Why are Lorino and Sireniki so different? Exploring communities through festivals, language use, and subsistence practices in contemporary Chukotka

• Main Authors: Yashchenko, Oxana, Ященко, Оксана
• Other Authors: Schweitzer, Peter, Plattet, Patrick, Yasmin-Pasternak, Sveta
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Chukchi; Russia (Federation); Lorino; Social life and customs; Sireniki; Languages; Yuit Eskimos; Yuit language; Chukchi language; Arctic; Chaplino; Fairbanks; Nadezhda; Chukchi Peninsula; Chukotka; eskimo*; Sirenik*; Yupik; Alaska; Beringia
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/8302

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2013 Based on research in Chukotka, Russian Far East, this thesis focuses on the contemporary predicaments of native sports, public festivals, language practices, and marine mammal subsistence in the communities of Sireniki and Lorino. Through a social-historical contextualization of ethnographic data, it explores possible reasons for the differences found to exist between those villages. In the years of the post-Soviet transition, Lorino emerged as a vivacious community where successful sea-mammal hunters formed the core of its social and cultural hearth. At the time the research was conducted, this characterization appeared in a striking contrast to Sireniki, known to have been a model community in the late Soviet era. This work attempts to explain how Lorino and Sireniki got to where they are today. The insights gained from ethnographic fieldwork and library materials points to the legacy of the Soviet state-induced relocations, post-Soviet reorganization of sea mammal hunting, cultural history, and local leadership patterns. Examined in a comparative light, this constellation of factors helps understand how differently Lorino and Sireniki have developed since the end of the Soviet Union. Chapter 1. Theoretical framework -- 1.1. Introduction -- 1.2. Methods -- 1.3. Literature review -- 1.3.1. Chukotka ethnography and history -- 1.3.2. Studies of community well-being in the Arctic -- Chapter 2. Geographical and historical research settings -- 2.1. Chukotka autonomous region -- 2.2. The communities of Lorino and Sireniki on the Chukchi Peninsula -- 2.2.1. Yupik and Chukchi cultural history -- 2.2.2. Soviet Chukotka -- Chapter 3. Local, and regional festivals and sport tournaments -- 3.1. The "Beringia" skin-boat race -- 3.2. The "Nadezhda" sled dog race -- 3.3. Whale day celebrations in Lorino, Novoe Chaplino and Sireniki -- 3.4. 1988 and 2011 Whale Day celebrations in Sireniki -- 3.5. Chukchi festival "Kil'vey" -- 3.6. Arctic Olympics: sports in contemporary ...