The explorers dubbed them Kurils, Kurilians, endowing them with the epithet “shaggy”, and they called themselves “Ainu”, which means “man”. Since then, researchers have been struggling with the countless mysteries of this people. But to this day they have not come to a definite conclusion.
First of all: where did a tribe come from in a continuous Mongoloid massif that is anthropologically, roughly speaking, inappropriate here? Nowadays the Ainu live on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, and in the past they inhabited a very wide territory - the Japanese Islands, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the south of Kamchatka and, according to some data, the Amur region and even Primorye up to Korea. Many researchers were convinced that the Ainu were Caucasians. Others argued that the Ainu are related to the Polynesians, Papuans, Melanesians, Australians, Indians...
Archaeological data convinces of the extreme antiquity of Ainu settlements on the Japanese archipelago. This particularly confuses the question of their origin: how could the people of the Old Stone Age overcome the enormous distances separating Japan from the European west or the tropical south? And why did they need to exchange, say, the fertile equatorial belt for the harsh northeast?
The ancient Ainu or their ancestors created amazingly beautiful ceramics, mysterious dogu figurines, and in addition, it turned out that they were perhaps the earliest farmers in the Far East, if not in the world. It is not clear why they completely abandoned both pottery and agriculture, becoming fishermen and hunters, essentially taking a step back in cultural development. The Ainu legends tell of fabulous treasures, fortresses and castles, but the Japanese and then the Europeans found this tribe living in huts and dugouts. The Ainu have a bizarre and contradictory interweaving of the features of the northern and southern inhabitants, elements of high and primitive cultures. With their entire existence, they seem to deny conventional ideas and customary patterns of cultural development.
Ainu and Japanese
The Ainu were a warlike, brave and freedom-loving people. Japanese samurai did not like to invade their lands unless they had a significant numerical advantage, experiencing the northern fear of the “hairy savages” with their poisoned, striking arrows. The ancient historical work “Nihonseki” (720) testifies “The Ainu are by nature brave and fierce and shoot very well. They constantly keep their arrows in their hair, love to carry out robberies and run as fast as if they were flying.”
Japanese chronicles claim that control of the new administrative units was transferred to representatives of the “royal house”. However, the Soviet researcher M.V. Vorobyov found that this was not quite the case. The managers were often the leaders of local clans who expressed their allegiance to the tenno. And among them there were also Ainu and their descendants from mixed marriages.
Russian ethnographer D.N. Anuchin reported that the government of the Mikado (tenno, emperor of Japan) encouraged marriages of the victorious Japanese with the conquered Ainu, especially with their powerful clans, and many noble Japanese families descend from these marriages. N.V. Kuehner wrote: “Some of the conquered Ainu leaders entered the Japanese feudal elite as princes or their assistants and, undoubtedly, there were also many mixed marriages...”
The culture of the Japanese was significantly enriched at the expense of their northern enemy. As the Soviet scientist S.A. points out. Arutyunov, Ainu elements played a significant role in the formation of samuraiism and the ancient Japanese religion - Shinto.
The ritual of hara-kiri and the complex of military valor of bushido are of Ainu origin. The Japanese ritual of sacrificing Gohei has clear parallels with the installation of inau sticks by the Ainu... The list of borrowings can be continued for a long time.
Rituals. Bear holiday
A special attitude towards the bear was characteristic of all the peoples of the northern hemisphere who lived in the taiga and tundra. The cult of the bear was widespread among the peoples of Siberia and the Far East. The custom of holding a “bear festival” was equally characteristic of both the ancient Ainu and Nivkhs. This refers specifically to the bear festival of the so-called Amur type - about an animal reared in a cage.
The bear was revered as the ancestor of the totem, which should not be killed or eaten. Gradually this ban weakened. But after hunting and eating meat, the bear had to be appeased and its “rebirth” ensured. The main rituals of the holiday were dedicated to this, and remained unchanged until the mid-twentieth century.
Ainu language
Ainu language (Ainu. アイヌ イタク ainu so, Japanese アイヌ語 ainugo) - the language of the Ainu,
The Ainu language and culture date directly back to the Jomon era - the Japanese Neolithic (ceramic dating for the Japanese mainland: 13000 BC - 500 BC)
In Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands, Jomon continued until the last third of the 19th century).
Apparently, we can safely say that in the Jomon era, the Ainu language was spoken on all the Japanese islands, from the Ryukyu Islands to Hokkaido. At the end, or perhaps even towards the middle of the Jomon era, the Ainu language spread to the Kuril Islands, the lower Amur, southern Sakhalin and the southern third of Kamchatka.
When the colonization of Hokkaido began, at first the Matsumae shoguns ordered that the Aina should not be taught Japanese under any circumstances, so that it would be easier to exploit them, but after 1799 (the uprising on Kunashir Ya Kunne Siri “Black Island”) a decree was issued ordering the Aina to be taught Japanese language. The process of assimilation began. But the assimilation of the Hokkaido Ainu began on a grand scale only after the Meiji Ishin Revolution. It all started with school education, which was conducted in Japanese. Only a few people tried to create an education system for Ainu children in their own language: Batchelor, who taught children the Ainu language in Latin transcription, Furukawa and Penriuk, who contributed to the creation of private schools for Ainu. Such private schools did not last very long, because the Japanese from the very beginning created various obstacles for them.
The joint education of Ainu children and Japanese children, as well as comprehensive massive Japaneseization, led to the fact that by the middle of the 20th century, most Ainu dialects had sunk into oblivion. “In the words of the most prominent Japanese linguist Hattori Shiro, the head of the first and, apparently, the last mass survey of Ainu dialects carried out in the 50s, its participants “got on the last bus”; now most of the described dialects no longer exist.”
