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Paper long abstract

The Crimean Tatars are Indigenous people of Ukraine whose origins and historical trajectory are inextricably tied to Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region. The perception of Crimea as the “motherland” and the sole historical homeland of the Crimean Tatars constitutes a central element of this community’s self-identity.

This presentation, prepared by the curators of the Miras museum exhibition on Crimean Tatar culture, examines how traditional cultural practices and heritage are deeply connected to the community’s understanding of nature and the surrounding environment. This relationship is expressed not only in worldviews but also in material culture, including decorative and applied arts, Ornek ornamentation (recognized by UNESCO as an element of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity), traditions of respect for water and fountains, and localized agricultural practices-particularly irrigation and horticultural systems-which reflect an ethos of coexistence with, rather than domination over, the natural environment.

At the same time, the cultural image of Crimean nature and landscapes has been shaped by processes of colonization and the orientalist framing of the Crimean Tatars. A recurring feature of Russian colonial practices in Crimea, historically and in the present, is the perception of the peninsula’s environment as a “rich but empty land,” suitable primarily as a site for social and economic experimentation. This perspective has repeatedly resulted in shifts in the economic specialization of the territory, the dispossession of Indigenous landholders, the imposition of monocultural farming, and other practices that disrupt the ecological and cultural balance historically sustained by the Crimean Tatars.