Chanting

The Khanty people live mainly in the Khanty and Mansi Autonomous Okrug in western Siberia

A chantic family in traditional clothing

The Finno-Ugric ethnic group of chanting (old name "Ostyaks" self-description and Russian Khanty (Ханты - pronounced "han'di" as "hunni") . Indekl ) speaks a for Ugric Finno- branch of the Uralic languages belonging Ugric Language , the chantic divided into four dialects . Together with the Mansi , they are called Ob-Ugrians and form the indigenous population of the region in the West Siberian lowlands, formerly known as Jugoria . Linguistically, the Ob-Ugrians are the closest living relatives of the Hungarians .

The original horse breeders from Upper Irtysh became hunters and reindeer herders and came into contact with Russians in the 11th century . In the 16th century they came under Russian rule. It was not until the 18th century that the Khanty began to become Christian . Their cultural existence is threatened by the area's oil industry.

groups

The Chanten are divided into three larger sub-groups according to their settlement areas, the dialects of which are sometimes very different. The northern Chanten live on the Kasym , a right tributary of the Ob; the eastern Khanty settle on the Wach , which flows into the Ob near Nizhnevartovsk . The southern group, which originally settled on the Irtysh , was almost completely assimilated.

population

An older chant

In the 2002 census, 28,678 people stated “chantic” as their nationality. 26,694 of them lived in Tyumen Oblast , 17,128 of them in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and 8,760 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug . In the Tomsk Oblast , 873 residents indicated “Khanty” as their nationality, in the Komi Republic it was 88.

language

The colloquial language in cities and larger settlements today is mainly Russian . In smaller villages, in ethnic enclaves within larger settlements and on the residential areas of the semi-nomads living in the taiga , the Chantic dialects are still an important and sometimes the main means of communication.

history

Early history

Untanned sable hides

The Khanty and Mansi originate from the steppe areas of the Siberian southwest. Around 500 AD they migrated as horse-breeding nomads from the upper reaches of the Irtysh north to the lower Ob . They adapted themselves to the local environmental conditions and took over reindeer herding from the Ural peoples. The original horse breeding only lives in myths. On the other hand, they spread Central and South Asian cultural elements to the north. It is believed that Khanty and Mansi did not separate until the 13th century, with the two early phratries (clan associations) indicating that the early newcomers assimilated older Siberian peoples.

Novgorod and Russia, 11th-16th centuries

An ermine catcher of the Chanten (1790)

In Russian sources the Khanty were first mentioned in the 11th century under the name Ugra. Around 1265 they had to pay tribute to Novgorod . In the 14th century Novgorod undertook several military expeditions against the Khanty, evidently in 1323, 1329 and 1364. The Muscovites made similar forays , especially in 1483 and 1499. The Khanty dodged further east, but in 1563 they had to succumb to the Sibir Khanate , a successor empire the Golden Horde , also pay tribute.

In addition to the Mansi , they were among the first peoples of Siberia to be met by the Yermaks expedition . The Russians installed indirect rule, the main aim of which was the payment of tributes ( yassak ) in the form of sable skins . Local leaders, either traditional or appointed by the colonial rulers, were responsible for collecting and paying tribute. This tribute was the original main target of the Russian conquest of Siberia. For a long time Siberian sable hides were the most important source of income for the state.

The Christianization of the Khanty people did not begin until the beginning of the 18th century by the monk Fyodor, but the Russian colonial power secured the area early by building fortresses, such as Tyumen in 1585, Tobolsk in 1587, Surgut in 1593, Obdorsk (later Salekhard ) in 1595, etc.

1715 was a short description of the Ostyaks of Grigory Novickij , considered the first ethnographic study of Siberia. Novickij was a participant in the first proselytizing campaign, which lasted from 1712 to 1715. The objects brought back from such trips to Siberia were collected in the Petersburg Art Chamber . In the 1730s, the local view of the curiosities that had accumulated there changed. Systematisation began in the late 1730s. In cupboard 9, which, like 10, contained Siberian clothing, a swan-skin coat of the Chanten was deposited. The Berlin-born Peter Simon Pallas also traveled to Siberia. In his work Reise durch Various Provinces of the Russian Empire , which appeared in St. Petersburg from 1771–1801, he dedicated 30 pages of the third volume to the chants. He describes it as a "nation of fishermen" who still clung to "Heydenthum". He reports that dreams made shamans out of some of the tribesmen, having been instructed by ancient shamans in what he claims to be "deceitful arts".

Linguists began to be increasingly interested in the language of the Khanty in the 19th century. Therefore, the Hungarian Antal Reguly (1818-1854) traveled to them in the years 1845 to 1848 to collect language material that proved that his mother tongue and that of the chants belonged to a larger language family (Ural-Altaic hypothesis). The sick Reguly could no longer evaluate the materials himself, but the Hungarian Finno-Ugric Studies arose on their basis .

