Paper short abstract:

My paper reconsiders the Nenets historicities through reading the diaries of a Nenets hunter Tyko Vylka. I argue that his diaries entangle multiple modalities of histories and can contribute to the ongoing discussions on the status of indigenous knowledge and decolonisation of western paradigms.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with the diaries of Tyko (Ilya) Vylka (1886-1960), one of the most famous indigenous persons in the Russian/Soviet North. I argue that his everyday notes accompanied by drawings and economic calculations shed light on the social crafting of multimodal Nenets historicities on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. Telling, writing, drawing, and engaging with the surrounded environment were the practices which shaped his subjectivity which in turn was also relationally entangled with a number of Arctic explorers, painters, and high-ranking politicians. In my paper, I reveal how Tyko Vylka mastered the historicity for his community which was situated between the Nenets indigenous way of narrating of the past and the dominant writing practices of Russian administrators and travellers. I, however, take a step further in my reflections upon such divisions and pay special attention to the materiality of his notes, namely the social life of diaries and his usages of paper and ink. Such an approach opens a complex relational field of historicity which allows us to find a way beyond the colonial divisions and includes it into an orchestra of historical practices. The paper is based on my long-term archival and field research and combines the methodologies of historical anthropology, ethnohistory, and visual anthropology.