Mythologies of the Dolgan Tribe

Dolgans (Russian: Долганы; Dolgan: Долган, Дулҕан Dulğan, Һака (Sakha); Yakut: тыа-киһи) are an ethnic group who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. They are descended from several groups, particularly Evenks, one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North. Dolgans are the most closely related to the Sakha. They adopted a Turkic language sometime after the 18th century. The 2010 Census counted 7,885 Dolgans. This number includes 5,517 in Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District. Dolgan speak the Dolgan language, which is closely related to the Yakut language. In the 17th century, the Dolgans lived in the basins of the Olenyok River and Lena River. They moved to their current location, Taymyr, in the 18th century. The Dolgan identity began to emerge during the 19th and early 20th centuries, under the influence of three groups who migrated to the Krasnoyarsk area from the Lena River and Olenyok River region: Evenks, Yakuts, Enets, and so-called tundra peasants (зату́ндренные крестья́не, zatúndrennye krest’jáne). Originally, the Dolgans were nomadic hunters and reindeer herders. However, they were prevented from following a nomadic lifestyle during the Soviet era and required to form kolkhozy (rural collectives) that – in addition to their traditional activities – engaged in reindeer breeding, fishing, dairy farming and market gardening. In 1983, the anthropologist Shirin Akiner claimed: "Dolgans enjoy full Soviet citizenship. They are found in all occupations, though the majority are peasants and collective farm workers. Their standard of housing is comparable to that of other national groups in the Soviet Union." Most Dolgans practice old shamanistic beliefs; however, most are influenced by Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

The Dolgan inhabit the Taimyr Peninsula and the left bank of the lower Yenisei River, across from the town of Dudinka. This territory forms part of the Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous District (okrug), the TAO, which is part of the Krasnoyarsk region of the Russian Federation (RF). The Dolgan do not enjoy national autonomy. In the majority of settlements they reside and conduct their economy in common with the Nganasan, Evenki, Nenets, and other nationalities, as well as with migrants. At the present time most of the Dolgan are concentrated in the settlements along the courses of the Dudypta, Kheta, and Khatanga rivers and along the shores of Khatanga Bay. Some also live in the settlements of Levinskie Peski and Khantaiskoe Ozero in the western part of the TAO. A number of families reside in the district capital of Dudinka and in the large townlike settlement of Khatanga. The majority of the territorial groupings that contributed to the formation of the Dolgan migrated from regions more to the south than those of the Nganasan. Here the terrain is for the most part forest tundra (Russian: lesotundra ) with sparse growth of larch. In the eastern part of the peninsula the taiga infringes from the south. The average January temperature for Khatanga is —33.8° C and the mean July temperature is 12.3° C. According to the 1989 census, 6,600 Dolgan resided in the Russian Federation (RF), with 1,300 in cities of the RF. Some 5,000 Dolgan resided in the TAO and constituted 11.8 percent of the total population. About a quarter of the total Dolgan population resided outside their district. Of those residing within the district, 71 percent were concentrated in the Khatanga subdistrict. The Dolgan language is classified in the Turkic Language Group, part of the Altaic Language Family. As late as the 1950s it was classified as a dialect of the Yakut language. Today, however, it has won a place for itself as a distinct language. Yakut lexical and grammatical forms predominate, but Evenki, Russian, and some Samoyedic lexical forms have become incorporated into the Dolgan language. There are phonetic and morphological differences between the speeches of various territorial groups. At present, three Dolgan subgroups are distinguished: Western (Yenisei, Norilsk), Central (Avam), and Eastern (Khatanga). Occasionally a fourth subgroup is distinguished, the easternmost one of the Popigai Dolgan. In spite of local divergences in speech, there is excellent mutual intelligibility among the speeches of all groups and also with that of the northern Yakut. All Dolgan, except those of very advanced years, have a good command of the Russian language, and some individuals also speak Nganasan and Evenki. Until recently there was no written Dolgan language. In 1973 the first book in the Dolgan language was published, printed in the Yakut alphabet. Beginning in the fall of 1990 instruction in the Dolgan language was introduced in lower school grades. A Dolgan primer, developed for the purpose, is now in use.

