Paper short abstract:

I am based on the indigenous idea of territory’s ability to absorb the memory of significant events committed within its limits. In my presentation I indicate the types of conversion of territory, caused by necessity to move to another place, rivalry for the territory or religious conversion.

Paper long abstract:

Relying on my extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I will describe the conversion of the sacred natural sites of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, caused by their religious praxis. I am based on the indigenous idea of territory’s ability to absorb the memory of the most significant events committed within its limits. As over time, the certain territories can accumulate within them a number of such events, eventually they obtain spiritual fullness and become able to remind people of the past events imprinted on them.

In my presentation I indicate to three types of conversion of territory, practiced in Siberian spirituality. First, conversion occurs because of such socio-cultural change, which makes it impossible the continue ritual praxis within the certain locations. In that case, all the spiritual memory of those locations is as if shifted and removed to another physical location. The second type of space conversion is due to the rivalry of the groups (or individuals) over a certain territory, which results in displacing its previous owners, followed by the acquisition of all the spirits ‘inhabited’ that place and appropriation of the spiritual content that place ("place of power") is associated with. The third type of conversion of space deals with mastery of the place, followed by the removal of all its spirits and filling it with a completely different, often opposite content. Such renovation of space occurs in case of religious conversion, for example, when establishing a Christian Church on a site of shamanic sacrifices.