Shamanism of the Evenks and Ecological Thought in ‘Northern Texts’
Dong-yureop balkan yeon-gu February 29, 2024 Joonil Moon
The shamanic worldview of the Evenki people, a Siberian ethnic minority, integrates ecological ideas, moral ethics, rituals, and a holistic way of life shaped by interactions with the natural and social environment. During the Soviet period, shamanism and ethnic traditions were suppressed by atheistic socialism and Russification policies. After the Soviet collapse, ethnic minority writers began producing literature that expresses their traditional shamanic worldview from an insider perspective, offering a corrective to Western and Russian research that has distorted the nature of Siberian shamanism. This paper examines literary texts about the Evenki to explore their shamanic worldview and ecological ideas.