The Dolgans are one of approximately thirty "Numerically Small Peoples of the North" in Russia. The Numerically Small Peoples are indigenous groups who have lived in the Far North for thousands of years, relying on the land and its natural resources to provide food, clothing, and shelter. Th eir spiritual life is also rooted in the land and the animals with which they share the tundra and taiga. Although their lives have changed rapidly as industrialization has spread throughout the world over the course of the past one hundred years, the land and its resources continue to provide a livelihood and spiritual anchor for the Dolgans. The contemporary Dolgan people are offi-cially recognized as an amalgam of Sakha, Evenki, Entsy, Russian, and Nganasany peoples. The name "Dolgan" is derived from one of the Tungus clans from whom the contemporary Dolgans originated. The ethnonym, or ethnic self-designation of the Dolgans is "Dulgaan," but this is a very recent (19th century) name. Prior to that, groups used names originating from their past ethnic identities or the territories in which they lived. Indigenous peoples in both Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union were considered "primitive" because they lived in the harsh arctic environment and made their living off the land. In the Soviet Union, the government implemented policies designed to "modernize" indigenous peoples and thus bring them into the fold of socialist society, whether they wanted to be modernized or not. Collectivization, universal education, and assimilation were three primary focal points of government policy. Collectivization entailed confiscating people's property, including their reindeer herds, and organizing economic activities on the basis of collective (kolkhozy) and state farms (sovkhozy) . Education is generally acknowledged as a positive development except when students are denied the right to learn in their Native languages, and their cultures are disparaged by teachers and administrators. This is a problem which is only today being addressed. The Dolgans were expected to assimilate into the dominant Soviet society-to stop thinking of themselves as Dulgaan and start thinking of themselves as Soviet. Their lives as nomadic reindeer herds and hunters would end as they adopted modern industrial occupations and lifestyles. Their distinctive way of life, culture and beliefs would merge and eventually disappear into the larger "Soviet people."

The Dolgan are probably the most recent example within the Russian Federation of the formation of an independent ethnic group. Their consolidation began in the nineteenth century. At the time of the 1926-1927 census, the Dolgan were represented by nine ethnographic groupings. These consisted of the Dolgan proper; of alliances that historically incorporated large numbers of Yakut; of Yakut proper; of Evenki groups (also of varied origins); of a significant number of Russian peasants, hunters, and dog breeders; and of small numbers of Samoyeds, Nenets, and Enets. All of these spoke different Dolgan or Yakut dialects. The Nganasan did not play a significant part in the formation of the Dolgan. They simply ceded the southern and easternmost frontier regions of the territories they used in their transhumance to the Dolgan. From the seventeenth century on, the "Great Russian Road," the Khatanga Tract, existed on the Taimyr. Along this road communications were maintained by means of reindeer and dog transport between the Dudino settlement and Lake Piasino and then eastward toward the Khatanga and even farther to the Anabar River and to Yakutia. Winter camps along this road were relatively permanent. It was in this stretch of territory that groups speaking different languages, diverse in origin, with different traditions and beliefs and different material and spiritual cultures, developed a unitary self-consciousness, language, and culture and eventually coalesced into the Dolgan people. Their collective name is derived from one of the Tungus clans. Their economy was primarily based on hunting—wild reindeer in the north, elks and mountain sheep in the south. Subsidiary game were ptarmigan and hares. In the summer, molting geese and ducks were taken. Reindeer husbandry in various groups was oriented mostly toward transport. Reindeer were raised to serve as mounts and for forest transport, although some families residing in the tundra kept large herds for sled transport. Fishing played a very important role, and commercial polar-fox trapping was well developed. By the beginning of the twentieth century all Dolgan were Christians. The presence of the Russian population in the area facilitated the spread of Orthodox Christianity. By the end of the 1930s this population was completely assimilated by the Dolgan. Thus, Dolgan culture incorporated components from different peoples, and these different influences are discernible even today to various degrees in different areas of the Dolgan settlement. Following the establishment of Soviet control, the Dolgan, especially the Western groups, experienced numerous administratively mandated reorganizations of their economies and resettlement from one territory to another within the Taimyr Peninsula. The mixing of peoples of various origins increased, and the emergence of a single common identity as a separate people became stronger. The basic transformations followed the same pattern as among the Nganasan and in tandem with the latter. The Dolgan tundra-reindeer breeders in the 1970s, under pressure from the proliferating wild-reindeer herds in western and central Taimyr, lost all of their domestic animals and had to switch to commercial fur trapping, fishing, and fall hunting of wild reindeer. Stable units for reindeer breeding are preserved only to the east of the Khatanga settlement.

