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- Convenors:
-
Karina Lukin
(University of Helsinki)
Dmitry Arzyutov (The Ohio State University)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Knowledge Production
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel discusses the ways of practising and narrating the indigenous historicities in the North which have been intertwined with other "western" and "eastern" narratives of the past. We especially welcome papers based on case studies from different parts of the Arctic.
Long Abstract:
What does 'history' mean for the various Arctic indigenous and minority groups? To what extent are the non-western 'historicities' intertwined with the dominant "western" narratives such as national/imperial histories or histories of scientific theories, and may even undermine them? To answer these questions, the panel seeks papers from indigenous scholars and the scholars working in the Arctic as well as historians of science. We invite you to reflect with us on the ontological diversities of the concepts of the past and their narrative and practical entanglements with materiality, bodies, non-human beings, environment, and the invisible. These diversities paradoxically lead us to reveal rather the underappreciated relatedness and mutual dependences of the "western" and "non-western" ideas of history. The encounters of the urban administrators and scholars with the divergent ways of narrating and practising the past could not but affect the further development of "western" epistemologies. The converse was equally true. The colonial authorities tried to persuade local people into following the evolutionistic, linear and event-based history. The inclusive way between the two is still rarely taken. And therefore we intend to do this at our panel. We hope it may allow us to "break the rules" in the discourses about the "Other" within anthropology and ethno- and oral histories and open a new avenue for theorizing the indigenous historicities and their (in)visible presence and involvement in the co-production of knowledge. We particularly welcome papers based on long-term field and/or archival/museum research.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
General introduction to the panel "Whose rules? Indigenous historicities from the north"
Paper long abstract:
General introduction to the panel "Whose rules? Indigenous historicities from the north"
Paper short abstract:
Russian and North American ethnographies remaind divided by a hyphen - symbolizing different approaches to documents "deep" historical continuities as opposed to alternate frames of time and space. This paper compares these two approaches
Paper long abstract:
In both Russia and North America, the authoritative construction of identity has beena tasks entrusted to university scholars working with indigenous communities. In comparison to other parts of the world, the imperial and post-imperial histories of these two regions are roughly similar, as are the history of statecraft and their ecologies. It is striking however that in each regions there have evolved different theoretical models for discussing identity. In Russia, the tradition of constructing 'ethnic histories' is marked by a concern for finding deep, long-term continuities of practice and speech that mark rather inflexible cores of identity in groups of people. The North American tradition of writing 'ethnohistory', by contrast, has focussed on the way that groups of people describe their own sense of belonging and even develop their own understandings of how time flows and events link together. As members of indigenous communities themselves take more prominent roles in university communities, and as North American and Russian scholars engage more frequently , there have been more opportunities for the two schools of thought to borrow from each other. This paper evaluates some of the more interesting trends in this dialogue.
Paper short abstract:
In Indigenous studies, the concept of contested histories was originally used to describe how the history-writing of the majority is challenged by Indigenous Peoples’ own, originally oral, histories. This notion has received entirely new meanings especially in the 2000s in Finland.
Paper long abstract:
In Indigenous studies, the concept of contested histories was originally used to describe how the history-writing of the majority, which is considered to rationalise the colonial control over indigenous lands, is challenged by Indigenous Peoples’ own, originally oral, histories. This notion has received entirely new meanings especially in the 2000s, as different Sámi and Finnish groups have emerged to challenge the established views of the Sámi themselves. The article analyses a continuum of interpretations on Lapland and Sámi history. In addition to the Lappologist, “Northern Finnish” and Sámi conceptions of history, also histories generated by Lapland’s Finns have had a significant role in this development. The same goes for oral tradition, Sámi political reality, indigenous peoples’ movements and developments within the discipline of history. The contemporary political situation in Sápmi has resulted in contested histories not only among individual researchers, but between institutions in Finland, as well, when the Ministry of Justice and the Sámi parliament have produced their own historical interpretations.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores ways of reading folklore as a form of narration that relates to imperial histories, but at the same time contests its totalizing voice and stance and mode. It discusses Nenets yarabts and the possibilities they offer to provincialize Russian imperial histories.
Paper long abstract:
Being a powerful instrument of colonial othering, folklore simultaneously silences the subaltern in making them traditional – not modern – and gives them voice in representing vernacular modes and contents of narrating. When touching themes known from the history of the centre, folklore has often been treated as distorted form of historical knowledge. This paper explores folklore as narration that relates to imperial histories, but at the same time contests its totalizing voice, stance and mode. The aim of the paper is not to construct an alternative history, but to discuss the ways in which pasts and their variable narrations differ and come together.
The paper concentrates on Nenets songs that narrate visits in towns and cities and discuss their position in the Nenets poetics of the past. The songs belong to a genre called yarabts that has recently been discussed to be at least partly historical. This argument is based on the indisputable fact that the yarabts often name historically known places and figures, and are thus taken to be less mythic than the events in the other sung epic genre, syudbabts.
I argue that the Nenets strategies of narrating the past stand in a different spectrum of narrative elements and aims than the “Western” notions around history. Nevertheless, in making references to the places and practices known in the history of Russia, the Nenets epic poetry offers a possibility to reassess the meanings related to the past and this to provincialize the Russian imperial narrative.
Paper short abstract:
In their spoken narratives about historical past and the present life in the tundra the Nenets tell that the present politics of the Russian state towards indigenous people of the North is different than it was during the Soviet era.
Paper long abstract:
The present politics of the Russian state towards indigenous people of the North is different than it was during the Soviet era with its colonial institutions like government bureaucracy, control of religion and traditional routs of migrations on the tundra, modernization of the culture and life of indigenous people of the North. In spoken narratives of people about their historical past and the present life in the tundra, the Nenets elders consider that during the Soviet time their life was under a strict control and governance. At the same time, they proved that the distance between the state and its people these days has a wider gap than it was during the Soviet time. One can say that the state rules towards indigenous people and their ways of living and working in the tundra became even more authorized that it was during the Soviet time. Intensive work of the extractive industry, development of modern infrastructure in the tundra, district rules of controlling reindeer herders work and fishing, and resent difficulties of climate change, made the Nenets people to become uncertain about their future life in the tundra.