Paper short abstract:

This paper explores continuities in the interrelation of community and place, expressed and maintained through art. It delineates these continuities through describing the changing significance of a museum artefact - a nineteenth-century model of an indigenous Siberian summer festival.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores continuities in the interrelation of community and place, expressed and maintained through ritual, poetry and craft. It delineates these continuities through describing the changing significance of a single museum artefact - a nineteenth-century model of a Sakha Yhyakh celebration. The indigenous Siberian Sakha people have experienced considerable displacement since the advent of Russian settlers into what is now the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), in the mid-seventeenth century. This displacement has generated the adoption of foreign paradigms into Sakha interrelationships with their homelands, as it has required Sakha communities to adapt to new spaces and territories. It was especially intense during the Soviet period, when The Soviet administration caused the Sakha population to move into Russian-style settlements and jobs, integrating them into standardised, secularist institutions and places. The Yhyakh has continued to be a key event within Sakha (Yakutia)'s yearly calendar, despite these transformations - although its form and significance have changed. It is rooted in an ancient Sakha onto-epistemology, which itself is predicated on the indivisible connection between place and community, both expressed and mediated in poetry, music and craft. A key function of the Yhyakh was and is a combined affirmation and consolidation of the benevolent relationship between Sakha communities and their homeland, manifested in poetic prayer, craft and sacrifice. The story of the Yhyakh model illustrates the alterations in Sakha experiences of community and place that have occurred in tandem with Soviet and post-Soviet transformations, in addition to the persistence of this interrelationship.