In Southern Sakhalin (Karafuto Governorate), which was much less Japaneseized than Hokkaido, the Ainu language was used as a language of everyday communication, and before the Russian-Japanese War, the Ainu language was used in interethnic communication: ““foreigners” of Sakhalin, as noted in the “Sakhalin Calendar” for 1898, “they also have a good command of Ainu, which is a common language on the island for all almost foreign tribes among themselves, with the local administration and Japanese fish farmers.” [Taxami S. 251]
After the end of World War II, most of the Sakhalin Ainu ended up in Hokkaido. Until recently, there were only a few people, very advanced in age, who spoke the Sakhalin dialect of Raichishka.
The Ainu language practically fell out of use in the 1920s. Most Ainu now speak Japanese. In the early 90s, the movement for the revival of the Ainu language intensified in Japan. The activist of the movement was a member of the Japanese parliament Kayano Shigeru. Thanks to his activities, the publication of a newspaper in the Ainu language began and many Ainu are beginning to learn their language.
Scientists about the Ainu
American anthropologist S. Lorin Brace, from Michigan State University in the journal Science Horizons, No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: “the typical Ainu is easily distinguished from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, denser body hair and a more prominent nose.”
Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of Japanese, Ainu and other Asian ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that representatives of the privileged samurai class in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese.
Brace further writes: “.. this explains why the facial features of representatives of the ruling class are so often different from modern Japanese. The samurai, the descendants of the Ainu, gained such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the ruling circles and introduced Ainu blood into them, while the rest of the Japanese population were mainly descendants of the Yayoi."
There is one ancient People on earth that we have simply ignored for more than one century, and more than once was subjected to persecution and genocide in Japan due to the fact that with its existence it simply breaks the established official false history of both Japan and Russia.
Now, there is reason to believe that not only in Japan, but also on the territory of Russia there is a part of this ancient indigenous people. According to preliminary data from the latest population census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ainov in our country. The fact itself is unusual, because until recently it was believed that the Ainu live only in Japan. They guessed about this, but on the eve of the population census, employees of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences noticed that, despite the absence of Russian peoples in the official list, some of our fellow citizens stubbornly continue to consider themselves Ain and have good reason for this.
As research has shown, the Ainu, or KAMCHADAL SMOKIANS, did not disappear anywhere, they just did not want to recognize them for many years. But Stepan Krasheninnikov, a researcher of Siberia and Kamchatka (XVIII century), described them as Kamchadal Kurils. The name "Ainu" itself comes from their word for "man", or "worthy man", and is associated with military operations. And as one of the representatives of this nation claims in a conversation with the famous journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought with the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only people remaining to this day who, from ancient times, restrained the occupation, resisted the aggressor - now the Japanese, who were, in fact, Koreans with perhaps a certain percentage of the Chinese population, who moved to the islands and formed another state.
It has been scientifically established that the Ainu already inhabited the north of the Japanese archipelago, the Kuril Islands and part of Sakhalin and, according to some data, part of Kamchatka and even the lower reaches of the Amur about 7 thousand years ago. The Japanese who came from the south gradually assimilated and pushed the Ainu to the north of the archipelago - to Hokkaido and the southern Kuril Islands.
The largest concentrations of Ainu families are now located in Hokaido.
According to experts, in Japan the Ainu were considered “barbarians”, “savages” and social outcasts. The hieroglyph used to designate the Ainu means “barbarian”, “savage”, now the Japanese also call them “hairy Ainu”, for which the Japanese do not like the Ainu.
And here the Japanese policy against the Ainu is very clearly visible, since the Ainu lived on the islands even before the Japanese and had a culture many times, or even orders of magnitude, higher than that of the ancient Mongoloid settlers.
But the topic of the Ainu’s hostility towards the Japanese probably exists not only because of the ridiculous nicknames addressed to them, but also probably because the Ainu, let me remind you, were subjected to genocide and persecution by the Japanese for centuries.
At the end of the 19th century. About one and a half thousand Ainu lived in Russia. After the Second World War, they were partly evicted, partly they left along with the Japanese population, others remained, returning, so to speak, from their difficult and centuries-long service. This part mixed with the Russian population of the Far East.
In appearance, representatives of the Ainu people very little resemble their closest neighbors - the Japanese, Nivkhs and Itelmens.
The Ainu are the White Race.
According to the Kamchadal Kurils themselves, all the names of the islands of the southern ridge were given by the Ainu tribes who once inhabited these territories. By the way, it is wrong to think that the names of the Kuril Islands, Kuril Lake, etc. originated from hot springs or volcanic activity.
It’s just that the Kuril Islands, or Kurilians, live here, and “Kuru” in Ainsk means the People.
It should be noted that this version destroys the already flimsy basis of the Japanese claims to our Kuril Islands. Even if the name of the ridge comes from our Ainu. This was confirmed during the expedition to the island. Matua. There is Ainu Bay, where the oldest Ainu site was discovered.
Therefore, according to experts, it is very strange to say that the Ainu have never been in the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese are doing now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Japan (after all, archeology says the opposite), so they, the Japanese, supposedly the Kuril Islands need to be given back. This is completely untrue. In Russia there are the Ainu - the indigenous White People who have the direct right to consider these islands their ancestral lands.
American anthropologist S. Lorin Brace, from Michigan State University in the journal Science Horizons, No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: “a typical Ainu is easy to distinguish from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker body hair, beards, which is unusual for the Mongoloids, and a more protruding nose.”
Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of Japanese, Ainu and other ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that members of the privileged samurai class in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese.
