Page date:5/7/2002
Ziker’s
account of the Dolgan and Nganasan peoples of the Ust Avam community is a unique
and valuable contribution to the anthropology of postsocialism, hunter-gatherer
studies, and Siberian ethnography. The book provides ethnographic detail on
local economic practices, history, demographics, cosmology, land and resource
management arrangements, and kinship, and relates these details to larger anthropological
debates on human nature, relationships between colonizers and colonized, tradition,
and sustainability. The book describes the devastating changes affecting indigenous
people in the central Taimyr lowlands created in the wake of the Soviet Union’s
collapse, in particular: increasing isolation of remote communities along with
a shift to non-market survival strategies; convergence of traditions among the
Dolgan and Nganasan; and, increasing socioeconomic differentiation between remote
communities and urban centers.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements v
1 Peoples of the Tundra 1
Native People of Taimyr 2
Hunting and Gathering after the USSR 8
Connections to the Avam Tundra 11
Methods 16
Outline 19
2 Making a Living: Ecology and Economy 23
Geography 24
Climate and Fauna 26
Hunting Seasons 29
Hunt Types 31
Division of Labor 43
Production Harvests and Efficiency 44
Food Distribution and Sharing 47
Food Consumption 53
3 The Loud Years: Resistance and Collaboration 63
Prehistoric Human Occupation of the Taimyr Peninsula 64
Russian Expansion 65
Formation of the Dolgan Nationality 69
The Communist Revolution and the Formation of the Regional Government 71
Collectivization, Rebellion, and Repression 76
Cultural Encounters 82
4 Alcohol and Violent Death 85
The Alcohol Problem 86
Ethnodemographics of Ust Avam 88
Fertility 92
Mortality 95
Pitfalls in the Post-Soviet Transition 103
5 Shamans, Ancestors, Sin, and Sacrifice 105
Dulsimyaku Kosterkin and the Ngumtuso Clan 106
Dolgan Shamanism 110
Individuals and Shamanic Power 116
Traditional Cosmological Knowledge 118
Sacred Places 121
Sacrifice and Cooperation 123
6 The Law of the Tundra 125
Assigned Territories, Family/Clan Holdings, and Common-Pool Resources 126
Formal Land Claims 128
Forms of Ownership and Politics 134
Assigned Territories 136
Management of Hunting Grounds and Resources 138
Physical and Social Territoriality 140
City and Tundra Law 147
7 The Future Is in Their Hands
Divergence and Convergence 151
Kinship and Social Organization 153
Globalization and Circumpolar Cooperation 159
Appendix A 165
Appendix B 167
Glossary 169
References 171
Study Guide 183