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Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Volume 8 2014 Number 2 JEFJOURNAL OF ETHNOLOGY AND FOLKLORISTICS Editor-in-Chief Ergo-Hart Västrik Editors Risto Järv, Indrek Jääts, Art Leete, Pille Runnel, Taive Särg, Ülo Valk Language Editor Daniel Edward Allen Editorial Assistant Judit Kis-Halas Advisory Board Pertti J. Anttonen, Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Dace Bula, Tatiana Bulgakova, Anne-Victoire Charrin, Silke Göttsch, Lauri Harvilahti, Mihály Hoppál, Bo Lönnqvist, Margaret Mackay, Irena Regina Merkienė, Stefano Montes, Kjell Olsen, Alexander Panchenko, Éva Pócs, Peter P. Schweitzer, Victor Semenov, Anna-Leena Siikala, Timothy R. Tangherlini, Peeter Torop, Žarka Vujić, Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Ants Viires, Elle Vunder Editorial Address Estonian National Museum Veski 32 51014 Tartu, Estonia Phone: + 372 735 0421 E-mail: [email protected] Distributor Estonian National Museum Homepage http://www.jef.ee Design Roosmarii Kurvits Layout Tuuli Kaalep Printing Bookmill, Tartu, Estonia Indexing Anthropological Index Online, Central and Eastern European Online Library (C.E.E.O.L.), MLA Directory of Periodicals (EBSCO), MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO), Open Folklore Project This issue is supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory, CECT). JOURNAL OF ETHNOLOGY AND FOLKLORISTICS ISSN 1736-6518 (print) ISSN 2228-0987 (online) The Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics is the joint publication of the Estonian Literary Museum, the Estonian National Museum and the University of Tartu. Established in 2007. Published formerly as • Pro Ethnologia • Studies in Folklore and Popular Religion • Studies in Folk Culture Established in 1993 Established in 1996 Established in 2003 ISSN 1406-9962 ISSN 1406-1090 ISSN 1736-1192 All rights reserved JOURNAL OF ETHNOLOGY AND FOLKLORISTICS Volume 8 | Number 2| 2014 CONTENTS Preface to the Special Issue .................................3 VLADIMIR DAVYDOV Coming Back to the Same Places: The Ethnography of Human-Reindeer Relations in the Northern Baikal Region ...............................7 OLGA POVOROZNYUK Belonging to the Land in Tura: Reforms, Migrations, and Indentity Politics in Evenkia . 33 PATRIK LANTTO The Consequences of State Intervention: Forced Relocations and Sámi Rights in Sweden, 1919‒2012 .................................. 53 AIMAR VENTSEL Sakha Music: Selling ‘Exotic’ Europeanness in Asia and Asianness in Europe ... 75 LAU R VALLI K I V I On the Edge of Space and Time: Evangelical Missionaries in the Post-Soviet Arctic 95 VICTOR SHNIRELMAN Hyperborea: The Arctic Myth of Contemporary Russian Radical Nationalists ...121 Notes for Contributors ................................. 140 JEF Special Issue DEPARTURES AND RETURNS IN THE NORTH PREFACE TO THE SpeCIAL ISSUE This special issue of the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics is compiled on the basis of papers presented at the 3rd International Arctic Workshop of the University of Tartu, titled World Routes.1 The aim of the workshop, held at the beginning of June 2012, was to bring together presentations that discuss the movement of people, physical objects, identities, ideas or the idea of movement in the context of the Arctic in a way that opens new horizons or initiates exciting discussions. The Arctic is often seen as an isolated empty area covered with snow. However, the Arctic has been inhabited not just for centuries but for thousands of years. These inhabitants have been in constant movement. The Arctic is a region with huge distances where more or less everything needs to be constantly imported. This means that move- ment is more significant in the Arctic than in many other regions. The movement of people in different parts of the Arctic is linked with various environmental factors, changes in the economy, political processes, state policies and the movement of ideas, to name but a few. Apart from this, physical movement is often accompanied by iden- tity shifts, the creation of new identities, the consolidation of existing ones or adapta- tion of new (sibiriaki in Siberia). These multiple factors and different modes of move- ment and identity change have – contrary to human movement in other continents of the world – received little continuous attention from scholars. Moreover, the movement of people in the Arctic is often studied as the movement of two separate groups, native and incomer populations, but we should see it as interconnected on different levels. Moreover, space and movement in the Arctic has found little analysis in a comparative perspective, whether as a comparison between different Arctic regions or with non-Arc- tic territories. The workshop wished to explore these and other aspects of movement. The main theoretical framework of the