Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how Monpas speak about the environment and how the words reflect their understanding of the geospatial and ecological system of the place. The mixed usage of Tawang Monpa language, Hindi, and Tibetan reflects social change lived by people regarding an environment beyond nature.

Paper long abstract:

The Monpa live in between the Tibetan empire/the People's Republic of China and Assam kingdom/Indian states for centuries, and they accepted the Tibetan Buddhism as the main religion since the 15th century. With communities scattered in the Eastern Himalayas and including migration in their livelihood strategies, this small self-regarded tribe does not have a standardised language, and the population has been divided by the Chinese and Indian territories under a British ex-colonial shadow. The Monpa languages differ from hills to valleys, north to south, unique in some secluded villages. The learning of words regarding natural phenomena and the environment is experiential, involves seasonal migration to different altitudes and terms exchanged between the hill and the valley Monpas. Based on four months ethnographic research and interviews in Mon Tawang, this paper focuses on how Monpa talk about changes in the environment as they define, especially in weather, extreme climatic events and the impacts of such. This paper will discuss two findings and one suggestion: (1) how the words tell about the Tawang Monpa's understandings about the geospatial and ecological system; (2) by articulating words they borrow from Tibetan and Hindi and the emotional expressions, it reflects the lived experiences of this border community through the social changes engaging religious power, ambivalent modernisation, and conflict between two states in the past sixty years; (3) approaching the environment in the local vocabulary and philosophy behind can provide a practical path for sustainability, climate change adaptation and possibly democratise the knowledge production.

Paper short abstract:

This paper documents and analyses a systematic contrast between the linguistic representation and the spatial organisation of affinal relationships in European societies - critically assessing the evidence, and the theoretical and historical implications.

Paper long abstract:

There are two main structural patterns for the formation of secondary kin terms in European languages. In one pattern, typical of northwest Europe, secondary terms are formed by adding generational or affinal modifiers to the primary terms (e.g. English: mother, grandmother, mother-in-law). In the other, typical of southern and eastern Europe, generational and affinal terms have their own distinct roots (e.g. Italian: madre, nonna, suocera).

Comparison with demographic network data for the same societies shows that the first (verbally similar) pattern is associated with spatially distant marriage, while the second (verbally dissimilar) pattern goes with spatially close marriage. It is as though people are balancing spatial and verbal similarity against each other - ensuring that, overall, relatives by marriage are neither too similar nor too different from primary kin.

The questions that arise are (i) whether this association between verbal and spatial patterns is significant in its own right, or whether it is merely a by-product of the distinction between Germanic, Romance and Slavonic languages (ii) if it is significant, what are the cognitive mechanisms that generate the contrast between verbal and spatial similarity, and how do they interact with other, more material influences on spatial community structure, and (iii) what historical processes led to the present geographic distribution of the alternative spatio-verbal systems.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the landscape structure and nomenclature of Selkup folklore and its interaction with the Selkup everyday landscape nomenclature and the environment of the Selkups within the last several centuries. Names of objects most important for the structuring of folklore space are analyzed.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the landscape structure and nomenclature of Selkup folklore texts and its interaction with the Selkup everyday landscape nomenclature, on the one hand, and with the traditional environment of the Selkups within the last several centuries, on the other. Selkup is an endangered Samoyedic language spoken today by no more than 600 people in the Upper and Middle Taz and the Turukhan basins (Western Siberia). Our main data is a corpus of folklore texts in local dialects of Northern Selkup recorded during the last century (about 100000 running words). Northern Selkup landscape nomenclature was described by Ariadna Kuznetsova in (Kuznetsova et al. 1980: 59-77), she also compiled a word list of Selkup toponyms of the Taz basin (Kazakevich et al. 2002: 209-215). The data of these two works is also used. Selkup folklore texts do not contain much of landscape description, but for the travelogues. There are two types of Selkup travelogues: descriptions of shaman's travels and descriptions of ordinary people's travels. Specific features of the landscapes of both types will be described. The folklore space consists of three worlds: the middle world of people, the upper world of sky creatures and the underground world of devils and dead. The centre of the middle world is the dwelling of the hero. From here he starts his way and here he usually returns. The dwelling is surrounded with a forest and there is a river nearby. It's remarkable that the river is always present, but is not often mentioned.

Paper short abstract:

On example of Nenets life stories, this paper tells about the previous policy of the Soviet state towards its' indigenous people of the North.

Paper long abstract:

On example of Nenets life stories, this paper tells about the previous policy of the Soviet state towards its' indigenous people of the North. It tells how the Soviet colonial institutions like government bureaucracy, control of religion and traditional routs of migrations on the tundra made changes the life and culture of these people. In their stories Yamal Nenets tell how they succeed to include the main changes made by the state within their traditional life, and also how the state politics changed the Nenets customs and every day life on the tundra.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the process of production, use, and change of riverine and other place names based on data collected in 2017 among the Okhotsk Ewenki

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the process of production, use, and change of riverine and other place names based on data collected in 2017 among the Okhotsk Ewenki, the easternmost Indigenous fishing, hunting, and herding community in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It demonstrates how riverine names, and knowledge of hydrological systems in general, are embedded in Ewenki people's foundational understandings and perceptions of space and place and function in tandem with their mobility, navigation skills, and relationships with animals and non-human beings to render landscapes meaningful. The results reveal that Ewenki riverine names are not simply remembered and reproduced, but rather generated and transformed through empathic contact and engagement within a semiotic circle of shared knowledge and praxis among humans and other beings encountered in ambulatory travel. This practice is related to Ewenki understanding of ownership over territory, which is perceived as being equally shared with other beings, and is reflected in Ewenki place names.

Paper short abstract:

Place Name "hotspots", clusters of Indigenous toponyms, reveal patterns of human perception, settlement and use of bioculturally diverse environments. I explore these hotspots through analysis of Tlingit country in Southeast Alaska to explore relationships between language and environment.

Paper long abstract:

Place Name "hotspots", dense clusters of Indigenous toponyms, reveal patterns of human perception, settlement, and use of bioculturally diverse environments. I present and illustrate the concept of place name "hotspots" using GIS and a database of 3500 Tlingit and other Indigenous Southeast Alaska toponyms, in combination with other ethnographic and environmental data, to explore what densities of place names reveal about key relationships between Indigenous populations and their environments in Southeast Alaska with comparative reference to other regions of the North Pacific coast of North America.