The story of the Ainu classes is reminiscent of the story of the upper castes in India, where the highest percentage of the White man's haplogroup is R1a1
Brace further writes: “.. this explains why the facial features of representatives of the ruling class are so often different from modern Japanese. The real Samurai, the descendants of Ainu warriors, gained such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the rest of the ruling circles and introduced Ainu blood into them, while the rest of the Japanese population were mainly descendants of Yayoi."
It should also be noted that in addition to archaeological and other features, the language has been partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in “Description of the Land of Kamchatka” by S. Krasheninnikov.
In Hokkaido, the dialect spoken by the Ainu is called saru, but in SAKHALIN it is called reichishka.
As it is not difficult to understand, the Ainu language differs from the Japanese language in syntax, phonology, morphology and vocabulary, etc. Although there have been attempts to prove that they are related, the vast majority of modern scientists reject the assumption that the relationship between the languages goes beyond contact relations, involving the mutual borrowing of words in both languages. In fact, no attempt to link the Ainu language to any other language has gained widespread acceptance.
In principle, according to the famous Russian political scientist and journalist P. Alekseev, the problem of the Kuril Islands can be solved politically and economically. To do this, it is necessary to allow the Ainu (partially evicted to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors (including their ancestral habitat - the Amur region, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and all the Kuril Islands, creating at least following the example of the Japanese (it is known that the Japanese Parliament only in 2008 did it recognize the Ainov as an independent national minority), the Russian dispersed autonomy of an “independent national minority” with the participation of the Ainov from the islands and the Ainov of Russia.
We have neither the people nor the funds for the development of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, but the Ainu do. The Ainu who migrated from Japan, according to experts, can give impetus to the economy of the Russian Far East by forming national autonomy not only in the Kuril Islands, but also within Russia and reviving their clan and traditions in the land of their ancestors
Japan, according to P. Alekseev, will be out of business, because there the displaced Ainu will disappear, but here they can settle not only in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, but throughout their entire original range, our Far East, eliminating the emphasis on the southern Kuril Islands. Since many of the Ainu deported to Japan were our citizens, it is possible to use the Ainu as allies against the Japanese, restoring the dying Ainu language.
The Ainu were not allies of Japan and never will be, but they can become allies of Russia. But unfortunately, we still ignore this ancient People.
With our pro-Western government, which feeds Chechnya for free, which deliberately filled Russia with people of Caucasian nationality, opened unhindered entry for emigrants from China, and those who are clearly not interested in preserving the Peoples of Russia should not think that they will pay attention to the Ainu, only CIVIL INITIATIVE will help here.
As noted by leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Academician K. Cherevko, Japan exploited these islands. Their law includes such a concept as “development through trade exchange.” And all the Ainu - both conquered and unconquered - were considered Japanese and were subject to their emperor. But it is known that even before that the Ainu gave taxes to Russia. True, this was irregular.
Thus, we can say with confidence that the Kuril Islands belong to the Ainu, but, one way or another, Russia must proceed from international law. According to him, i.e. According to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan renounced the islands. Today there are simply no legal grounds for revising the documents signed in 1951 and other agreements. But such matters are resolved only in the interests of big politics, and I repeat that only its Brotherly people, that is, We, can help this people.
In The indigenous people of Japan are the Ainu!
Original taken from masterok The Japanese are not native to Japan
Everyone knows that Americans don't indigenous people of the USA, exactly the same as now South American population. Did you know that the Japanese are not the indigenous population of Japan?
Who then lived in these places before them?
Before them, the Ainu lived here, a mysterious people whose origins still have many mysteries. The Ainu lived next to the Japanese for some time, until the latter managed to push them north.
The fact that the Ainu are the ancient masters of the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands is evidenced by written sources and numerous names of geographical objects, the origin of which is associated with the Ainu language. And even the symbol of Japan - the great Mount Fuji - has in its name the Ainu word “fuji”, which means “deity of the hearth”. According to scientists, the Ainu settled the Japanese islands around 13,000 BC and formed the Neolithic Jomon culture there.
The Ainu did not engage in agriculture; they obtained food by hunting, gathering and fishing. They lived in small settlements, quite distant from each other. Therefore, their habitat was quite extensive: the Japanese islands, Sakhalin, Primorye, the Kuril Islands and the south of Kamchatka. Around the 3rd millennium BC, Mongoloid tribes arrived on the Japanese islands, who later became the ancestors of the Japanese. The new settlers brought with them the rice crop, which allowed them to feed a large population in a relatively small area. Thus began difficult times in the life of the Ainu. They were forced to move to the north, leaving their ancestral lands to the colonialists.
But the Ainu were skilled warriors, fluent with bows and swords, and the Japanese were unable to defeat them for a long time. A very long time, almost 1500 years. The Ainu knew how to wield two swords, and on their right hip they carried two daggers. One of them (cheyki-makiri) served as a knife for committing ritual suicide - hara-kiri. The Japanese were able to defeat the Ainu only after the invention of cannons, by which time they had learned a lot from them in terms of military art. The samurai code of honor, the ability to wield two swords and the mentioned hara-kiri ritual - these seemingly characteristic attributes of Japanese culture were actually borrowed from the Ainu.
Scientists are still arguing about the origin of the Ainu. But the fact that this people is not related to other indigenous peoples of the Far East and Siberia is already a proven fact. A characteristic feature of their appearance is very thick hair and a beard in men, which representatives of the Mongoloid race lack. It has long been believed that they may have common roots with the peoples of Indonesia and the Pacific Aborigines, as they have similar facial features. But genetic studies ruled out this option as well. And the first Russian Cossacks who arrived on the island of Sakhalin even mistook the Ainu for Russians, they were so unlike the Siberian tribes, but rather resembled Europeans. The only group of people from all the analyzed variants with whom they have a genetic relationship were the people of the Jomon era, who presumably were the ancestors of the Ainu. The Ainu language is also very different from the modern linguistic picture of the world, and a suitable place has not yet been found for it. It turns out that during their long isolation the Ainu lost contact with all other peoples of the Earth, and some researchers even distinguish them into a special Ainu race.
