“Without Deer There Is No Culture, Nothing”
This article presents the pragmatics of reindeer herding by Chukchi and Koryak people in northern Kamchatka, Russia, to convey a sense of the importance of herding as a symbolic resource. A detailed description of brief visits to a reindeer herd in Kamchatka uncovers the power of reindeer as a symbo...
| Published in: | Anthropology and Humanism |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Wiley
2002
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ahu.2002.27.2.133 https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1525%2Fahu.2002.27.2.133 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ahu.2002.27.2.133 https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ahu.2002.27.2.133 |
| Summary: | This article presents the pragmatics of reindeer herding by Chukchi and Koryak people in northern Kamchatka, Russia, to convey a sense of the importance of herding as a symbolic resource. A detailed description of brief visits to a reindeer herd in Kamchatka uncovers the power of reindeer as a symbol for indigenous people and indigenous culture in this area. I use a first‐person, subjective ethnography and include some of the challenges I met in the field and my attempts to overcome them. The title quotes a reindeer herder impressing upon me the importance of his work for his people. Reindeer are connected to human beings in a totalizing manner. Reindeer are simultaneously index, icon, and symbol of human social organization, economic activity, spiritual practice, material culture—in short, “our culture,” as I was told by many people in Kamchatka. |
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