Vagramenko, Tatiana (2017) Indigeneity and Religious Conversion in Siberia: Nenets ‘Eluding’ Culture and Indigenous Revitalization. In: Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews. Comparative Studies on Contemporary Eurasia, India and South America. LIT Verlag. Ethnologie: Forschung und Wissenschaft, pp. 207-229. ISBN 9783643956446
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
It was the cold and blizzardy spring of 2011 when I stayed in Marina’s house in a snowbound village of Beloyarsk, across the Polar Urals. Marina was a short, thin and sickly looking Nenets woman in her early fifties. Several years ago she abandoned her forty-some years of nomadic tundra life and moved to the village. A wise woman, known as a bearer of indigenous knowledge and a gifted storyteller, she was, as a child, sick with cirrhosis of the lungs, which sometimes was interpreted by her relatives as a shamanic illness. Besides, her father always prevented her from getting married, insisting that Marina should stay spouseless. And for Marina’s family this was a sign that she might be a Numd’siarvy ne–the bride of God, a woman promised and devoted to the main Nenets deity called Num.“They think I am a shaman, always ask me to tell them something,” Marina once said to me, “But I don’t know who I am. I don’t beat the drum, what can I tell ‘em?” She also inherited the clan’s sacred sledge (khe’khan), where Nenets people traditionally keep their sacred objects. This supposedly made her responsible for keeping the clan gods and correspondingly for safeguarding the clan’s wealth and luck. However, Marina changed the course of her life and soon after she settled in a village she was converted to Protestant Christianity becoming one of the most active members of a local Baptist community. “You will be happy”, many years ago these were the last words of Marina’s father to her, before he died. “I don’t know why he said that,‘you will be happy’. Maybe, he might have had a revelation, because I am with God now.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | B Mission theology/theory > Conversion B Mission theology/theory > Identity issues B Mission theology/theory > Contextualization/Inculturation G Christian traditions/Denominations > Baptist |
| Divisions: | Former Soviet Union > Russian Federation |
| Depositing User: | Katharina Penner |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Feb 2024 08:01 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Feb 2024 08:01 |
| URI: | https://ceeamsprints.osims.org/id/eprint/2916 |
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