Today there are very few Ainu left, about 25,000 people. They live mainly in the north of Japan and are almost completely assimilated by the population of this country.
Ainu in Russia
The Kamchatka Ainu first came into contact with Russian merchants at the end of the 17th century. Relations with the Amur and North Kuril Ainu were established in the 18th century. The Ainu considered the Russians, who were racially different from their Japanese enemies, as friends, and by the middle of the 18th century, more than one and a half thousand Ainu accepted Russian citizenship. Even the Japanese could not distinguish the Ainu from the Russians because of their external similarity (white skin and Australoid facial features, which are similar to Caucasoid ones in a number of ways). When the Japanese first came into contact with the Russians, they called them the Red Ainu (Ainu with blond hair). Only at the beginning of the 19th century did the Japanese realize that the Russians and the Ainu were two different peoples. However, to the Russians the Ainu were "hairy", "swarthy", "dark-eyed" and "dark-haired". The first Russian researchers described the Ainu as looking like Russian peasants with dark skin or more like gypsies.
The Ainu sided with the Russians during the Russo-Japanese Wars of the 19th century. However, after defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russians abandoned them to their fate. Hundreds of Ainu were killed and their families were forcibly transported to Hokkaido by the Japanese. As a result, the Russians failed to recapture the Ainu during World War II. Only a few Ainu representatives decided to stay in Russia after the war. More than 90% went to Japan.
Under the terms of the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875, the Kuril Islands were ceded to Japan, along with the Ainu living there. 83 Northern Kuril Ainu arrived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on September 18, 1877, deciding to remain under Russian control. They refused to move to reservations on the Commander Islands, as the Russian government suggested to them. After which, from March 1881, for four months they traveled on foot to the village of Yavino, where they later settled. Later the village of Golygino was founded. Another 9 Ainu arrived from Japan in 1884. The 1897 census indicates 57 people in Golygino (all Ainu) and 39 people in Yavino (33 Ainu and 6 Russians). Both villages were destroyed by Soviet authorities, and the residents were resettled to Zaporozhye, Ust-Bolsheretsk region. As a result, three ethnic groups assimilated with the Kamchadals.
The Northern Kuril Ainu are currently the largest Ainu subgroup in Russia. The Nakamura family (South Kuril on the paternal side) is the smallest and has only 6 people living in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. There are a few on Sakhalin who identify themselves as Ainu, but many more Ainu do not recognize themselves as such. Most of the 888 Japanese living in Russia (2010 census) are of Ainu origin, although they do not recognize it (pure-blooded Japanese are allowed to enter Japan without a visa). The situation is similar with the Amur Ainu living in Khabarovsk. And it is believed that none of the Kamchatka Ainu are left alive.
In 1979, the USSR deleted the ethnonym “Ainu” from the list of “living” ethnic groups in Russia, thereby declaring that this people had become extinct on the territory of the USSR. Judging by the 2002 census, no one entered the ethnonym “Ainu” in fields 7 or 9.2 of the K-1 census form
There is information that the Ainu have the most direct genetic connections through the male line, oddly enough, with the Tibetans - half of them are carriers of the close haplogroup D1 (the D2 group itself is practically not found outside the Japanese archipelago) and the Miao-Yao peoples in southern China and in Indochina. As for female (Mt-DNA) haplogroups, the Ainu group is dominated by group U, which is also found among other peoples of East Asia, but in small numbers.
sources
The Ainu lived on the territory of Japan for thousands of years, before the first settlers of the Altai language group appeared there, who later became known as the Japanese. The war with the invaders lasted one and a half thousand years.
There are now 3,000 Ainu in Japan and 2,500 live in Hokkaido, their ancient homeland.
The Russian Ainu are also not lost in the common ethnic sea. At the moment there are 205 of them in Russia. As National Accent reports through Alexei Nakamura, the head of the Ainu community, “the Ainu or Kamchadal Kurils did not disappear anywhere, they simply did not want to recognize us for many years. The self-name "Ainu" comes from our word for "man" or "worthy man" and is associated with military operations. We fought against the Japanese for hundreds of years.”
Hokkaido is, in fact, the historical territory of residence of the Ainu, with whom the Japanese waged bloody wars, trying to conquer this courageous people. When the state of Yamato takes shape, an era of constant war begins between the state of Yamato and the Ainu. “Among the eastern savages, the strongest are the Emishi,” according to Japanese chronicles, where the Ainu appear under the name “Emisi.”
And the Japanese were unable to defeat the Ainu for a long time. Only many centuries later did the cult of samurai arise, the origins of which were in the martial art of the Ainu, and not the Japanese. Moreover, individual samurai clans are of Ainu origin. Moreover, the Ainu themselves are not a people related to the Japanese. Unlike the Japanese, the Ainu have abundant hair (the so-called “Ainu passport”) and lighter skin. They look more like Europeans with some Asian blood than Asians. Scientists have not fully figured out the origins of this people.
