Indigenous peoples of Siberia

Indigenous peoples of Siberia

Administrative Siberian Federal District        Geographic Siberia        North Asia, greatest extent of Siberia
Total population
4,500,000
Regions with significant populations
Siberia
Languages
Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages, Eskimo–Aleut languages, Nivkh languages, Mongolic languages, Tungusic languages, Turkic languages, Uralic languages, Yeniseian languages (Ket), Yukaghir languages, Ainu languages
Religion
Siberian Shamanism, Tengrism, Tibetan Buddhism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Sunni Islam

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Indigenous people of Siberia.

Siberia (North Asia), including the Russian Far East, geographically, is the Asiatic part of Russia. As a result of the Russian conquest of Siberia (17th to 19th centuries) and of the subsequent population movements during the Soviet era (1917-1991), the demographics of Siberia today is dominated by speakers of Russian, including the Russian subethnic group Siberians (Sibiryaks). However there remains a slowly increasing number of indigenous groups, between them, accounting for about 10% of the total Siberian population (about 4,500,000), some of which are closely genetically related to indigenous peoples of the Americas.^[1]

History[]

Ethnographic map of the 16th-century Siberia from a Russian Empire period

In Kamchatka, the Itelmens' uprisings against Russian rule in 1706, 1731, and 1741, were crushed. During the first uprising the Itelmen were armed with only stone weapons, but in later uprisings they used gunpowder weapons. The Russian Cossacks faced tougher resistance from the Koryaks, who revolted with bows and guns from 1745 to 1756, and were even forced to give up in their attempts to wipe out the Chukchi in 1729, 1730–31, and 1744–47.^[2] After the Russian defeat in 1729 at Chukchi hands, the Russian commander Major Dmitry Pavlutsky was responsible for the Russian war against the Chukchi and the mass slaughters and enslavement of Chukchi women and children in 1730–31, but his cruelty only made the Chukchis fight more fiercely.^[3] A war against the Chukchis and Koryaks was ordered by Empress Elizabeth in 1742 to totally expel them from their native lands and erase their culture through war. The command was that the natives be "totally extirpated" with Pavlutskiy leading again in this war from 1744 to 1747 in which he led to the Cossacks "with the help of Almighty God and to the good fortune of Her Imperial Highness", to slaughter the Chukchi men and enslave their women and children as booty. However this phase of the war came to an inconclusive end, when the Chukchi forced them to give up by killing Pavlutskiy and decapitating him.^[4]

The Russians also launched wars and conducted mass slaughters against the Koryaks in 1744 and 1753–54. After the Russians tried to force the natives to convert to Christianity, different native peoples such as the Koryaks, Chukchis, Itelmens, and Yukaghirs all united to drive the Russians out of their land in the 1740s, culminating in the assault on Nizhnekamchatsk fort in 1746.^[5] After its annexation by Russia in 1697, around 100,000 of 150,000 Itelmen and Koryaks died due to infectious diseases such as smallpox, mass suicides and the mass slaughters perpetrated by the Cossacks throughout the first decades of Russian rule.^[6] The genocide by the Russian Cossacks devastated the native peoples of Kamchatka and exterminated much of their population.^[7][8] In addition to committing genocide, the Cossacks also devastated the wildlife by slaughtering massive numbers of animals for fur.^[9] Ninety percent of the Kamchadals and half of the Vogules were killed from the 18th to 19th centuries and the rapid genocide of the indigenous population led to entire ethnic groups being entirely wiped out, with around 12 exterminated groups which could be named by Nikolai Iadrintsev as of 1882. Much of the slaughter was brought on by the Siberian fur trade.^[10]

In the 17th century, indigenous peoples of the Amur region were attacked and colonized by Russians who came to be known as "red-beards".^[11] The Russian Cossacks were named luocha (羅剎) or rakshasa by Amur natives, after demons found in Buddhist mythology. The natives of the Amur region feared the invaders as they ruthlessly colonized the Amur tribes, who were tributaries of the Qing dynasty during the Sino–Russian border conflicts. Qing forces and Korean musketeers who were allied with the Qing defeated the Cossacks in 1658, which kept the Russians out of the inner reaches of the Amur region for decades.^[12]

The regionalist oblastniki were, in the 19th century, among the Russians in Siberia who acknowledged that the natives were subjected to violence of almost genocidal proportions by the Russian colonization. They claimed that they would rectify the situation with their proposed regionalist policies.^[13] The colonizers used massacres, alcoholism and disease to bring the natives under their control, some small nomadic groups essentially disappeared, and much of the evidence of their obliteration has itself been destroyed, with only a few artifacts documenting their presence remaining in Russian museums and collections.^[14]

The Russian colonization of Siberia and conquest of its indigenous peoples has been compared to European colonization in the United States and its natives, with similar negative impacts on the natives and the appropriation of their land. However, the Siberian experience was very different, as settlement has not resulted in dramatic native depopulation.^[15]

From 1918 to 1921, there was a violent revolutionary upheaval in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. Russian Cossacks under Captain Grigori Semionov established themselves as warlords by crushing the indigenous peoples who resisted them.^[16] The Czechoslovak Legion initially took control of Vladivostok and controlled all of the territory along the Trans-Siberian Railway by September 1918.^[17][18] The Legion later declared its neutrality and was evacuated via Vladivostok.

