Finding “Their Own”: Revitalizing Buryat Culture Through Shamanic Practices in Ulan-Ude

Abstract

The shamans working at the Tengeri Shamans’ Organization in Ulan-Ude, Republic of Buryatia, claim that their work is devoted to reviving “traditional” Buryat culture, despite local criticism of the “nontraditional” institutional nature of their practices. Ethnographic and survey data collected in 2012 confirm that this is in fact the case for the urban Buryats who are drawn to the organization. Shamanic healing at Tengeri requires patients to learn family genealogies and revive clan rituals, and it offers both practical opportunities and encouragement for the use of the Buryat language, thereby providing a locus for cultural revitalization.

Notes

^1. Names have been changed to protect confidentiality. Public figures who are cited from published sources and shamans who have given explicit consent are referred to by their real names. Both the research and this article are a collaborative project between Justine Quijada, an anthropologist of religion, and Kathryn Graber, a linguistic anthropologist. Justine Quijada has conducted about 18 months of fieldwork in Buryatia over three visits from 2004 to 2012, and Kathryn Graber has conducted 20 months of fieldwork in Buryatia between 2005 and 2012. Because we worked with the same people in the same locations in 2012, “we” is used to refer to both or either of us, as well as Roberto Quijada, the project photographer who was present at all ritual events. “I” is used in certain instances when specific interactions are described and “we” would be awkward. In these instances “I” generally refers to Justine Quijada in discussions of tailgans and to Kathryn Graber on the subject of language use. Eric Stephen provided the statistical analysis of survey data and wrote the sections pertaining to this material. Both Russian and Buryat were used in our fieldwork, and the members of Tengeri and ceremony participants used both languages when discussing their practices. Dialogue was in Russian unless otherwise indicated. We provide terminology in the language used most often by our interlocutors, whether Russian (Rus.) or Buryat (Bur.) as indicated.

^2. Additional survey data that we collected but which does not appear in this article concern why ceremony participants said they attended and how they learned about the events. In future work, this data should allow us to retrace information networks and see the impact of different Buryat- and Russian-language media and social networks as information sources.

^3. It should be noted that not everyone who visits Tengeri is ethnically Buryat. At the ceremonies we surveyed in Ulan-Ude, 70 percent of the respondents self-identified as Buryat only; 25 percent of the participants self-identify as Russian only; another 3 percent indicated other nationalities. Interestingly, only slightly over 1 percent self-identified as both Russian and Buryat, which, based on interview data, indicates that the vast majority of individuals of mixed heritage self-identify as one or the other ethnicity. Many clients and shamans at Tengeri are of mixed Russian and Buryat (or other Eurasian) backgrounds. In addition there are at least two fully ethnic Russian shamans practicing at Tengeri on a regular basis. Overall, Buryats represent just under 30 percent of the population of the Republic of Buryatia.

^4. For comparative data on the level of education, urbanization, and economic development among Buryats vis-à-vis other former Soviet nationalities, see Chakars 2014, especially chapter 3; Kaiser 1994; and Schroeder 1990.

^5. A much higher percentage of census respondents reported their “native language” (rodnoi iazyk) as Buryat—82 percent in 2010, or 234,022 respondents out of 286,839 self-identified Buryats (Rosstat 2012–13, 290). The discrepancy is due to the practice, widespread in the former Soviet Union, of considering one’s rodnoi iazyk to be one’s “heritage” or “ancestral” language, regardless of actual competence. Census respondents were asked, “Do you know [literally “control,” vladet’] the Russian language?” (Yes/No) and “What other languages do you know?” with three blank spaces to write in the names of additional languages and their corresponding codes. Below this was a separate blank in which to indicate “your native language” and its corresponding code.