Alexander Nakamura talks about the “theft” of Ainu traditions by the Japanese: “The Japanese samurai sword is called “katano.” In Ainu this word means “settlement”, “village” or “clan”. The sword was called that because it was passed down from father to son, from son to grandson. Harakiri - so-called. Japanese ritual murder - actually invented by the Ainu! According to our beliefs, the soul lives in the stomach. And she hangs there on a thin rope. To die and release the soul - otherwise a person will not be reborn later - you need to open the stomach and cut this thread. Where did the deep “Japanese” bow come from? In our mythology there is a water spirit called Kapa Kozu. Taking the form of a man, he goes out onto land to drag someone under the water. He has a hole in his head. There is water in it. If it suddenly leaks out, the spirit will die. But the trouble is that this spirit is very polite. For example, I am walking through the forest and meet a man. What if this is Kapa Kozu? I begin to bow to him. He answered me. The deeper the bow, the more respectful the response. And the more water flows out of the spirit. So, in fact, this is a check for lice - are you not a merman...".
The Japanese not only subjected the Ainu to harsh assimilation and appropriated their traditions, but also ruthlessly suppressed their resistance. Alexander Nakamura: “My ancestor came from the southern Kuril Islands, from the island of Shikotan (Yashikotan in Ainu). During the last Ainu uprising, around 1725, he and his family, pursued by Japanese troops, left the chase on canoes all the way to Kamchatka. Donkey in Russia on Kuril Lake. By the way, it is wrong to think that the names of the Kuril Islands, Kuril Lake, etc. originated from hot springs or volcanic activity. It’s just that the Kurils or Kurils live here, and “kuru” in Ainu means people.”
Thus, the history of the Ainu destroys Japanese ideologies about the original belonging of the Kuril Islands to Japan. Alexander Nakamura: “I am a member of the expedition to the island of Matua. There is Ainu Bay there. During the 12th expedition we discovered the oldest Ainu site. From artifacts it is clear from about 1600 that these were the Ainu. This is evidenced by the remains of dishes, an obsidian tip with a groove for poison, and other household items characteristic of the Ainu. Therefore, it is very strange to say that the Ainu have never been in the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese are doing now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Hokkaido and only in Japan, therefore, supposedly, the Kuril Islands should be given to them. This is a lie. In Russia there are the Ainu - an indigenous people who also have the right to these islands. It is very strange that the Russian Foreign Ministry does not use this argument to remind that the islands cannot belong only to the Japanese Ainu, but rather to all the Ainu.”
Unlike Moscow, Tokyo does not forget about the Ainu. “In Hokkaido there is a corporation called Utari, which means partnership. They have 55 branches throughout the Japanese islands,” says Alexander Nakamura. — These are educational cultural centers. There they study not only the Ainu language, but also culture. We tried to establish cultural ties with other Ainu through Utari. But the corporation was only interested in politics, and definitely anti-Russian ones. I asked one of their leaders why this was being done. He answered honestly: we need to live on something, and politicians allocate funds for what interests them. That’s why now Utari and I hardly communicate. We will revive the culture of the Kamchadal Kurils - the Ainu - on our own."
But textbooks and dictionaries of the Ainu language are so far only in English or Japanese. Alexander Nakamura emphasizes the need to publish educational literature for the Ainu in Russian.
I remember that the famous Russo-eater Jozef Pilsudski in 1905, at the height of the Russo-Japanese War, tried to negotiate with Tokyo on joint actions against Russia. And he even called on soldiers of the tsarist army of Polish origin to desert and join the Pilsudski legions. Jozef's brother, Bronislaw Pilsudski, during his exile to Sakhalin, was engaged in research into the Ainu language and traditions, leaving a number of articles and essays on this topic.
Western propaganda, including through the mouth of Poland, broadcasts the myth of the conquest of all the peoples of Russia by the bloodthirsty Russians - from Karelia to the Kuril Islands, from the Caucasus to Yamal. But the political views of the Russian Ainu do not fit into this framework. And therefore no one in the West will hear about them.
Indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation (hereinafter referred to as the indigenous peoples of the North) are peoples of less than 50 thousand people living in the northern regions of Russia, Siberia and the Russian Far East in the territories of the traditional settlement of their ancestors, preserving their traditional way of life , management and crafts and realizing themselves as independent ethnic communities.
General information
Indigenous peoples of the Far North, Siberia and the Far East - this is the official name; more briefly, they are usually called the peoples of the North. The birth of this group dates back to the very beginning of the formation of Soviet power, to the 1920s, when a special resolution “On Assistance to the Peoples of the Northern Outskirts” was adopted. At that time, it was possible to count about 50, if not more, different groups that lived in the Far North. They, as a rule, were engaged in reindeer herding, and their way of life was significantly different from what the first Soviet Bolsheviks saw for themselves.
As time passed, this category continued to remain as a special accounting category, gradually this list crystallized, more precise names of individual ethnic groups appeared, and in the post-war period, at least since the 1960s, especially in the 1970s, this category began to include 26 nations. And when they talked about the peoples of the North, they meant 26 indigenous peoples of the North - they were called back in their time the small peoples of the North. These are different language groups, people speaking different languages, including those whose close relatives have not yet been discovered. This is the language of the Kets, whose relations with other languages are quite complex, the language of the Nivkhs, and a number of other languages.
Despite the measures taken by the state (at that time it was called the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet government), separate resolutions were adopted on the economic development of these peoples, on how to facilitate their economic existence - still the situation remained quite difficult: alcoholism was spreading , there were a lot of social ills. So gradually we lived until the end of the 1980s, when suddenly it turned out that 26 peoples did not fall asleep, did not forget their languages, did not lose their culture, and even if something happened, they want to restore it, reconstruct it, and so on, want to use it in their modern life.
At the very beginning of the 1990s, this list suddenly began to live a second life. Some peoples of Southern Siberia were included in it, and so there were not 26, but 30 nations. Then gradually, during the 1990s - early 2000s, this list expanded, expanded, and today there are about 40-45 ethnic groups, starting from the European part of Russia and ending with the Far East, a significant number of ethnic groups are included in this the so-called list of indigenous peoples of the north of Siberia and the Far East.
