be contained in museums, performed, and studied as part of the past. As I also explore in Chapter 7, the Evenki I knew who were involved in performing tradition in the form of dance, song, and handicrafts did not see these acts as “inventing” culture. Being part of a folk dance troupe, singing, or sewing warm fur clothing was instead part of daily life and sociality. The state created institutions and funded organizations, but the revitalization of Evenk cultural practices that was busily taking place when I first arrived in Tura in 1992 and continued in various ways throughout the 1990s involved people who themselves breathed life into these sites and found meaning in them. In the 1990s, Turintsy continued to value Soviet institutions such as the House of Culture, but many also began to look to new or renewed forms of sociality such as organized religion and healing practices.

In Tura, as in other Soviet towns and villages, the “House of Culture” (Dom kul’tury or “De Ka” as young people called it) was the primary center of organized social life for much of the Soviet period. While in cities these social centers were sometimes called “Palaces of Culture” and in fact were housed in former tsarist-era palaces, in Tura the House of Culture was a cavernous, rather unappealing two-story structure of grey concrete built in the 1980s in the town center. This institution sponsored events throughout the year to mark holidays such as the “Day of the October Revolution,” New Year’s Eve, and “the End of Winter.” It also housed various clubs such as a chess club, a sports club, a rock music group, and the Evenk folk dance group (Osiktakan), and hosted a weekly discotheque for teenagers. Moreover, the House of Culture served as the site for civic events. It was a polling site for the election of local and federal representatives and was used for public send-offs for young men entering the army. In the post-Soviet era indigenous groups in some parts of Siberia established separate cultural centers they viewed as distinct from the more orthodox, state-sanctioned House of Culture (see Gray 1998: 297; Khelol 1997). Throughout the 1990s, however, the Evenki in this region had not created such alternatives, and in fact, in Tura many Evenki, as well as other town residents, continued to frequent the House of Culture as an important gathering place, both for civic events and for entertainment.

Most significantly for Evenki, in conjunction with the residential school, the House of Culture was a place where Evenk identities were bolstered through state-financed means. The various clubs housed within the House of Culture and the holiday events celebrated there focused around reproducing what were referred to as “traditional” (traditsionnye) Evenk songs, dance, and clothing. For instance, in 1993–94 the House of Culture had an Evenk folk music ensemble consisting mostly of elderly women who sang songs in Evenk and Russian; the songs featured lyrics about life in the taiga. The Evenk folk dance ensemble also performed a number of choreographed pieces that invoked shamanic practices and were accompanied by the steady beat of a hide drum. In the 1980s and early 1990s, this was a popular group for youth to belong to; the troupe traveled extensively in the Soviet Union, as well as abroad, and it was also considered a source of employment for those principal dancers who were paid by the Department of Culture. In the 1990s, in addition to the dance and music groups, the House of Culture also housed a “methodological center,” where three women were employed in crafting the details of traditional, material culture for set design, costumes, and ritual events. By the late 1990s the growing demands of the Evenk District Sakha community for greater government recognition and a corresponding allocation of resources were also evident in the House of Culture, where a Sakha drama group was briefly established.

The majority of educated Evenki in the Evenk District in the early 1990s were employed in the sphere of “culture” as “cultural workers” (kul’turnye rabotniki) in institutions such as the residential school and the House of Culture. The concentration of Evenki in these spheres ensured that they were steeped in this enterprise of producing officially designated versions of tradition (Bloch 2001). When the Ministry of Culture lost much of its financing from the central government in 1993, however, the House of Culture became a less focal aspect of Tura social life. Many of the cultural workers—musicians, artists, and choreographers—were compelled to seek employment in more lucrative spheres. One artist who had been trained as an architect joined the town planning office. A musician employed at the House of Culture admitted to me with a note of shame that he had decided to leave his job to shovel coal in one of the town boilers. His new position would pay four times more than what the House of Culture could offer him.³¹ The deterioration of this institution represented the demise of a broader system that had played a critical role in placing Evenk identities within a structured, shared, Soviet context.

