Homelands, leadership, and self rule: Observations on interethnic relations in the Sakha Republic¹

For field work and/or research support, I am indebted to the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the Social Science Research Council, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Kennan Institute of the Smithsonian's Wilson Center, Columbia University, Harvard University, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) University, Yakutsk University, the Academy of Sciences Institute for the Problems of the Minorities of the North, the Institute of Languages, Literature, and History in Yakutsk (IlaLI), and the Sakha Republic Ministry of Culture. I am deeply thankful to my Sakha language teacher, Klara Belkin, and to Sakha, Even, Evenk, and Yukagir friends who opened their homes to me in the republic and have visited me in the United States. This article combines my presentations at the first and second Working Seminar on Problems of Northern Peoples, and I am grateful to organizers Anatoliy Volgin, Olga Balalaeva, Andrew Wiget, and Gail Fondahl.

Abstract

An American anthropologist examines the complex and situationally variable concept of “homeland”; as it affects the ways in which indigenous groups in the Sakha Republic—the Sakha (Yakuts), Even, Evenk, Yukagir—define not only their territories but their own identities and interrelationships with other ethnic groups, including the Russians. Traditions of interethnic harmony as well as conflict are assessed in order to determine whether concepts of homeland can be formulated that foster national and ethnic pride of minority groups without perpetuating nesting chauvinisms within the political structure or exacerbating interethnic tensions surrounding competition for natural resources. Particular attention is devoted to the (re)formation of obshchiny—community councils with decision‐making authority in the post‐Soviet era. Such councils not only function in their own minority communities but also desire input into who can utilize local natural resources. They are in the position to mediate local concerns with larger ethnonational groups via negotiations with republic and federation political and economic organizations. Data are derived from field work in the Sakha Republic beginning in 1986 and continuing each year since 1991. Field work in the summer of 1994 in the Sredne Kolyma region of the Sakha Republic is particularly relevant.

Notes

For field work and/or research support, I am indebted to the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the Social Science Research Council, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Kennan Institute of the Smithsonian's Wilson Center, Columbia University, Harvard University, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) University, Yakutsk University, the Academy of Sciences Institute for the Problems of the Minorities of the North, the Institute of Languages, Literature, and History in Yakutsk (IlaLI), and the Sakha Republic Ministry of Culture. I am deeply thankful to my Sakha language teacher, Klara Belkin, and to Sakha, Even, Evenk, and Yukagir friends who opened their homes to me in the republic and have visited me in the United States. This article combines my presentations at the first and second Working Seminar on Problems of Northern Peoples, and I am grateful to organizers Anatoliy Volgin, Olga Balalaeva, Andrew Wiget, and Gail Fondahl.