The self-designation is dolghan, dulghan (meaning probably 'people living on the middle reaches of the river'), but the following names have also been used: toa, pl. toalar, toakihi, pl. toakihilär 'people of the wood', toatagolar 'nomadic people', tagal or tägäl, 'a tribe, a people'. The self-designation of the Yakuts, haka or saha, has also been recorded. In 1935--59 the self-designation of the Yakuts, saha, was used as an official Russian name for the Dolgans inhabiting the Taimyr National Territory. The Dolgans themselves do not identify with the Yakuts, and they actually differ considerably from the Yakuts in their language and their ethnic culture. The variety of self-designations reflects the ethnic history of the Dolgans, and the relatively short span this history encompasses. The name Dolgan became known outside the tribe itself only as late as the 19th century. The Dolgans inhabit an area in the southern part of the Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) National Territory, in the Khatanga and Pyassina river basins, and to a lesser extent on the Yenisey (the Dudinka district). A few dozen Dolgans live in Yakutia, on the lower reaches of the River Anabar. On the Taimyr Peninsula the Dolgans are the most numerous indigenous ethnic group. Etnologically the Dolgan society is formed of the Yakut and Tungus clans Dolgan, Dongot, Edjan or Edzhen, and Karanto or Karóntuo. Over time these clans have been joined by other Yakut or Evenk groups, and, to a lesser extent, by the Enets and the Nenets. There also existed a group of Russian settlers on the River Heta, who, by the end of the 19th century, had become Dolganized and had gradually adopted the way of life of nomadic reindeer breeders. According to Dolgikh's data the proportion of the different ethnic groups in the formation of the Dolgan people was as follows: Tungus -- 50--52 percent, Yakut -- 30--33 percent, Russian -- 15 percent, and Samoyed -- 3--4 percent.

This Arctic trip takes guests to the border area between Yakutia's Anabar District and the Taymyr Peninsula to visit the nomadic Dolgan reindeer herders. At 800 – 1000km north of the Arctic Circle, these are the northernmost reindeer herders in the world. Anabar is the northernmost part of Yakutia, the coldest inhabited region in the world. The Dolgan nomads inhabit this frozen wasteland, completely devoid of sunlight for two whole months during the mind-bogglingly harsh winter. Like the Nenets they sew their own clothing from reindeer furs. They build wooden cabins on sledge runners and insulate them with reindeer furs. During migrations (once every ten days in winter or every 2 – 3 days in summer) the reindeer pull the whole home 10km or so to a new location. The Dolgans area is also home to the world's largest herd of wild reindeer (1 million head) so as well as herding their own animals they also hunt the wild ones when they have spare time.

Dolgans are a Turkic people, who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The 2002 Census counted 7,261 Dolgans. This number includes 5,517 in former Taymyr Autonomous Okrug. Dolgan identity emerged in the 19th early 20th century, when some of the Evenks, Yakuts, Enets, and the so-called Tundra peasants migrated to the region away from the Lena River and Olenyok River. Originally, the Dolgans were nomadic reindeer breeders and hunters. They were eventually forced to settle and form kolkhozes during the Soviet times, engaging in reindeer breeding, hunting, fishing, dairy farming as well as market gardening.