Chanting the Ob, late 19th century

Similar to North America, the indigenous peoples were integrated into a network of trading posts, which mainly served to collect fur ( fur trade in North America ). Alcohol soon emerged as an important medium of exchange, along with the spread of previously unknown diseases. The Chanting Society was in full dissolution around 1900.

Soviet Union

With the October Revolution began an epoch of around 60 years in which the government tried to forcibly assimilate the minorities. For this purpose, as in North America, boarding schools were set up in which the children of the indigenous people were no longer allowed to use their mother tongues. When the project began in 1925, however, there were also hopes of escaping the catastrophic situation in northern Siberia. In 1930 the Ostyak Vogul District was established, which was renamed the Chanten Mansen District ten years later. Under Stalin , shamans were persecuted and holy places were destroyed.

The Chants fought against this disregard for their culture and accused the Russians who came to their area of desecrating their holy places and alienating their children. When six members of a sovkhoz were fishing in Lake Numto in 1934, a fatal escalation occurred. This lake was the residence of the goddess Kasim in the opinion of the Chants, so it was a crime to catch fish there. The six unsuspecting people were killed after a sacrificial ritual. Moscow then dispatched troops, and an open uprising ensued with an unknown number of victims. After months of fighting, 51 chants were shot or disappeared in prison camps, from which they never returned. The attempted uprising went down in history as the " Kasimer uprising ". Forced resettlement under Stalin led to the establishment of villages such as Varyogan, 7 km above Novoagansk , and Agan . The culturally significant bear hunt was banned, and the associated rituals were now imprisoned for ten years. The system of characters created especially for the language and based on the Latin alphabet was replaced by the Russian script.

At the beginning of the Second World War , around 200 Khanty men from Kasim were drafted into the Red Army , of which only 18 returned.

The destruction of culture continued with the oil production (from 1953), more precisely with the radical change in the ecosystem. Numerous families moved further north to undeveloped areas, but the oil industry followed them.

In 1990 the threatened peoples founded the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East , which fought against discrimination and environmental degradation. She is a member of the Arctic Council founded in 1996 . In the area of the Khanty and Mansi, the sub-organization Spasanie Jugry (rescue of Jugriens) was established.

Russian Federation

The oil fields of Russia

In 1997 about half of the 23,000 Khanty people were resident in the Khanty and Mansi district, the rest in the Tomsk Oblast . The area of the Chanten and Mansi continues to be an important production area for oil and gas, although for decades no consideration was given to the indigenous people or the landscape. The Khanty reindeer herds have shrunk. a. because they stood on oil-contaminated pastures. In addition to the economic consequences such as unemployment and lack of property, the culturally uprooted are affected by the psychological consequences of every cultural uprooting, such as alcohol and drug problems, domestic violence and depression (see: Oil disaster in Western Siberia )

Some places have to be supplied with drinking water by tanker because the tap water tastes like oil. The suicide rate is high. Nevertheless, living conditions could change drastically again when the oil fields are exhausted.

In 1993 an association of independent reindeer herders was founded, including the former director of the Varjogan Ethnographic Museum, Jurij Kylevich Ajvaseda (Vella). A group of indigenous peoples founded in 1989 ensured that the builders of conveyor systems had to ask for permission.

In 1995 the area north of the Pochovsk oil field inhabited by him and neighboring families was put out to tender for exploitation, and Lukoil was awarded the contract . Jurij Vella tried to draw attention to the situation of reindeer herders with street barricades and public protests in the regional capital. Attempts to enforce their rights with the help of lawyers and the ethnologist Natalja Novikova failed twice due to bureaucratic hurdles. On September 14, 2000, Lukoil workers attempted to use an excavator to destroy a bridge on the road that connects his residential area with the village of Var'jogan.

The Chanten and their neighbors suffered particularly severely from the forest fires in summer 2010 . For a long time, their area was the hardest hit after Ryazan , but 75 fires were registered on August 9, putting it well ahead of Ryazan (38) and Moscow (28).

Way of life

Many Chanten were traditionally semi-nomads with seasonal change of residence, unlike the neighboring Nenets , of which a larger part lives fully nomadic. In the Soviet era, numerous Khanty settlements were forcibly evacuated and their residents were relocated to newly built larger villages, where the majority of Khanty people now live. A smaller number of them still follow a semi-nomadic way of life, which, however, has become increasingly difficult to maintain due to the collapse of the Soviet supply system and the expansion of oil production. At the same time, the villages built in the Soviet era are often in a precarious position because their builders did not take into account whether the surrounding area is suitable for feeding a large number of people.

religion

Until the Christianization by the Russian Orthodox Church (beginning in the 17th century, but not significantly until the end of the 19th century), so-called “classical shamanism” was the ethnic religion of the Chantis. The ethnologist Klaus E. Müller speaks of "complex shamanism" and means those forms that have developed a complex ritual culture through contact with other religions and neighboring agricultural societies. In the chanting there were (or are?) Various spiritual specialists : magicians, healers, wandering singers, soul companions , various fortune tellers and necromancers who consume poison mushrooms. The rites are very long, animal sacrifices were central. Shaman fights have been reported. In Chantic culture, the bear is considered sacred and is a central element of religious ceremonies, which are often accompanied by hours of chants and dances. Traditional robes, hats and gloves with chantic decorations are also worn. Performances with or without masks made from birch bark are also part of the culture.