What does it take to be on this list?
First of all, you as a people are officially forbidden to be fruitful and multiply in the sense that, let it sound rude, you should not be more than 50,000 people. There is a limit on numbers. You must live in the territory of your ancestors, engage in traditional farming, preserve traditional culture and language. Everything is actually not so simple, it’s not easy to have a special self-name, but you must consider yourself an independent people. Everything is very, very difficult, even with the same self-name.
Let's try to look at, say, the Altai people. Altaians themselves are not included in the list of indigenous peoples. And for a long time in Soviet ethnography and Soviet science it was believed that this was a single people, formed, however, from different groups, but they formed into a single socialist nation. When the late 1980s and early 1990s arrived, it turned out that those who made up the Altaians still remember that they are not completely Altaians. This is how new ethnic groups appeared on the map of the Altai Republic and on the ethnographic map: Chelkans, Tubalars, Kumandins, Altaians themselves, Telengits. Some of them were included in the list of indigenous peoples of the North. There was a very difficult situation - the 2002 census, when the power structures of the Altai Republic were very afraid that due to the fact that a significant part of the former Altaians suddenly enrolled in the indigenous peoples, the population of the republic, that is, the titular people, would significantly decrease and then they would be taken away portfolios - there will be no republic, and people will lose their positions. Everything turned out well: in our country there is no such direct correlation between the titular ethnic group and the status of the entity in which it lives - it could be a republic, an autonomous district or something else.
But when it comes to ethnic identity, the situation is much more complicated. We said that several groups of these Altaians emerged. But if we take each of them, we will find that each of them consists of 5, 10, or maybe 20 divisions. They are called genus, or, in Altai, “syok” (‘bone’), some of them have a very ancient origin. In the same 2002, the leaders of the clans - they are called zaisans - when they learned that the people’s answer would not affect the status of the republic in any way, they said: “Oh, how good. So, maybe now we’ll write ourselves down as Naimans, Kipchaks (by the name of the clan).” That is, it really turns out that a person is generally an Altai, but at the same time he can be a representative of some ethnic group within the Altaians. He may be a member of his own family. If you dig around, you can find even smaller ones.
Why should you be on this list?
Since there is a list, you can get into it, you can sign up for it. If you are not on this list, then you will not have any benefits. About benefits, as a rule, they say: “They signed up there because they want benefits.” Of course, there are some benefits if you know about them and can take advantage of them. Some people don't know that they exist. These are benefits for medical care, for receiving firewood (relevant in villages), it could be preferential admission for your children to university, there is another list of these benefits. But that's really not the most important thing. There is such a moment: you want to live on your own land, and you have no other land. If you are not included in this list of indigenous peoples of the North, then you will be treated like everyone else, although you are already a citizen of the Russian Federation. Then you will not have additional leverage in terms of protecting the territory on which you and your ancestors lived, hunted, fished, and practiced that traditional way of life, which is very important to you.
Why is it so important? Sometimes with laughter, sometimes without laughter they say: “Well, what can we take from him? Even if he is a “white collar” worker, the time comes for poutine or to collect cones in the taiga, he goes to the taiga to collect cones or to poutine, disappears into the sea and catches fish.” A man works in an office, but he cannot live without it. Here they tell it with laughter or even disdain. If we find ourselves, say, in the United States, then we will simply find that self-respecting companies will provide a person with vacation for this time, because they understand that he cannot live without it, and not because it is his whim, that he wants to go fishing, just like any of us might want to go somewhere on the weekend to relax. No, it’s something in the blood that drives a person from the office back to the taiga, to the lands of his ancestors.
If you do not have the opportunity to further protect this land, then various difficult life situations may occur. It is no secret that the territory inhabited by small indigenous peoples of the North is rich in mineral resources. It can be anything: gold, uranium, mercury, oil, gas, coal. And these people live on lands that seem very important from the point of view of the strategic development of the state.
7 smallest nations of Russia
Chulym people
Chulym Turks or Yus Kizhiler (“Chulym people”) live on the banks of the Chulym River in the Krasnoyarsk Territory and have their own language. In former times, they lived in uluses, where they built dugouts (odyg), half-dugouts (kyshtag), yurts and tents. They were engaged in fishing, hunting fur-bearing animals, extracting medicinal herbs, pine nuts, growing barley and millet, harvesting birch bark and bast, weaving ropes and nets, making boats, skis, and sledges. Later they began to grow rye, oats and wheat and live in huts. Both women and men wore pants made from burbot skins and shirts trimmed with fur. Women braided many braids and wore coin pendants and jewelry. Dwellings are characterized by chuvals with open hearths, low clay stoves (kemega), bunks and chests. Some Chulymch residents converted to Orthodoxy, others remained shamanists. The people have preserved traditional folklore and crafts, but only 17% of 355 people speak their native language.
Oroks
Indigenous people of Sakhalin. They call themselves Uilta, which means “deer”. The Orok language has no written language and is spoken by almost half of the 295 remaining Oroks. The Japanese nicknamed the Orok people. The Uilta are engaged in hunting - sea and taiga, fishing (they catch pink salmon, chum salmon, coho salmon and salmon), reindeer husbandry and gathering. Nowadays, reindeer husbandry has fallen into decline, and hunting and fishing are under threat due to oil development and land problems. Scientists assess the prospects for the continued existence of the nation with great caution.
Enets
The Enets shamanists, also known as the Yenisei Samoyeds, call themselves Encho, Mogadi or Pebay. They live on Taimyr at the mouth of the Yenisei in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The traditional dwelling is a conical tent. Of the 227 people, only a third speak their native language. The rest speak Russian or Nenets. The national clothing of the Enets is a parka, fur pants and stockings. Women have a swing parka, men have a one-piece parka. Traditional food is fresh or frozen meat, fresh fish, fish meal - porsa. From time immemorial, the Enets have been engaged in reindeer hunting, reindeer husbandry, and Arctic fox. Almost all modern Enets live in permanent settlements.