^6. Whether or not Buryats should be considered “indigenous” is a matter of debate. We consider them to be indigenous in the sense that they are the long-standing occupants of lands that have since been brought under the political control of larger nation-states (Russia, Mongolia, and China) dominated by other ethnic groups, and that those lands, including both spiritual/ceremonial relationships to the land and a history of pastoral nomadism, have a strong relationship to their identity as a group. However, Buryats are too numerous to be considered “indigenous” under Russian law. As a consequence of Soviet nationality policies, most Buryats think of themselves as a “nationality” and associate the term “indigenous” with the “numerically small nationalities of the North,” such as the Ewenki or Chuckchi. Since the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Affairs stresses self-identification as a central feature of “indigeneity,” the fact that Buryats do not consistently self-identify as indigenous undermines our definition. In our experience, shamans and those involved in shamanism are more likely to think of themselves as “indigenous” or seek similarities between themselves and other indigenous groups than Buddhist Buryats (see Quijada 2009). There is no political leadership, such as a tribal government, that would have the authority to make such a claim on behalf of the whole population. See Graber (2012, 38–40) for further discussion of this question.

^7. See also Humphrey (1971, 150), who makes a similar claim.

^8. See Quijada (2011) on the process of diagnosing a shamanic calling at Tengeri. See Tkacz et al. (2002) for a detailed account of an initiation very similar to those conducted at Tengeri. The tailgan as a ritual form will be discussed further below.

^9. “Other than human person” is a phrase coined by anthropologist Irving Hallowell in the 1950s in reference to Ojibwe cosmology, but has since been adopted more widely to refer to beings whose characteristics are not well represented by the English terms “spirit” or “deity.” When these beings are referred to as “persons,” the term is intended to signal that they have social relationships.

^10. Buddhist organizations, such as the Etigelov Institute, also have to defend themselves against the accusation that they should not advertise (see Quijada 2009).

^11. There is very little pan-Siberian indigenous activism, and Buryats, who, as noted above, are not considered one of the numerically small peoples of the North, do not appear to be very invested in pan-Siberian connections. Economic dislocations and tremendous distances throughout Siberia contribute to this, but Soviet nationality policies, which stressed ethnic particularism (Slezkine 1996) and a pan-Soviet identity, may also work against the articulation of a pan-Siberian identity. See Hirsch 2005 for an excellent discussion of regional vs. ethnic considerations in Soviet nationality policy.

^12. It should be noted that “clan” (Rus. rod) is a somewhat flexible term that tends to be used to refer to kinship groups beyond the immediate family. These can range from extended family in a village to much larger and abstract territorial designations. Clans have names that are used to identify an individual to spirits during a ritual.

^13. “Ug” is the lineage or “root.”

^14. The regional location is noted because shamanic practices vary considerably from one area to another. This practice may not be standard elsewhere in Buryatia, and we do not wish to contribute to authorizing one region’s practices over another’s. The practice is merely an example of the underlying logic.

^15. See, for example, Bernstein (2006), which shows an interview with a professional Buryat couple from Ulan-Ude who had traveled to Olkhon to make offerings to the husband’s clan ancestors, despite not having any remaining relatives on Olkhon.

^16. See also Buyandelger (2007) and (2013) for a discussion of shamanic etiologies among Buryats in Mongolia. As the Director of the Tengeri organization studied with a Buryat shaman in Mongolia, the categorizations of illness and diagnosis are similar, despite a very different social context.

^17. Some of the most detailed sociolinguistic surveys conducted by this group, including Dyrkheeva, Darzhaeva, and Bal’zhinimaeva’s (2009) survey referenced herein, distinguish Buddhist temples and sacred sites as a separate domain of use.

^18. For a discussion of reactions to Buryat-language shamanic material in interviews and focus groups, see Graber 2012, 186–194.

^19. Verbal artistry in the ritual language of contemporary Buryat shamans bears further analysis. Preliminarily, it should be noted that the efficacy of such poetics depends not only on the linguistic ability of the performer (whether that be the shaman or the ongon), but also on that of the audience.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was generously funded by the National Council of Eurasian and East European Research Indigenous Peoples of Russia Grant 826-17i.