workshop was that the movement of people in the Arctic, both past and present, is multi-layered, has a complex background and content, and several initiators. We liked to discuss these different levels and aspects of movement in the Arctic. Herewith we do not limit discussion to one discipline, region, ethnic group or economic form (mode). Similarly to earlier workshops,2 presentation topics appeared to be rather diverse. As the organisers had proposed quite fluid subjects, scholars who gathered at the meet- ing interpreted the initial task in a variety of ways. This was in accord with the organ- ising team’s strategic plan, which was to inspire free academic interpretation of the concept of ‘movement in the Arctic’. In his paper “Coming Back to the Same Places: The Ethnography of Human-Rein- deer Relations in the Northern Baikal Region”, Vladimir Davydov analyses the results © 2014 Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian National Museum, University of Tartu 3 ISSN 1736-6518 (print), ISSN 2228-0987 (online) Vol. 8 (2): 3–6 of his recent fieldwork among Evenk reindeer herders. Davydov challenges earlier Rus- sian ethnographies that approached domestication as a one-time social event and dem- onstrates that complicated movements of animals and people make this social change ambivalent. Davydov presents a fascinating ethnography of how people try to facilitate reindeer return by feeding reindeer with salt, producing smoke that enables the rein- deer to escape insects and binding calves to stakes and poles. On the one hand, animals periodically come back to a camp. On the other hand, reindeer herders know the places to which the animals return outside a camp, helping them to find reindeer. Davydov argues that one cannot claim that reindeer domestication in the northern Baikal is actu- ally finalised but is a relative and on-going process. Olga Povoroznyuk’s article “Belonging to the Land in Tura: Reforms, Migrations, and Indentity Politics in Evenkia” aims to explore a different aspect of movement in the Arctic. The author demonstrates how the long-term influence of administrative reform, migration and cultural and identity construction policies have created a diverse pat- tern of territorial identity in the Evenk territories around Tura town in Central Siberia. Although the state reforms and indigenous policies have framed the indigenous iden- tity construction processes, a sense of “belonging to land” can be distinguished as a major culture-specific factor that shapes vernacular identity narratives and discussions. Patrik Lantto contributes to the Arctic movement topic with his discussion concern- ing indigenous land rights. His paper “The Consequences of State Intervention: Forced Relocations and Sámi Rights in Sweden, 1919–2012”. Putting his arguments into the framework of international law (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indig- enous Peoples), Lantto explores the way in which forced relocations of Sámi in Swe- den have affected the discussion on Sámi rights. The author elaborates on historical analyses of ideas and actions of national and regional authorities and the way the Sámi groups have acted in the long-term conflict that has developed. A rather different approach to the problem of movement in the North is proposed by Aimar Ventsel in his paper “Sakha Music: Selling ‘Exotic’ Europeanness in Asia and Asianness in Europe”. This article is focussed on various forms of Sakha music and how these different genres match the concepts of Europeanness or Asianness. Ventsel demonstrates how these categories are manipulated to produce success among audi- ence of different natures and from different regions. In this processes, the geographical distance between the artist’s origin and the audience plays the primary role by confirm- ing the authenticity of the music. To offer the audience music by labelling it exotic is a strategy that Sakha artists use to market their music and earn income and prestige. Laur Vallikivi’s article “On the Edge of Space and Time: Evangelical Missionaries in the Tundra of Arctic Russia” is dedicated to the discussion of Protestant missionaries’ conceptualisation of the coastal areas of the Nenets tundra in the biblical framework. According to Vallikivi, various missions and ideologies (Russian Orthodox, Commu- nists, Evangelicals) have attempted to rearrange the worldview of the indigenous peo- ples in the North. Although agents of change have been driven by various agendas, from an ideological point of view they appear similar to the natives “in their search for productive edges, constructing ‘remote’ time-spaces, all these being woven into a major narrative in which the past and present are heroic and the future will be joyful” (p. 113). These utopianists have interpreted the northernmost areas of human habitation
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