Basins
The Tazy (Tadzy, Datzy) are a small and fairly young people living on the Ussuri River in the Primorsky Territory. It was first mentioned in the 18th century. The Taz originated from the mixing of the Nanai and Udege with the Manchus and Chinese. The language is similar to the dialects of northern China, but very different. Now there are 274 Tazis in Russia, and almost none of them speak their native language. If at the end of the 19th century 1,050 people knew it, now it is owned by several elderly women in the village of Mikhailovka. The Taz live by hunting, fishing, gathering, farming and animal husbandry. Recently, they have been striving to revive the culture and customs of their ancestors.
Izhora
The Finno-Ugric people Izhora (Izhora) lived on the tributary of the Neva of the same name. The self-name of the people is Karyalaysht, which means “Karelians”. The language is close to Karelian. They profess Orthodoxy. During the Time of Troubles, the Izhorians fell under the rule of the Swedes, and fleeing the introduction of Lutheranism, they moved to Russian lands. The main occupation of the Izhors was fishing, namely the extraction of smelt and herring. The Izhors worked as carpenters, weaving and basket weaving. In the middle of the 19th century, 18,000 Izhoras lived in the St. Petersburg and Vyborg provinces. The events of World War II had a catastrophic impact on the population. Some of the villages burned down, the Izhorians were taken to Finland, and those who returned from there were transported to Siberia. Those who remained in place disappeared among the Russian population. Now there are only 266 Izhors left.
Vod
The self-name of this Orthodox Finno-Ugric vanishing people of Russia is Vodyalayn, Vaddyalaizyd. In the 2010 census, only 64 people classified themselves as Vod. The language of the nationality is close to the southeastern dialect of the Estonian language and to the Livonian language. From time immemorial, the Vods lived south of the Gulf of Finland, on the territory of the so-called Vodskaya Pyatina, which is mentioned in the chronicles. The nationality itself was formed in the 1st millennium AD. The basis of life was agriculture. They grew rye, oats, barley, raised livestock and poultry, and were engaged in fishing. They lived in barns, like Estonian ones, and from the 19th century - in huts. The girls wore a sundress made of white canvas and a short “ihad” jacket. Young people chose their own bride and groom. Married women had their hair cut short, while older women shaved their heads and wore a paykas headdress. Many pagan remnants have been preserved in the rituals of the people. Now Vodi culture is being studied, a museum has been created, and the language is being taught.
Kereki
Vanishing people. There are only four of them left in the entire territory of Russia. And in 2002 there were eight. The tragedy of this Paleo-Asian people was that from ancient times they lived on the border of Chukotka and Kamchatka and found themselves between two fires: the Chukchi fought with the Koryaks, and the Ankalgakku got the worst of it - that’s what the Kereks call themselves. Translated, this means “people living by the sea.” Enemies burned houses, women were taken into slavery, men were killed.
Many Kerek people died during the epidemics that swept the lands at the end of the 18th century. The Kereks themselves led a sedentary lifestyle, obtained food by fishing and hunting, and killed sea and fur-bearing animals. They were engaged in reindeer herding. The Kereks contributed to dog riding. Harnessing dogs in a train is their invention. The Chukchi harnessed dogs with a fan. The Kerek language belongs to the Chukchi-Kamchatka language. In 1991, there were only three people left in Chukotka who spoke it. To preserve it, a dictionary was recorded, which included about 5,000 words.
What to do with these people?
Everyone remembers well the movie “Avatar” and that nasty character who said that “they are sitting on my money.” Sometimes one gets the impression that those companies that are trying to somehow regulate relations with people living in those places where they can mine and sell something, treat them this way, that is, these are people who are simply getting in the way. The situation is quite complicated, because everywhere, in all cases, where something like this happens (this could be some sacred Lake Nouto, where the Khanty or Forest Nenets live, it could be Kuzbass with its coal deposits, it could be Sakhalin with its oil reserves), there is a certain clash of interests, more or less clearly expressed, between the indigenous peoples of the North, between the local population, in principle, everyone. Because what is the difference between you, an aborigine, and a Russian old-timer who behaves exactly the same way, living on the same land, doing the same fishing, hunting, and so on, and suffering in the same way from dirty water and other negative consequences of mining or development? something fossil. The so-called stakeholders, in addition to the aborigines, include government agencies and the companies themselves that are trying to make some profit from this land.
If you are not on this list of indigenous peoples of the North, then it will be much more difficult for you to defend your land and your rights to the way of life that you want to lead. It is important to preserve your culture, because if you do not have a territory where you live compactly with your fellow tribesmen, then it will be very difficult to ensure that your children learn their native language and pass on some traditional values. This does not mean that the people will disappear, will disappear, but in the way you perceive the situation, there may be such an idea that if my language disappears, I will cease to be some kind of people. Of course you won't stop. Throughout Siberia, a huge number of peoples of the North have lost their languages, but this does not mean that they do not speak any language. In some places the Yakut language has become their native language, and almost everyone speaks Russian. Nevertheless, people maintain their ethnic identity, they want to develop further, and the list gives them this opportunity.
But there is one interesting twist here that no one has thought about yet. The fact is that it is increasingly heard among the younger generation of the indigenous peoples of the North, which, strictly speaking, have lost their ethnic specificity (they all speak Russian and do not wear traditional clothes): “We are indigenous peoples, we are indigenous peoples.” A certain community appears, perhaps it is a class identity, as in tsarist Russia. And in this sense, it apparently makes sense for the state to take a closer look at the processes that are now taking place in the North, and perhaps, if we talk about assistance, it may not be for specific ethnic groups, but for that new class community called the indigenous peoples of the North .