Priests, Shamans, and Consciousness in Flux

The rapid demise and public denigration of formal Soviet ritual left a gaping ideational hole for many people in the Russian Federation. In the Evenk District in the 1990s, youth often openly derided symbols of the Soviet era, carving disparaging graffiti in public outhouses and exchanging anecdotes parodying socialist policies and Soviet leaders. Older people and Evenk intellectuals, however, often found this disrespect for Soviet cultural practice and ideology disconcerting. They spent decades taking part in a common Soviet consciousness and often proudly proclaimed themselves as Soviet citizens (sovetskie grazhdane). Such was the case of one retired reindeer herder who described himself to me as a “Soviet person” (sovetskii chelovek) in our conversations in 1993. One afternoon he proudly exhibited the medals he had won for fighting on the Western Front during World War II and for leading a successful herding brigade for a number of years.

One reflection of the widespread sense of belonging to a Soviet society was the ongoing salience of Soviet holidays. Many of these did not just disappear from the landscape with the creation of the Russian Federation. Some Soviet holidays such as May 9, Victory Day (Den’ Pobedy), commemorating the end of World War II for the Soviet Union, or November 7, October Revolution Day (Den’ Oktiabr’skoi Revoliutsii), commemorating the Russian Revolution, continued to be widely celebrated. These days were marked by concerts organized at the House of Culture and private parties. These were also occasions when Evenki living in southern cities made an effort to travel home.

Lenin’s birthday, April 22, while not widely celebrated in Tura in the 1990s and significantly not marked by an event at the House of Culture, was inscribed in local consciousness. The holiday was designated as “Labor Day” (Den’ Truda), at a time when the Communist Party was briefly outlawed in 1993–94. One “Labor Day” event in Tura in 1994 particularly illustrates how Soviet ritual practice remained pertinent for an older generation in the 1990s. Lenin’s birthday began with the daily 7:30 A.M. Evenk District radio broadcast. The feature program was a medley of former tributes to Lenin that concluded with the commentator’s note of relief that the days of requisite odes to Lenin had come to an end. That afternoon I learned from the young commentator that she had been personally threatened by a group of people identifying themselves as members of the Communist Party. Soon after the program they barged into her office and began to berate her for her views; they emphasized that without Soviet power and Lenin’s vision the Evenki would not be at the “level of development” that they were today. She was warned to avoid such disparaging remarks or else her job would be in danger.

Some people in the Evenk District, however, were not finding comfort in the structures and ideologies of Soviet cultural practices; they were looking for new ways to make sense of their world, and organized religion became one of these. Prior to 1993 there had never been an organized religious group in Tura, although there had been occasional missionary outposts in the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as mentioned earlier in this chapter. In the summer of 1993, Russian Baptists and Dutch Evangelical missionaries made their way north from Krasnoiarsk to bring the word to the people of Tura and to several surrounding villages. While there was no church in which these groups could gather, they erected tarps on the residential school grounds and began giving sermons. The group of Evangelists from the Netherlands made a particularly strong impression upon one young Evenk man who had grown up in Tura. He recounted how they gave out free Bibles printed in Russian and how everyone was extremely friendly. An Evenk educator also remarked that she was impressed that the missionaries took an interest in translating the Bible into Evenk; the Evangelists even approached her about possibly working on this project.³²

In the fall of 1993, people continued to discuss the missionaries’ summer visits, but by November the focus turned to a small group of Turintsy who decided to form a Russian Orthodox community. Although the local administration had not granted a permit for the group to meet, about forty interested people gathered in the House of Culture on one chilly evening in November. The majority of the group were Russian women, although there were a few elderly men and Evenk women. Most attendees sat dressed in fur hats and boots, shivering in the freezing, cavernous cement building. A radio correspondent taped the discussion about establishing the first church ever to exist in Tura. The primary organizer of the gathering requested ten names of people for a petition that would provide justification for the Russian Orthodox Archdiocese in Krasnoiarsk to support the fledgling group. The evening concluded with a conflict between the organizers and the director of the House of Culture. The director became concerned about repercussions from the town administration and claimed that a nongovernmental organization, the church group, could not legally meet in a government building. Despite this tension, the group continued to meet once a week and even held Easter services in the town administration’s office building.³³ By the spring of 1994, there was also a Baptist group meeting weekly in a Tura apartment.