Lost and Found Children in the Arctic Wilderness Moving On, Moving Forward

Lost and Found Children in the Arctic Wilderness Moving On, Moving Forward NATALYA KHOKHOLOVA Abstract: The article does not investigate the reason behind the recurring cases of missing children and young adults in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and does not offer an explanation for this phe- nomenon. Instead, it interprets this occurrence as a symptom of the oppressive histories and realities for indigenous groups residing on the territory of this part of the Russian Federation. Although the reasons for children going missing might seem obvious—the vast uninhabited territory of the region and poor infrastructure—the article argues that these cases of missing children are the result and evidence of neglect on behalf of parents and the state. The contribu- tive value of this article is to voice the current precarious situation in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) under the “brotherhood” of the New Russians’ oligarchy and the way that communal cultural practices of the indigenous peoples of Yakutia resist this form of oppressive practice and the possibility of going missing, or extinct. Keywords: indigenous peoples, Karina Chikitova, Kerecheene Tuprina, lost and found narratives, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), resistance t is customary in remote parts of Russia, like the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), to hear of people being reported lost and missing, as the Iregion is a vast and scarcely populated territory with poorly developed infrastructure. During the summer, iagodniki (berry pickers) sometimes disappear in the depth of forests after encountering bears or even escaped criminals. In winter months icy roads are often the cause of fatal accidents; car engines often give up in the middle of their routes, exhausted from moving in the freezing temperatures of negative 60 degrees Celsius and colder. As a rule, if people go missing in the region, they rarely find their way back. However, there have been two cases Sibirica Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 2021: 57–75 © The Author(s) doi: 10.3167/sib.2021.200204 ISSN 1361-7362 (Print) • ISSN 1476-6787 (Online) Natalya Khokholova with happy endings that attracted the world’s media attention. These are the miraculous stories of the survival of Karina Chikitova in 2016 and of Kerecheene Tuprina in 2018. The first story is that of four-year- old Karina, who was rescued after being missing for twelve days in the Olekma taiga. Although she was mentally and physically malnour- ished, she turned up intact. The second case involves the courageous and risky travel of the young Kerecheene into the misty white abyss of the remote northern Anabar tundra. She was saved by the customary tradition of reindeer herders of leaving rations of food and fuel in small huts for other fellow herders-travelers and hunters, and also by the power of modern technologies: Instagram and phone calls. The Sakha Republic is the largest national republic of the Russian Federation, with an area as large as India but with a population half that of Slovenia. It is ethnically mixed, with a current majority Sakha (Yakut) population. Russians form a significant minority, though their numbers have decreased rapidly since the Soviet disintegration. The Sakha Republic is also home to other indigenous communities such as Chukchis, Dolgans, Evens, Evenks, and Yukagirs, and over one hundred other nationalities as diverse as Swedes and Chinese. Russian settlers erroneously referred to the Sakha people as Yakuts, which replaced the original name, Sakha, following the disintegration of the USSR. The Sakha people are a Turkic nomadic group believed to have migrated from Central Asia in and around the eighth to twelfth centuries. The republic also has a significant Slavic population, which includes the Russian “old timers” (starozhyli)—the descendants of fur trappers, Cossacks, prospectors, traders, and priests. Russia’s eastward expansion began in the mid- to late-sixteenth century under Ivan the Terrible. Subsequently, in 1632, a fort was built on the Lena River, which developed into Yakutsk, the modern-day capital of the Sakha Republic. The Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed by the Soviets in 1922. The abundance of natural resources and industri- alization in the area attracted settlers from central Russia and Ukraine, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. The settlers changed the population dynamics of the republic, minoritizing the Sakha people in their own land. Moscow monopolized the rich natural resources of the region, and under the Soviets, Sakha remained one of the most economically backward republics of the Soviet Union. In the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Sakha declared itself a sovereign state on September 27, 1990, but did not renounce its incorporation from the Russian Federation. 