Paper short abstract:

While internalizing Christianity, Nenets indigenous people reinterpret their past, alternately doubting and defending its efficacy for the present. Paradoxically they are using the logic and concepts of new religion to protect their ethnic authenticity and to claim their cultural distinctiveness.

Paper long abstract:

Although religious conversion is commonly understood in anthropology as a response to crisis, it is precisely religious change which can in some cases bring even more uncertainty into people's lives. They begin more self-consciously to reconsider their past, which induces them both to doubt and defend the efficacy of previous tradition. This leads either to cultural debasement and a sense of humiliation, or to cultural resistance and the emergence of nationalistic discourse.

The post-Soviet period has created new opportunities for cross-cultural interaction and revealed global markets of religion. Today, nomadic Nenets indigenous people inhabiting arctic tundras of Western Siberia are being challenged by international gas development, urbanization, the market economy, as well as numerous Christian missionaries. Adapting this new reality, Nenets use religious conversion to Protestantism as a resource for achieving stability, social protection and faith in the future.

But in fact religious "born agains" bring even more ambiguity and accumulate deeper social problems. Perceiving Christianity as "Russian faith" and historically dissociating from the dominance of Russian society, Nenets believe that religious conversion harms ethnic authenticity and breaks ties with traditional community. Facing such danger, converted Nenets creatively use the Christian conceptual system as a tool to shape and protect their cultural difference. They revise their past, inserting Christian logic into their history, as well as extending traditional cultural concepts into their Christian future. This paper examines how Nenets construct their history, doubt and defend their heritage, creatively using the logic of new religion in claiming their cultural distinctiveness.