Prologue

Dear Friends and Family:

As most of you probably are aware, I am about to leave for 1 year to live in Eastern Siberia. I thought I would start a blog to keep you all updated on my life while I'm there, but also to share with those of you who are interested a little about what it is like to live there. I'll try to keep "update" and descriptive posts separate, so if you don't have the time, you can don't have to wade through paragraphs of description to find out what I'm doing. But that may or may not be possible. Feel free to leave comments and ask questions if you'd like. I will hopefully be posting at least once a month. But I will be checking email more often and I will respond eventually if you write me :)

Love to all,

Susan


Prologue


Just a couple of words I guess would be appropriate in this first blog posting about what it is I am actually doing in Siberia, why I would be going to live for a year in what is in fact known as the coldest inhabited place on Earth.

As most of you reading this blog are likely aware, I am a graduate student in cultural anthropology and this research constitutes the primary research for my dissertation. Broadly speaking, as a student of cultural anthropology, I study contemporary human culture(s). "Culture," of course, means many different things to different people. For my purposes here, I really just want to distinguish cultural anthropology from either archaelogy (Indiana Jones) or physical anthropology (Lucy, Louis Leakey), both of which involve digging in the ground and wearing wide-brimmed hats. I will do no digging, although I may occasionally wear a wide-brimmed hat--the sun gets a little intense in the summer.

My specific purpose in the research I am about to embark upon is to examine the relationships between diamond mining, international organizations and expressions of indigenous identity in a region of Eastern Siberia called the Sakha Republic or Yakutia. This is actually an enormous region, about twice the size of Alaska--you can see that it's the large pink region in the map of Russia to the right (map provided Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin). The Sakha Republic is named for the dominant indigenous population, the Sakha, who speak a Turkic language (that is, one related to Kazakh, Kirghiz, and Turkish) and whose ancestors are supposed to have migrated from the south sometime between 1000 and 1500AD.
Historically the Sakha were semi-nomadic horse and cattle breeders and practiced a pagan religion that included shamanistic elements. They were first incorporated into the Russian empire around the middle of the 17th Century and, during the early years of the Soviet Union, forcibly settled into villages and agricultural collectives.

In the 1950's, diamonds were discovered in the region and Sakha agricultural collectives were enlarged to support an immigrant workforce for the mines. The region's diamond industry now produces almost 25% of the world's diamonds, making it an extremely lucrative and vital industry for the Russian Federation. The majority population of the Republic is now Russian and other Slavic "newcomers," with the Sakha and other indigenous groups comprising around 40%.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's, the region experience a "cultural revival" with Sakha activists hoping to promote Sakha language and culture and to assert regional autonomy from the Russian Federation. To this end, the first president of the post-Soviet Sakha Republic, Mikhail Nikolaev, who is himself Sakha, sought bilateral contacts with other countries and membership for the region in various international organizations, like the UN or the Northern Forum. More recently, however, the autonomy of the region has been severely curtailed by recentralization moves on the part of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Republic's president is no longer popularly elected; he is appointed by Putin. The diamond industry, briefly controlled by the Republic, is now controlled by the Russian federal government, meaning that crucial profits are not retained in the region.

So, what I'm interested in is how all of these events and processes have influenced the way Sakha people see themselves and their identity. Do they see themselves as an "indigenous group", with rights and grievances addressable in documents like the recently passed UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights. Or, do the see themselves more as an ethnic minority, that could be an independent "nation" like France or England. Or, perhaps, identity as Sakha is not so important to people and other kinds of identities are more important, like being a member of the Russian Federation, or being from a certain region within the Sakha Republic.

Clearly, every individual will see things differently and there will be many contradictions in the ways that people view their own identity and sense of self. This is why I think it will be important to live in the region for a while, to get to know people, to learn to speak Sakha language, interact informally. I will certainly conduct some formal "research"--interviews, surveys, etc.--but the majority of my time will be spent simply living and interacting with people while they go about their daily lives.

What I'm hoping to do in this blog, then, is to share my experiences with all of you and in doing so, share the experiences of the people whom I get to know. I hope you enjoy...