Traditional gloves and hats worn in ceremonies related to the bear festival

Christianization only took place superficially among many remote peoples of Siberia, so that syncretistic mixed religions are common today. This also applies to the western Khanty people, who are strongly Russified and mainly work in the oil industry. The eastern Khanty people - who practice mobile reindeer herding - are still followers of a largely original shamanism. Those groups that still live deep in the pristine taiga like their ancestors were able to hide and preserve their traditions particularly well and react very cautiously to questions about their shamans and rituals.

Culture

One of the most important researchers of Chantic oral literature, mythology and folklore was the Finno-Ugrist and folk song collector Wolfgang Steinitz , whose "Ostjakologische Arbeit" appeared in 1939 in Tartu , Estonia .

Traditionally decorated vessels made of birch bark

An important part of the culture is the making of traditional clothing and working with birch bark. Both masks for traditional ceremonies and practical vessels with chantic decorations are made.

politics

Politically, the Khanty people belong to the "small peoples of the north" who are organized together with the other indigenous peoples of the Autonomous Okrug in the Association for the Salvation of Ugra ( "Ассоциация Спасение Югры" ; Assoziazija Spassenije Jugry ) based in Khanty-Mansiysk . This in turn belongs to the all-Russian indigenous association RAIPON .

Among the better-known personalities is the Khanty writer Jeremei Aipin (Еремей Айпин) , whose work largely deals with the conflict between his people and the oil industry.

Remarks

^ Soja Sokolowa: The land of Jugorien . Verlag Progress Moscow and FA Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1982 (original Зоя П. Соколова: Страна Югория , Издательство Мысль, Москва 1976 )

↑ See Population ( Memento from February 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Erich Kasten: Travel to the edge of the Russian Empire. The scientific development of the North Pacific coastal areas in the 18th and 19th centuries , Kulturstiftung Sibirien 2013, p. 15.

↑ Marcus Köhler: Russian Ethnography and Imperial Politics in the 18th Century , Göttingen 2012, p. 245.

↑ Link ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. to digitized material. @1@ 2

↑ Marcus Köhler: Russian Ethnography and Imperial Politics in the 18th Century , Göttingen 2012, pp. 170–173.

↑ Erich Kasten: Travel to the edge of the Russian Empire. The scientific development of the North Pacific coastal areas in the 18th and 19th centuries , Kulturstiftung Sibirien 2013, p. 24.

↑ This and the following from: Hannoversche Allgemeine, weekend supplement, March 31, 2007.

↑ Dittmar Dahlmann : Destruction of nature and preservation of nature. The major projects of socialism in Siberia , in: Michael Düring (Ed.): Nur Bären und Wölfe? Nature and the environment in Eastern Europe , Josef Eul, Lohmar-Köln 2011, p. 40-, here: p. 64.

↑ Conflict between Jurij Vella and LUKOIL escalates ( Memento of the original from May 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.

↑ Number of forest fires in Russia has decreased, Rianovosti, August 9, 2010

^ Nikolai Fjodorowitsch Katanow : Christianization of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. Translation of the publication of the Ministry of Education of the Khakassky State University on bildungsstoffen.com, accessed June 30, 2015.

↑ Klaus E. Müller: Shamanism. Healers, spirits, rituals. 4th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2010 (original edition 1997), ISBN 978-3-406-41872-3 . Pp. 30-33, 41.

↑ Belojarsky Local History Museum

↑ Juha Pentikäinen (Ed.): Shamanism and Northern Ecology. Volume 36 of Religion and society, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1996, ISBN 3-11-014186-8 . Pp. 153-182.

^ Klaus Hesse: Reviews / Pentikäinen, Juha: Shamanism and Northern Ecology. In: Anthropos. No. 92, 1997, p. 293.

↑ Stephan Dudeck: The day of the reindeer herder: Representation of indigenous lifestyles between taiga living area and petroleum town in Western Siberia. Kulturstiftung Sibirien / SEC-Publications, Fürstenberg / Havel, ISBN 978-3-942883-17-7 . Pp. 206-208, 220.

↑ The small peoples of the far north and far east of Russia. Society for Threatened Peoples - South Tyrol, Bozen 1998.