Why are the northern peoples disappearing?
Small nations differ from large ones not only in numbers. It is more difficult for them to maintain their identity. A Chinese man can come to Helsinki, marry a Finnish woman, live there with her all his life, but he will remain Chinese until the end of his days, and will not become a Finn. Moreover, even in his children there will probably be a lot of Chinese, and this manifests itself not only in appearance, but much deeper - in the peculiarities of psychology, behavior, tastes (even just culinary ones). If someone from the Sami people finds themselves in a similar situation - they live on the Kola Peninsula, in Northern Norway and Northern Finland - then, despite the proximity to their native places, after some time they will essentially become a Finn.
This is what happens with the peoples of the North and Far East of Russia. They preserve their national identity while they live in villages and engage in traditional farming. If they leave their native places, break away from their own people, then they dissolve in another and become Russians, Yakuts, Buryats - depending on where they end up and how life turns out. Therefore, their numbers are almost not growing, although the birth rate is quite high. In order not to lose national identity, you need to live among your people, in their original habitat.
Of course, small nations have intelligentsia - teachers, artists, scientists, writers, doctors. They live in the district or regional center, but in order not to lose touch with their native people, they need to spend a lot of time in the villages.
To preserve small nations, it is necessary to maintain traditional economies. This is the main difficulty. Reindeer pastures are shrinking due to growing oil and gas production, seas and rivers are polluted, so fishing cannot develop. Demand for reindeer meat and furs is falling. The interests of the indigenous population and regional authorities, large companies, and simply local poachers come into conflict, and in such a conflict, power is not on the side of small nations.
At the end of the 20th century. the leadership of districts and republics (especially in Yakutia, Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets districts) began to pay more attention to the problems of preserving national culture. Festivals of cultures of small nations have become regular, at which storytellers perform, rituals are performed, and sports competitions are held.
All over the world, the well-being, standard of living, and preservation of the culture of small national minorities (Indians in the Americas, Aborigines of Australia, Ainu of Japan, etc.) are part of the country’s calling card and serve as an indicator of its progressiveness. Therefore, the significance of the destinies of the small peoples of the North for Russia is disproportionately greater compared to their small numbers, amounting to only 0.1% of the country’s population.
State policy
It is customary for anthropologists to criticize government policy towards the small peoples of the North.
Policy towards the peoples of the North has changed over the years. Before the revolution, they were a special class - foreigners who had self-government within certain limits. After the 1920s The culture, economy and society of the northerners, like the rest of the country, have undergone major transformations. The idea of developing the peoples of the North and bringing them out of the state of “backwardness” was accepted. The economy of the North became subsidized.
In the late 1980s - early 1990s. ethnographers have formulated a rationale for the direct interdependence of traditional cultural identity, traditional economy and traditional habitat. Economy and language were added to the romantic thesis of soil and blood. The paradoxical idea that the condition for the preservation and development of ethnic culture - language and customs - is the conduct of a traditional economy in a traditional habitat. This virtually hermetic traditionalism concept became the ideology for the SIM movement. It was the logical rationale for the alliance between ethnic intellectuals and emerging businesses. In the 1990s. Romanticism received a financial base - first, grants from foreign charitable foundations, and then from mining companies. The industry of ethnological examination was enshrined in the same law.
Research by anthropologists today shows that economic activity can exist and develop without preserving language. At the same time, languages can also emerge from live family communication during housekeeping. For example, Udege, Sami, many dialects of Evenki and many other indigenous languages are no longer heard in the taiga and tundra. However, this does not prevent people from engaging in reindeer husbandry, hunting, and fishing.
In addition to cultural figures and businessmen, an independent layer of leaders and political activists has formed among the indigenous indigenous peoples,
There is a point of view among SIM activists that benefits should not be selective, but apply to all representatives of the SIM, no matter where they live or what they do. As arguments, for example, arguments are offered that in the body the need for fish in the diet is laid down at the genetic level. An option to solve this problem is to expand the areas of traditional residence and traditional farming throughout the entire region.
The countryside in the Far North is not an easy place to live. People from different ethnic backgrounds work there in agriculture. They use the same technologies, overcome the same difficulties, face the same challenges. These activities should also receive government support regardless of ethnicity. The state guarantee of the protection of the rights of the peoples of Russia primarily guarantees the absence of any discrimination on ethnic and religious grounds.
As the analysis shows, the Law “On Guarantees of the Rights of Indigenous Minorities of the Russian Federation” stands out in its approach from the entire Russian legal system. This law considers peoples as subjects of law. The inability to lead provides the basis for the formation of an estate - a group of people endowed with rights due to their ethnic origin. Local executors of laws will long face attempts to legally close a fundamentally open social system.
The principal way out of this situation may be to overcome the romanticism of traditionalism and separate the policy of supporting economic activity and supporting ethnocultural activity. In the socio-economic part, it is necessary to extend benefits and subsidies to indigenous minorities to the entire rural population of the Far North.
In the ethnocultural part, the state can provide the following types of support:
- Scientific support, represented by research organizations and universities, in their development of programs and training of specialists.
- Legal support in the form of development and adoption of norms for the preservation and development of ethnocultural heritage.
- Organizational support in the form of development and implementation of ethnocultural programs of cultural institutions and educational institutions.
- Financial support for NGOs developing ethnocultural initiatives in the form of grant support for promising projects.
Obviously, this presupposes a fundamental change in the Law “On Guarantees of the Rights of Indigenous Minorities of the Russian Federation.”