58 Sibirica Lost and Found Children in the Arctic Wilderness I argue that the ongoing that even have become customary cases involving lost and found children in Yakutia reveals the generational layers of social trauma and neglect among indigenous communities in Russia.1 These stories are symptomatic of the political abuse expe- rienced by the indigenous peoples of the Russian North at the hands of the recurring founding fathers of the nation and the “bigger white brothers.” These stories represent loss and revitalization, as well as broader patterns of “neglect,” which are not only interpersonal but political, in which the Sakha Republic is a neglected child in the Russian Federation. Although Yakutia has never been a liability for the Russian state—it has always been self-sufficient and underrepresented—the ideological beliefs and sanitizing practices that undergird the dis- course of the “elder white brother” (belyi starshii brat) have depicted it as a savage region in need of educating and fitting into the age of industrial modernity.2 Due to forced modernization, an array of certain inconsistencies in infrastructure were established, and numerous social problems—from issues of self-identification to occupational opportu- nities—plague certain social groups in Yakutia. The disruption of state support and planned development of traditional industries, together with a spontaneous transition to a market economy had a massive impact on indigenous peoples of the North in the Sakha Republic— much of the problem boils down to unsystematic use and penniless sales of raw materials from the northern mining sites and fields.3 Com- bined with a lack of a culture of environmental sustainability at the level of the state, we see environmental degradation, the pollution and poisoning of rivers and lakes, the waterlogging of pasture, fishing and hunting areas, that is an artificial narrowing of habitat during the industrial development of the territories of the indigenous peoples (Crate 2009). Finally, there has been a deepening of social differentiation be- tween the city and the village in connection with the destruction of the communal agricultural enterprises, the bankruptcy of peasant farms and nomadic tribal communities, spurred on by economic activities not based on real calculation. The Sakha Republic is currently and gradually experiencing a collapse of the network of the industrial and social infrastructure of settlements, including transport, resulting in real and clandestine un- employment (Baisheva 2012: 57). Having lost many of the traditional mechanisms of life and unable to get involved in the process of indus- trialization of society, many indigenous communities subsist within a typically marginal way of life, in which the “fragments” of ethnic consciousness are intertwined with hastily acquired “values” of urban Summer 2021 59 Natalya Khokholova lifestyles. The extreme demographic situation among northern minori- ties is due not only to a decrease in the birth rate, natural growth but also to an increase in mortality that has been noted over the 1980s and 90s past several decades (see Poelzer and Fondahl 1997). It is likely that the reasons for the increase in infant and child mortality are distur- bances in the ecological balance of the environment, a decrease in the standard of living of the indigenous population, and a marginal moral and psychological sense of self and living arrangement of the indigenous population (Baisheva 2012: 152). To provide one example to illustrate the precision of these practices of “educating and sanitizing,” I noted identical accounts repeated by many of my interviewees, who mentioned that in Yakutsk in the 1980s, indigenous peoples would be frowned upon and even attacked for wearing reindeer boots (“unty”) and speaking Sakha. Even now, wearing reindeer boots inside offices or in other formal spaces of employment or social engagement is considered to be demonstrating disrespect to others or confirming that wearing unty makes one a country bumpkin (d’erebas, mambet). It goes hand in hand with othering when applied to the indigenous people who primarily are attached to the rural life- style—they are thought of as inferior because they live off herding cattle or reindeer, and therefore by default smell like domestic stock. Thus, they are uneducated, backward, and unclean. As Ulturgasheva (2020) explains in her article “Indigenous Youth, Gender and Domestic Violence in the Russian Sub-Arctic,” the process of othering can “take a form of straightforward and open bullying, or it is disguised as micro- hostility, e.g., unintentional social exclusion,” a result of the sense of superiority over the indigenous groups from the rural Sakha Republic. This illustration of bullying based on one’s origins further ques- tions the relations and responsibilities of the superior “elder white brother” and its inferiors. The works of cultural theorists such as Mabro (2009), Bhabha (2012), Said (1978), and Fanon (2020) explain that the mechanisms of othering behind the sense of superiority of one race over another, and how it drove the imperial conquests and spread of its politics and laws.4 Said’s foundational work for post-colonial and imperialism studies Orientalism (1978) reveals that the imperialists often use the demeaning, effeminizing tactics and attitudes projected on the subject of their conquest as a seal—a completion of domination.

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