Who are the Evenki?

Who are the Evenki?

The Evenki are an ethnolinguistic continuum of reindeer herders across the taiga, or boreal forest, of central and eastern Siberia.  Form a cultural middle ground between the steppe pastoralism of the Mongols and the Taiga hunting/gathering of the Yeniseic peoples.  Although we refer to them as reindeer pastoralists, a more accurate description of their economy may be, to quote a lecture by Edward Vajda, “reindeer-augmented hunting and gathering”. Their world, then, is not entirely alien to the Ket, whom we’ve previously studied.  Much of their culture—for example, shamanism—while having adopted elements of pastoralism, would be recognizable to the Ket.  Unfortunately, the Ket and Evenki have not gotten along historically, and the adoption of reindeer breeding by the Evenki and others led to their forcing the Yeniseic peoples out of their ancestral homeland to the south.  In fact it is probable that the tysdeng “Stone People” against whom the folk hero Balna fought were in fact Evenki warriors.

Speakers of a North Tungusic language, which shares many features with Mongolic and Turkic, leading some to believe that they form the Altaic Macrofamily; however, this is widely disputed and may just as likely be the result of millennia of contact between the three language families.

About 3-400 years ago, certain Evenki tribes migrated south of the Amur, and continued their reindeer pastoralism in the far north of Inner Mongolia, at the very edge of the taiga.  Some of them left the forests and adopted a steppe lifestyle more similar to that of the Mongols; some of them began to speak a Mongolic variety known as Khamnigan, while a few continued to speak Evenki.  These steppe Evenki speakers were the group among whom I conducted my research.

After the communist revolution and, more importantly, the Sino-Soviet Split, the Evenki of China were forcibly resettled further from the border in order to keep them from nomadizing into the USSR, and subjected to ethnic cleansing by means of planned Han Chinese migration.  A result of this can be seen in the “Evenki Autonomous Banner” which in practice is an average Han community.  Most Evenki living there are in the remote and inaccessible steppes outside the city, and even then they only number about 6% of the total population.*  During my time in the district I encountered only one person with any knowledge of Evenki. 

Unfortunately, before I could get from this individual any detailed information, I was found by the Chinese police and escorted under guard back to the city.  While the Chinese government claims to respect ethnic autonomy and honor their cultures, it is highly fearful any actual interaction between ethnic minorities and laowai (outsiders).  Paradoxically, while it sees the Evenki (and other minorities, not least the Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongols) as a sort of living tourist attraction, they are represented to society by individuals who neither speak Evenki nor live a traditional Evenki lifestyle; indeed, often by people who are not themselves Evenki.  To the PRC government, minorities are useful only as cheerfully-dressed dancers who entertain tour groups and willingly submit to the “benefits” of Sinicization and cultural genocide.  Any academic hoping to do unsupervised—and uncensored—research risks deportation from the area, and even detention, the latter of which I experienced in the late summer of 2010.

Therefore, perhaps the only area in China steppe Evenki can be observed as a living language is the Evenki Ethnic Sum of Hulunbuir Prefecture, Inner Mongolia.  In this region ethnic Evenki may in fact constitute a plurality or slight majority*, and Evenki-style steppe pastoralism is a surviving tradition.

The Evenki Ethnic Sum is located on a subarctic steppe about an hour’s drive north of Hailar, the nearest town.  The land is shared by Daur Mongols and some Han Chinese, who form a de-facto elite living in the administrative center.

During this time I was able to compile a short wordlist with 64 entries, and compare them with Wiktionary’s general “Altaic” wordlist.  Before I post these findings, I will write a post detailing my experiences in the region, as I feel that this will prove useful to understanding the situation of China’s Evenki, and for those of my audience interested in travel stories.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenki_Autonomous_Banner
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenk_Ethnic_Sumu 

Bro Goes to a Mongolian Folk Healer

Hello friends, after many adventures in Hangzhou and among the Evenki of Inner Mongolia's Hulunbuir region, I've emerged in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where Blogspot is legal and I don't have to mess with VPNs to so much as read Wikipedia.

I've been getting settled nicely here, but the day before yesterday I was walking down the stairs in my building when the light went off.  Unable to see, I fell down a flight and twisted my ankle.  The next morning it had swollen to the size of a tennis ball, and I couldn't walk without using a stick as a crutch.  I went to my Mongolian class, and my teacher said not to go to a doctor, but rather a folk healer, since they were cheaper and worked better anyway.  I was skeptical, but she swore by it and was nice enough to take me to hers after class.

So anyway, we go into this guy's apartment that has a clinic-type room built into it.  The guy had me sit down on a stool, put some kind of herbal cream on my ankle, and then started kneading/karate chopping it like some kind of deranged masseuse.

It hurt.

My boss said when I arrived in Mongolia, "There's the Western way of doing things, and the Mongolian way.  Take the Western way and imagine the exact opposite.  That's the Mongolian way."  Suppose, for example, I have a car.  Do I a)get in the car and go somewhere, or b)get in the car and go nowhere?

The answer is b, since the traffic in UB downtown is so bad that it takes a half hour to drive ten minutes' walking distance.

Or, in yesterday's case, you have injured your ankle and can't walk.  Do you a) prop the ankle up with an ice pack and keep weight off it, or b) pay a large sweaty man to repeatedly strike the afflicted area and twist it around some more?  Once again, the answer is b.

The best part is, he kept telling me to relax my ankle.  Meanwhile I'm grunting and hollering and punching the wall, and my teacher is laughing so hard she can't stand up straight. 

After about ten minutes of searing agony, he told me to get up and try walking. Clearly, this man was insane.   Nevertheless, I did so, and to my surprise I was able to stand on my own, and even walk by myself.  How about that.

He sat me back down, prodded me around some more, and then put on another ointment.  He wrapped my ankle in cellophane and said to go home and sleep with a potato.  Yes, sleep with a potato.

Clearly this was a mistranslation on my part, but my teacher said yes, I was to go home and sleep with a potato.  He elaborated--when I went to bed that evening, I was to affix a centimeter-thick slice of potato to my ankle.  The potato would draw out the swelling in my ankle and I would be fine the next day.

Well ok then.

I went home, and over an hour or so the swelling went down like magic.  I slept with the potato last night and sure enough, my ankle feels great.  He told me to rest it for two days, but after that I can get back into my exercise routine.  And for all of this I paid 20,000 tugrug, or $11.

Amazing.  I never thought that folk medicine would be so effective.  Had I gone to a western doctor I would've paid 20,000 for the guy to see me, another 20,000 for pain meds, another 20,000 for a crutch, and probably another 10,000 for a brace.  Then I would've had to hobble around for the next week.

Today's lesson: don't doubt folk wisdom.