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Even and the Northern Tungusic languages

Brigitte Pakendorf and Natalia Aralova

in The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages

This chapter provides a concise structural overview of the three Northern Tungusic languages spoken in the Russian Federation, namely Even, Evenki, and Negidal. Even and Evenki are spoken by people ... More

This chapter provides a concise structural overview of the three Northern Tungusic languages spoken in the Russian Federation, namely Even, Evenki, and Negidal. Even and Evenki are spoken by people who traditionally were fully nomadic hunters and reindeer herders, whereas Negidal is spoken by a small group who were traditionally semi-sedentary fishers and hunters. Typical features of these languages are root-based vowel harmony, large case systems, an extensive system of verbal inflection and derivation, and the widespread use of nonfinite verb forms in subordination. The three languages discussed here share large numbers of cognate forms, but also have notable individual features, such as the indefinite accusative case found in Evenki and Negidal, the refactive verb derivation that Negidal shares with other Tungusic languages of the Amur region, or the use of evaluative morphology to express (in)definiteness in Even.Less

Introduction In the Archives of the Cultural Base

Craig Campbell

in Agitating Images: Photography against History in Indigenous Siberia

Agitating Images examines this era when the construction of Soviet landscapes began, and it seeks to bring into the account the lives of peoples affected by those structures. While the rest of Russia ... More

Agitating Images examines this era when the construction of Soviet landscapes began, and it seeks to bring into the account the lives of peoples affected by those structures. While the rest of Russia was undergoing radical and bloody transformations, life on the land for most hunters and herders in Evenkiia was not so confrontational.Less

The Years Are Like Centuries

Craig Campbell

in Agitating Images: Photography against History in Indigenous Siberia

Wherein a nervous history of Soviet culture shaping in central Siberia in the years before the formation of the Evenki National Region on December 10, 1930 is presented amidst photo-fragments. It is ... More

Wherein a nervous history of Soviet culture shaping in central Siberia in the years before the formation of the Evenki National Region on December 10, 1930 is presented amidst photo-fragments. It is a nervous history, as all histories should be.Less

Dangerous Communications

Craig Campbell

in Agitating Images: Photography against History in Indigenous Siberia

Wherein the everyday as an inimitable and steadily dynamic combination is interrelated elements is used to explore archives, photography, and sovietization in early post-revolutionary central Siberia.

Ethics of Presence and the (De)generative Image

Craig Campbell

in Agitating Images: Photography against History in Indigenous Siberia

I argue that photographs work along the same principle as archives and they undermine the rules of historical narrative by way of their bald disclosure of alternative historical readings, blind ... More

I argue that photographs work along the same principle as archives and they undermine the rules of historical narrative by way of their bald disclosure of alternative historical readings, blind spots, and the seams of knowledge production itself. Image agitators are dangerous communications to the integrity of conventional historiography.Less

Songs and Whispers

Peter Thomson

in Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal

Acrumpled and broken strand of asphalt rises at the northern edge of Ulan-Ude, wanders through the dark woods of the Khamar-Daban Mountains, and finally settles into a band of fertile bottom land ... More

Acrumpled and broken strand of asphalt rises at the northern edge of Ulan-Ude, wanders through the dark woods of the Khamar-Daban Mountains, and finally settles into a band of fertile bottom land in a narrow stretch of coastal plain approaching the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. A rattly old Toyota van skitters along the road, passing lonely farms and tiny villages that gather up out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, domed churches that seem miles from any worshipers, and an occasional solitary babushka by the side of the road selling whatever she’s been able to squeeze from the earth or gather in the woods. There are seven of us riding this highway on this raw morning in October of 2000, crammed into the van and bobbing like buoys to its irregular rhythms—James and me from Boston, our guide Andrei Suknev, his colleague Igor and our driver Kim, all from the city of Ulan-Ude, and two young women who have also signed on with Andrei for a few days—Elisa, from France, and Chanda, from Canada. We’re all eating pine nuts that we bought from one of those women at a wide spot in the road—they’re called orekhi here—and washing them down with lemon soda from a huge plastic bottle. Andrei is showing us how to crack open the nuts’ hard shells with our front teeth and excavate their soft and pungent meat with our tongues. At an austere restaurant in a tiny village that Andrei tells us is called “Noisy Place,” we eat a lunch of rice and some sort of meat, dry bread, and a peculiar variation on borshch, and we pee in an outhouse across the road. We get back in the van and rumble on. We’re heading for a remote national park on Baikal’s eastern shore, but at the moment I’m not quite sure where we’re going. I’d asked Andrei to take us hiking and camping on the lakeshore, to introduce us to local residents, communities, and culture. He’s promised to do that, but he hasn’t provided much beyond the barest details, and none of us has been asking for more. Less