Paper short abstract:

Departing the Chukchi concepts, Va’irgin and Unatgirgin, this paper discusses what it may mean to live, to die and to go extinct. Life depends on transformations through what we call death. The responsibility of lifeforms is concerned with co-creation.

Paper long abstract:

Departing the Chukchi concepts, va’irgin and unatgir’gin, this paper discusses what it may mean to live, to die and indeed to go extinct. Unatgirgin, which may be translated as simply life, depends on endless transformations through what we call death. Death, for the Chukchi, is always a movement towards a new life. Va’irgin – which may be translated as existence or ‘to be’ – is the life-creating principle. What differentiates va’irgin is the physical form or movement it manifests as. Without the differentiation of pure existence into bodily forms, there would be nothing manifest. There would be no humans, no trees, no rivers, no animals, no sun. In other words, unatgir’gin, is each and everyone’s or everything’s individual and temporal life. That kind of life is a movement; it has to transform. How individual life-forms, humans as well as other, moves into and through death depends on their ways of being with their surroundings. Among the Chukchi, rituals are continuously enacted in order to create unatgir’gin in a way that maintains Chukchi life. The responsibility of the bereaved is to direct the individual life of the deceased into manifesting again as a Chukchi person through mortuary rituals and dream-work. If this responsibility is failed, life, through its creating principle va’irgin, will find new ways of manifesting. It could, however, lead to extinction of one particular form of life – in this case the Chukchi.