Today, Kamchatka is largely populated by a Russian majority, although decreasing, with a slowly increasing indigenous population. The Slavic Russians outnumber all of the native peoples in Siberia and its cities except in Tuva and Sakha (where the Tuvans and Yakuts serve as the majority ethnic groups respectively), with the Slavic Russians making up the majority in Buryatia and the Altai Republic, outnumbering the Buryat and Altaian natives. The Buryats make about 30% of their own Republic, the Altaians make up about 33% Altaian, and the Chukchi, Evenks, Khanty, Mansi, and Nenets are outnumbered by non-natives by nearly 90% of the population. The Czars and Soviets enacted policies to force natives to change their way of life, while rewarding ethnic Russians with the natives' reindeer herds and wild game they had confiscated. The reindeer herds have been mismanaged to the point of extinction.^{[citation needed]}

Overview[]

Painting of Chukchi couple

Koryak men at the ceremony of starting the New Fire

Classifying the diverse population by language, it includes speakers of the following language families (number of speakers reflect the 2002 Russian census):

• Uralic
  • Samoyedic (some 22,000 speakers)
  • Ugric (some 10,000 speakers)
• Yukaghir (nearly extinct)
• Turkic^[19][20]
  • Yakut (456,288 speakers)
  • Dolgan (population: 7,261; speakers: 4,865)
  • Tuvan (population: 243,442; speakers: 242,754)
  • Tofa (population: 837; speakers: 378)
  • Khakas (population: 75,622; speakers: 52,217)
  • Shor (population: 13,975; speakers: 6,210)
  • Siberian Tatar (populations: 6,779)
  • Chulym (population: 656; speakers: 270)
  • Altai (some 70,000 speakers)
• Mongolic (some 400,000 speakers)
• Tungusic (some 80,000 speakers)
• Chukotko-Kamchatkan (some 25,000 speakers)
• Nivkh (some 200 speakers)
• Eskimo–Aleut (some 2,000 speakers)
• Ainu (nearly extinct, speakers remain in Hokkaido and on the Kamchatka Peninsula)

Simplified, the indigenous peoples of Siberia listed above can be put into four groups,

1. Altaic
2. Uralic
3. Yeniseian
   • Ket (some 1,600 people, 20 to 485 speakers)
   • Yugh (nearly extinct, 19 speakers)
4. Paleosiberian ("other")

Altaic has not been proven to be a language family, a phylogenetic unit. It may be a Sprachbund. Paleosiberian is simply a geographic term of convenience. Here, these two terms are listed just to serve as portal-like starting points – without suggesting genetic considerations.

Mongolic peoples[]

Buryat shaman of Olkhon, Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia

The Buryats number 461,389 in Russia according to the 2010 census, which makes them the second largest ethnic minority group in Siberia. They are mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia. They are the northernmost major group of the Mongols.^[21]

Buryats share many customs with their Mongolian cousins, including nomadic herding and erecting huts for shelter. Today, the majority of Buryats live in and around Ulan Ude, the capital of the republic, although many live more traditionally in the countryside. Their language is called Buryat.

In Zabaykalsky Krai of Russia, in Mongolia and China, there are also the Hamnigans—a Mongolic ethno-linguistic (sub)group as Mongolized Evenks.

Turkic peoples[]

Siberian Tatars

The Siberian Turks include the following ethnic groups:

• Altaians
  • Chelkans
  • Telengits
  • Tubalars
• Chulyms
• Dolgans
• Khakas
• Kumandins
• Shors
• Siberian Tatars
  • Baraba Tatars
• Soyots
• Teleuts
• Tofalars
• Tuvans
  • Tozhu Tuvans
• Yakuts

Tungusic peoples[]

The Evenks live in the Evenk Autonomous Okrug of Russia.

