Red Ties and Residential Schools. Alexia Bloch
2 for a discussion of the drop in population over the 1990s). The population included about 4,000 Evenki and 1,000 other indigenous Siberians such as Sakha, a group with its own neighboring titular district.4 In 1999 the Evenk District capital town of Tura had a population of about 6,000 people, of whom about 900 identified as Evenki. As discussed below, however, this was a rapidly changing population. While Tura was not very large, by the late 1990s it had nearly one-third of the total Evenk District population, with a wide range of designations of identities shaped by migration histories, economic standing, and political affiliations.
Terms referring specifically to indigenous Siberians ranged from “aboriginal” (aborigen) to “native”/“indigenous” (korennoi) to “Tungus” (tungus) to more derogatory terms used by both outsiders and Evenki themselves (in self-deprecating moments), such as “dark/dense” (temnyi). Evenki could be included in other categories as well. Each term carried different types of significance depending on context. For instance, few townspeople used the word “aboriginal” in referring to Evenk collective interests unless they were actively involved in indigenous rights politics; this term tended to mark the speaker as engaged with international discourse and having affiliations reaching beyond the town or region. A more common collective term referring to Evenki was “native” (korennoi); this term was a familiar one for most people because it was widely used in Soviet parlance. In official communication and in popular speech, the terms “aboriginal” and “native” could both be used narrowly to indicate just the Evenk population or more broadly to include the Sakha or Kety, the other indigenous groups concentrated in the area.5 For instance, in reporting the levels of literacy in the community, the number of children entering preschool, or other numerical facts, the given source would invariably distinguish between the population as a whole and the numbers for the native population.
Among the Evenki in Tura, there are distinctions based on geography and social status. In particular the Katanga Evenki are recognized as having roots outside the Evenk District. The Katanga Evenki arrived from the Katanga region, an area bordering the southeastern present-day Evenk District and the Sakha Republic—several hundred kilometers down the Nizhniaia Tunguska River—in order to assist in administering the fledgling Soviet town in the early 1930s. As the result of the Katanga Evenki’s history of sedentarization and colonial contact, which extended at least fifty years earlier than that of the Illimpei Evenki in the region of Tura, in 1917 the Katanga region already had a small cadre of literate Evenki (Sirina 1995). Historical ties of close affiliation between Katanga Evenki and Soviet structures of power resonate in a number of ways throughout this book, but particularly in women’s narratives in Chapters 3 and 4.
There are also distinctions between Baikit and Illimpei Evenki. In the 1920s when Soviet linguists were creating writing systems for a number of indigenous Siberians, they often chose between several dialects of a language to designate which one would become the official dialect for adoption in textbooks and other written materials.6 In creating an alphabet for the Evenki in the Evenk District, linguists chose the Baikit dialect, a dialect of Evenk historically spoken by Evenki from the southern area of the Evenk District, south of the Podkamennaia River in the Baikit region (Boitseva 1971: 146; Nedjalkov 1997). This has had long-lasting effects in terms of social stratification among Evenki in the Evenk District because those with the more southern, Baikit, “Sha-type” dialect were able to study the language in their own dialect, while those with the northern, Illimpei, “Kha-type” dialect could not. In favoring the Baikit dialect, Soviet linguists created an internal hierarchy of dialects among Evenki. In the late 1990s, Evenk intellectuals in Tura frequently discussed the problem of “literary” Evenk being considered more prestigious than the local dialect found in the Illimpei region surrounding Tura (Pikunova 1999).
Throughout the 1990s the term “Russian” (russkii) was used colloquially by both Evenki and others to refer to non-indigenous Siberians—whether Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, or Estonian—who were considered sufficiently European in origin. Furthermore, to be “Russian” indicated that one belonged to a social category associated with patterns of privilege; to be Russian was not to belong to the indigenous community. Within the category of Russian, a number of distinctions were also made, depending on multiple factors. For example, those Russians whose ancestors had lived for several generations in Siberia could also be referred to as “Siberians,” sibiriaki; historically sibiriaki are known for an “attitude of tolerance” (Czaplicka 1926: 490–92). In contrast, the term “newcomers” (priezzhii) was used to refer to those Russians who were induced by high pay and benefits to come to the area and planned to stay only for a few years.7 Throughout this book the term “Russian” is used to refer to the European population in the area; I use the term “Russian” in order to reflect the widespread use of this term as a collective noun in the Evenk District. Where appropriate the other, more specific designations of identity are noted.8
Aside from binary distinctions between Russians and natives, there were several other categories of belonging in Tura in the 1990s. Azeri and Tadzhik refugees, who totaled about one hundred people in 1998, were excluded from the category “Russian,” and instead they were often collectively referred to as “blacks” (chernye). This terminology was adopted from urban areas of Russia, where in the 1990s members of the dominant Russian population frequently derisively referred to people of non-European origin, and particularly those from Central Asia, as “blacks” (Lemon 1995). The few Tatars in Tura were also usually separated from the Russians semantically and simply called Tatary.
There were also inclusive terms invoked by community members. For instance, those recognized as rooted in the community were often termed simply “locals” (mestnye) or “ours” (nash). In the common situation in which passengers were patiently waiting for days at the Krasnoiarsk airport for a flight home, people from the region would gather together as the Evenkiitsy, or “Evenk District people”; it was also common for people from Tura to identify each other as Turintsy. Yet another term that was less widely used, but growing in usage, was rossiianin, meaning “a citizen of Russia” (see Balzer 1999: xiv).9 This inclusive term was most often used in formal civic settings, such as in newspapers or public addresses. Others would also invoke it, however, especially in seeking a way to represent collective needs or desires. For instance, the Evenk poet Nikolai Oegir writes in the poem cited in the epigraph to this chapter: “I—am a rossiianin! A title that like all in Russia, I proudly answer to” (1989: 26).
As was the case across the North in Russia in the 1990s (see Kerttula 2000; Rethmann 2001; Fondahl 1993), the Tura community was divided (or combined) along a number of lines. Local, newcomer, native, Russian, and black could intersect in various ways. For instance, you could theoretically be referred to in one situation as “black,” and yet in another be considered “local.” Newcomers would not be referred to as “locals,” but they could be considered as Evenkiitsy, or from Evenkiia. As will be further discussed in this and subsequent chapters, these categories were activated in relational terms and were invoked in shifting ways, depending on circumstances and who was talking to whom.
Evenki Past and Present
As historically nomadic reindeer herders, the Evenki were not always concentrated in government-designated regions like the Evenk District. The Evenki are thought to have originated in the steppes of present-day Mongolia; in fact, today there are nearly as many Evenki in China and Mongolia combined as in the Russian Federation. In Russia the Evenki comprise one of the larger indigenous Siberian groups; the Evenk population consists of about 30,000 people and stretches from the banks of the Enisei River in central Siberia to the Amur River region in the Russian Far East, an area encompassing nearly five time zones.10 Along with this extensive settlement, at least three distinct dialects of Evenk, a Tunguso-Manchurian branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages, have evolved over time (Nedjalkov 1997).
For decades scholars have debated the origins of the Evenki, as defined by a set of ethnological, physical, and linguistic traits. Sergei Shirokogoroff, probably the most renowned