Antler on the sea: Chukchi, Yupik, and Newcomers in the Soviet North.

Abstract

This dissertation describes the social-cultural organization of three groups, Chukchi, Yupik (Eskimo), and Newcomers (western, primarily Slavic, immigrants), in the village of Sireniki, located on the Bering Sea coast of the Chukotka Peninsula in the far northeast of the former Soviet Union. Through an examination of 18 months of ethnographic field data (collected between 1989-1991) and an analysis of anthropological theories on ethnicity, nationalism, and structural opposition, this work explores the hypothesis that the development of collective group identity and cultural transformation among northern indigenous peoples in the Soviet Union was heavily influenced not only by the structure of the Soviet system, but by the mobilization of oppositional relationships between the groups, relationships based on prior cultural forms, symbols, and meanings. Through relocation programs, mandatory schooling, economic collectivization, the control of natural resources, and the domination of political power, Soviet state authority reinforced the structural bases of collective identity to which the Chukchi, Yupik, and Newcomers adapted and which they made meaningful via their own cultural conceptualizations of each other. The solidification of collective identity and its maintenance through symbolism, ideology, economic and social structure, and culture is discussed for all three groups. A detailed ethnographic description and analysis reveals that Soviet economic and social policy transformed local cultural boundaries and facilitated the ensuing dialogue of difference. Of special significance to this work are the cultural collectivities of the groups as they relate to: (1) the articulation of Soviet state authority on Chukotkian indigenous groups; (2) the in-migration and integration of Newcomers to Sireniki; (3) the social, economic, ideological, and symbolic differences among groups; and (4) the persistence of native cultural texts and meanings within the context of state ideology and structure and Russian cultural hegemony. The focus of investigation and analysis is how collective identities were facilitated among the two indigenous groups (Yupik and Chukchi) and one immigrant group (Newcomers) in order to maintain their cultures in the face of rapidly changing social and material circumstances. The research design consisted of classic ethnographic field methods, including participant observation, formal and informal interviews, collection of life histories, and historical and archival research. Analysis of the data reveals that the Soviet state, with its ideological, political and economic goals, changed the structure of the interactions between local indigenous and immigrant groups, but was unable to change the cultural content of their discourse. These three cultural groups (Yupik, Chukchi, and Newcomer) have developed their own sense of collective identity vis-a-vis their dialogue with the others. These identities enable the Yupik, Chukchi, and Newcomers to accept Soviet designated social and economic conditions by infusing these conditions with their own cultural knowledge, making them meaningful and reproducible.