Sibirica

This second issue of volume 7 marks the completion of three volumes of Sibirica under the current editorship and with our publisher, Berghahn Books. We have been working to improve the content and delivery of the journal, organizing several issues around special themes, often as the result of interdisciplinary conferences related to the region. Our partnership with Berghahn has been great from the start and is only gaining strength. They have been expanding the electronic infrastructure for web access to subscribers, and Sibirica is accessible through Ingenta via links on Berghahn’s own website. We are in the process of digitizing all the back issues of Sibirica, all the way to its first incarnation as photocopied typescripts in the 1980s. This will give subscribers and others easy access to important scholarly material on Siberian studies.

This article investigates people's relationships to the natural environment, or ecological ethics, in two closely related minority ethnic groups—Evenki and Eveny in Siberia. It is based on the oral histories and the experience of people living "traditionally" on the land, and also those who have settled permanently in villages and towns. The article explains what role nature plays in their lives, the cultural rules of interrelation with it, and their transformations in the contemporary world. Indigenous moral laws have not been able to protect the land and nature from destruction common in wider Russian society. Therefore, appropriate state policy is needed to protect the rights of the minority indigenous peoples of the Russian North for use of natural resources.

This article looks at the particular ways in which shamanic sacred places are being constructed through tourist performances. Focusing on the guided tours in Olkhon Island conducted by a Buryat shaman, the article maps out the various meanings of this tourist phenomenon in the context of Buryat shamanic revival. It interprets tourist performances as forms of social action and as a paradigmatic example of how contemporary Buryats fashion their ethnic and religious identity, arguing that this form of shamanic tourism results in the greater articulation (rather than the diminution) of cultural heritage. Focusing on the intercultural production of sacred sites as one part of multi-faceted shamanic revitalization process, the article demonstrates that it is through reinvention of shamanism as a "genuine world religion" — which fashions sacred sites as equivalents of "temples" (in this case in tourist discourse)—indigenous activists stake out political ground for reclaiming sacred sites.

Swedish troops were the first major group of foreigners to be exiled to Siberia. This article overviews their early eighteenth century diaspora, particularly their livelihoods, religiosity and terms of imprisonment, their relations with Russian citizens and authorities, and their potential contributions to the development of Asian Russia. It builds primarily on Swedish secondary and primary sources such as the officers' diaries, and to some extent on the much scarcer Russian historiography.

The location of the capital of the Mongolian Empire, Kharakorum, had been lost to outsiders for centuries. In the summer of 1889, Nicholas Mikhailovich Iadrintsev, author, editor, and publisher of the newspaper Vostochnoe Obozrenie went in search of Kharakorum. As an oblastnik, Iadrintsev went on this quest to further understanding of Inner Asia's history. He quickly discovered its location in the Orkhon Valley, and the extremely significant Kultigin Stones, the first known Turkish writing of the first Turkish state. Iadrintsev's role in these discoveries and subsequent activity, are the subject of this research report.

This research report gives an ethnographic account of libations and ritual offerings in the shamanic culture of contemporary Western Buriats. Common ritual motifs are identified between libations in everyday practice, annual rites at the family hearth, and large-scale tailgan rituals. It is suggested that such practices mediate reciprocity between neighbors and reconstitute obligations of mutual help within kin groups. Finally, it is proposed that the vitality of the ritual complex today lies in its fundamental articulation of the principles of reciprocity and belonging in the context of rapid out-migration from the region and the atomization of kin groups.

Yulian Konstantinov, Reindeer-Herders. Field-Notes from the Kola Peninsula (1994–1995)

Florian Stammler, Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market. Culture, Property and Globalisation at the “End of the Land”

Aimar Ventsel, Reindeer, Rodina and Reciprocity. Kinship and Property in a Siberian Village

Vladislava Vladimirova, Just Labor. Labor Ethic in a Post-Soviet Reindeer Herding Community

Patty A. Gray, The Predicament of Chukotka’s Indigenous Movement: Post-Soviet Activism in the Russian Far North

A.A. Velchko and V.P. Nechaev, eds., Cenozoic Climatic and Environmental Changes in Russia

John F. Hoffecker and Scott A. Elias, Human Ecology of Beringia

Natascha Sontag, Map of the Inuit Language in Inuit Communities in Canada, Inuktitun Inuit Nunanginni Kanatami, La langue inuit dans les communautés inuit au Canada

Film Received for Review