The Udege, Ulchs, Evens, and Nanai (also known as Hezhen) are also indigenous peoples of Siberia, and are known to share genetic affinity to indigenous peoples of the Americas.^{[citation needed]}

Uralic peoples[]

Ugrians[]

The Khanty (obsolete: Ostyaks) and Mansi (obsolete: Voguls) live in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia. By 2013, oil and gas companies had already devastated much of the Khanty tribes' lands. In 2014 the Khanty-Mansi regional parliament continued to weaken legislation that had previously protected Khanty and Mansi communities. Tribes' permission was required before oil and gas companies could enter their land.^[22]

Samoyeds[]

Nenets child

Selkup man

Samoyedic peoples include:

• Northern Samoyedic peoples
  • Nenets
  • Enets
  • Nganasan
• Southern Samoyedic peoples
  • Selkup
  • Kamasins or Kamas
  • Mator or Motor (now extinct as a distinct ethnic group)
  • Koibal (now extinct as a distinct ethnic group)

Yukaghir group[]

Yukaghir is spoken in two mutually unintelligible varieties in the lower Kolyma and Indigirka valleys. Other languages, including Chuvantsy, spoken further inland and further east, are now extinct. Yukaghir is held by some to be related to the Uralic languages in the Uralic–Yukaghir family.

The Yukaghirs (self-designation: одул odul, деткиль detkil) are people in East Siberia, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic; the Taiga Yukaghirs in the Upper Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic and in Srednekansky District of Magadan Oblast. By the time of Russian colonization in the 17th century, the Yukaghir tribal groups (Chuvans, Khodyns, Anauls, etc.) occupied territories from the Lena River to the mouth of the Anadyr River. The number of the Yukaghirs decreased between the 17th and 19th centuries due to epidemics, internecine wars and Tsarist colonial policy. Some of the Yukaghirs have assimilated with the Yakuts, Evens, and Russians. Currently Yukaghirs live in the Sakha Republic and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation. According to the 2002 Census, their total number was 1,509 people, up from 1,112 recorded in the 1989 Census.

Eskimo–Aleut group[]

The Siberian Yupiks live along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula.

"Paleosiberian" groups[]

Ket woman

Four small language families and isolates, not known to have any linguistic relationship to each other, compose the Paleo-Siberian languages:

1. The Chukotko-Kamchatkan family, sometimes known as Luoravetlan, includes Chukchi and its close relatives, Koryak, Alutor and Kerek. Itelmen, also known as Kamchadal, is also distantly related. Chukchi, Koryak and Alutor are spoken in easternmost Siberia by communities numbering in the dozens (Alutor) to thousands (Chukchi). Kerek is now extinct, and Itelmen is now spoken by fewer than 10 people, mostly elderly, on the west coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

2. Yukaghir is spoken in two mutually unintelligible varieties in the lower Kolyma and Indigirka valleys. Other languages, including Chuvantsy, spoken further inland and further east, are now extinct. Yukaghir is held by some to be related to the Uralic languages.

3. Ket is the last survivor of the Yeniseian family along the middle of the Yenisei River and its tributaries. It has recently been claimed [1] to be related to the Na-Dene languages of North America, though this hypothesis has met with mixed reviews among historical linguists. In the past, attempts have been made to relate it to Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, and Burushaski.

4. Nivkh is spoken in the lower Amur basin and on the northern half of Sakhalin island. It has a recent modern literature and the Nivkhs have experienced a turbulent history in the last century.

5. Ainu languages are spoken on Sakhalin, Hokkaido, the Kurils, and on the Kamchatka Peninsula, as well as in the Amur region. Today, Ainu is nearly extinct, with the last native speakers remaining in Hokkaido and on Kamchatka.

Relationship to indigenous peoples of the Americas[]

Indigenous Siberian Shaman at Kranoyarsk Regional Museum, Russia

Paleo-Indians from modern day Siberia are thought to have crossed into the Americas across the Beringia land bridge between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago.

Analysis of genetic markers has also been used to link the two groups of indigenous peoples. Studies focused on looking at markers on the Y chromosome, which is always inherited by sons from their fathers. Haplogroup Q is a unique mutation shared among most indigenous peoples of the Americas. Studies have found that 93.8% of Siberia's Ket people and 66.4% of Siberia's Selkup people possess the mutation.^[23] The principal-component analysis suggests a close genetic relatedness between some North American Amerindians (the Chipewyan [Ojibwe] and the Cheyenne) and certain populations of central/southern Siberia (particularly the Kets, Yakuts, Selkups, and Altaians), at the resolution of major Y-chromosome haplogroups.^[24] This pattern agrees with the distribution of mtDNA haplogroup X, which is found in North America, is absent from eastern Siberia, but is present in the Altaians of southern central Siberia.^[24]

Culture and customs[]

Laminar armour of hardened leather reinforced by wood and bones worn by the Chukchi^[25]

Late lamellar armour worn by indigenous peoples of Siberia

This section needs expansion. You can help by . (December 2009)

Indigenous Siberian Canoe at Krasnoyark Regional Museum, Russia

Indigenous Siberian Musical Instrument used with Throat Singing, at Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum, Russia

Customs and beliefs vary greatly among different tribes.

