Shamanism of the Evenks and Ecological Thought in ‘Northern Texts’

Summary

The shamanic worldview of the Evenki people, a Siberian ethnic minority, integrates ecological ideas, rituals, myths, and moral ethics as a holistic way of life shaped by interaction with nature. Soviet-era atheistic policies and Russification suppressed these traditions. After the Soviet collapse, ethnic minority writers began producing literature expressing their traditional shamanic worldview from an insider perspective, offering new insights. This paper analyzes literary texts by Siberian authors to explore the Evenki shamanic worldview and its ecological dimensions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the shamanic worldview of the Evenki people among Siberian shamanism and the ecological ideas associated with it in the literary texts of Siberian ethnic minority authors. Siberia is perceived as a place where shamanism originated. However, as Eliade’s theory of shamanism has been recognized as a representative research methodology, empirical research on the origin and specificity of Siberian shamanism has been stifled, and the concept of shamanism has become ambiguous, resulting in a distortion of the origin and nature of Siberian shamanism. The shamanism of Siberian ethnic minorities is a religious phenomenon that has become embedded in the archetypal structure of their emotions, psychology, and consciousness in the process of interacting with the surrounding natural environment and human and social environment, as a holistic way of life that includes rituals, rituals, myths, moral ethics, and ecological life philosophy, as well as artistic systems. During the Soviet period, shamanism and the traditions and customs of Siberian ethnic groups were increasingly usurped by social reform and Russification policies under atheistic socialism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, writers from ethnic minorities who sought to see their culture through their own eyes, rather than relying on the findings of Western or Russian researchers, emerged and produced literature that expressed their traditional shamanic worldview. It can be said that conditions have been created for the study of Siberian shamanism to be illuminated by literature. This paper examines literary texts about the Siberian Ebenki people to explore the shamanic worldview and ecological ideas of this Siberian ethnic minority.

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