The Chukchi wore laminar armour of hardened leather reinforced by wood and bones.^[26]

Kutkh (also Kutkha, Kootkha, Kutq Kutcha and other variants, Russian: Кутх), is a raven spirit traditionally revered by the Chukchi and other Siberian tribal groups. He is said to be very powerful.^[27]

Toko'yoto or the "Crab" was the Chukchi god of the sea.^[28]

Nu'tenut is the chief god of the Chukchi.^[29]

The Chukchi also respect reindeer in both mortal and holy life. They have several rituals involving them. ^[30]

The Supreme Deity of the Yukaghirs is called Pon, which means "Something".^[31] He is described as very powerful.^[32]

Literature[]

• Rubcova, E.S.: Materials on the Language and Folklore of the Eskimoes, Vol. I, Chaplino Dialect. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moskva * Leningrad, 1954
• Menovščikov, G. A. (= Г. А. Меновщиков) (1968). "Popular Conceptions, Religious Beliefs and Rites of the Asiatic Eskimoes". In Diószegi, Vilmos (ed.). Popular beliefs and folklore tradition in Siberia. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
• Barüske, Heinz: Eskimo Märchen. Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Düsseldorf and Köln, 1969.
• Merkur, Daniel: Becoming Half Hidden / Shamanism and Initiation Among the Inuit. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis / Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion. Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1985.
• Kleivan, I. and Sonne, B.: Eskimos / Greenland and Canada. (Series: Iconography of religions, section VIII /Arctic Peoples/, fascicle 2). Institute of Religious Iconography • State University Groningen. E.J. Brill, Leiden (The Netherland), 1985. ISBN 90-04-07160-1.

See also[]

•  Siberia portal
• Ancient Beringian, Siberian indigenous people.
• History of Siberia
• Demographics of Siberia
• First All Union Census of the Soviet Union
• Indigenous people
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas
• List of ethnic groups
• Y-DNA haplogroups in populations of Central and North Asia
• Pomors
• Kola Norwegians
• Uralic languages
• Shamanism in Siberia
• List of indigenous peoples of Russia
• List of small-numbered indigenous peoples of Russia
• Small-numbered indigenous peoples of Extreme North

Citations[]

References[]

• Batalden, Stephen K. (1997). The Newly Independent States of Eurasia: Handbook of Former Soviet Republics. Contributor Sandra L. Batalden (revised ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0897749404. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Bisher, Jamie (16 January 2006). White Terror: Cossack Warlords of the Trans-Siberian. Routledge. p. 492. ISBN 978-1135765958. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Bobrick, Benson (15 December 2002). "How the East Was Won". THE NEW YORK TIMES. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
• Black, Jeremy (2008). War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continents, 1450-2000. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300147698. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Etkind, Alexander (2013). Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0745673547. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Forsyth, James (1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581-1990 (illustrated, reprint, revised ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521477710. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Jack, Zachary Michael, ed. (2008). Inside the Ropes: Sportswriters Get Their Game On. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803219076. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Kang, Hyeok Hweon (2013). "Big Heads and Buddhist Demons: The Korean Musketry Revolution and Northern Expeditions of 1654 and 1658". Journal of Chinese Military History. 2 (2): 127–189. doi:10.1163/22127453-12341256.
• Levene, Mark (2005). Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 2: The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-0857712899. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Mote, Victor L. (1998). Siberia: worlds Apart. Westview series on the post-Soviet republics (illustrated ed.). Westview Press. ISBN 978-0813312989. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Pesterev, V. (2015). Siberian frontier: the territory of fear. Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), London.
• Stephan, John J. (1996). The Russian Far East: A History (illustrated, reprint ed.). Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804727013. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Wood, Alan (15 April 2011). Russia's Frozen Frontier: A History of Siberia and the Russian Far East 1581 - 1991 (illustrated ed.). A&C Black. ISBN 978-0340971246. Retrieved 24 April 2014, pp. 89–90.CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Condé Nast's Traveler, Volume 36. Condé Nast Publications. 2001. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Yearbook. Contributor International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. 1992. Retrieved 24 April 2014.CS1 maint: others (link)

External links[]

• Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North
• "Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia". UNESCO.
• "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". UNESCO.
• Endangered Uralic Peoples
• Minority languages of Russia on the Net
• The Red Book of the peoples of the Russian Empire
• Survival International page on the Siberian Tribes
• L'auravetl'an Indigenous Information Network by Indigenous Peoples of Russia
• (in Russian) В погоне за малыми, an article about treatment of minorities in the Russian Empire, Kommersant-Money, October 25, 2005
• Mapping Indigenous Siberia: Spatial Changes and Ethnic Realities, 1900–2010. Ivan Sablin & Maria Savelyeva