The Dolgans are a small, Turkic-speaking nationality living on the Taimyr Peninsula in northern Siberia. Their primary occupations are hunting and fishing; they also breed a small number of domesticated reindeer, which are utilized as means of transport during nomadic migration. During the winter season the Dolgans live in the forest-tundra zone, and toward summer they migrate northward into the tundra in pursuit of wild reindeer herds. In 1989 there were seven thousand Dolgans, 80 percent of whom spoke their native tongue, which is derived from the Yakut language. The Dolgans appeared as a distinct nationality during the last three hundred years and are largely descended from the Tunguz and the Yakuts; their religion had its origin in the culture area of their formation. The Dolgans are converts to Christianity, and they bear Russian names. Their calendar—a six-sided small stick carved from mammoth bone—is known as the paskaal (from Russian paskhalʾnyi, "relating to Easter"); the basic Russian Orthodox holidays are marked on the sides of the paskaal. The old men who can calculate time by this calendar are called paskaalcit and are deemed to be sages. Icons are found in each Dolgan dwelling, but the Russian Orthodox saints represented on them are no more revered than are the other spirits of the Dolgan pantheon. In their mobile dwellings (urasa ), special sanctity is attached to the four foundation poles (suona ) in which the spirits who protect the people living in the urasa dwell. After a successful hunt, these poles are smeared with the blood of a wild reindeer and purified by the smoke of burning fat. When a dwelling's owner dies, the weeping of the suona is heard. The cover of the urasa is sewn out of reindeer chamois, on which are drawn the sun, moon, reindeer, or urasa, according to a shaman's instructions. The urasa functions as a barrier impenetrable to evil spirits. In building a permanent dwelling, the Dolgans leave two tall trees by the side of the entrance, so that the souls of the dwellers may live in their branches. The trees are termed serge ("post") in Yakut.

The Dolgans live on the Taymyr Peninsula in the central Siberian Arctic. They number about 7,000 and nowadays, they are mainly to be found living in settlements along the Dudypta, Kheta and Khatanga Rivers as well as the shores of Khatanga Bay. The Dolgans have the youngest Arctic culture, which only was recognised in the 19th Century. Scientists believe that the Dolgan evolved from a mixture of three other northern Siberian cultures, the Yakut, Evenk and Nenets. Their territory consists largely of open tundra and has a particularly harsh climate. The Khatanga area, for example, has an average January temperature of minus 33.8° Celsius with frequent winter storms. Just to the south of their territory in Taymyr lies the port of Dudinka and the industrial town of Norilsk whose pollutants are found right across the Arctic. The Dolgan language belongs to the Turkik group, part of the Altaic Language Family. For many years Dolgan was considered to be a dialect of Yakut, but now it has been accepted, at least by some academics, that it is a distinct language in its own right. Most Dolgan also speak Russian which they learn at school. Their traditional economy is based on a combination of reindeer breeding, hunting wild reindeer, as well as other game, trapping and fishing. The reindeer herders follow the common system of moving north in the spring and south in the autumn following traditional migration routes. These are changed each year, so that the group returns to the original route every fourth year, depending on the condition of the pastures. Slaughtering of domestic reindeer is normally done inNovember, when the reindeer are closest to the herders’ villages. Dolgan reindeer herders use baloks rather than tents. These are small huts, mounted on sled runners and insulated with reindeer skin. They have small stoves in them which burn coal that the herders bring form the villages. Most Dolgans nowadays live in settlements. Often these villages are small with only a few hundred people with wooden houses heated by coal. The facilities are usually very basic with no mains water or sewage system. The traditional staple foods of the Dolgans are reindeer meat, geese and ducks, fish. Bread and bannock is also eaten as flour entered their diet long ago. They also collect berries and edible plants in the summer. Most of the traditional foods are eaten raw, frozen or boiled. Today, a variety of Russian foods are available in most of the shops.

The self-designation is dolghan, dulghan (meaning probably ‘people living on the middle reaches of the river’), but the following names have also been used: toa, pl. toalar, toakihi, pl. toakihilär ‘people of the wood’, toatagolar ‘nomadic people’, tagal or tägäl, ‘a tribe, a people’. The self-designation of the Yakuts, haka or saha, has also been recorded. In 1935–59 the self-designation of the Yakuts, saha, was used as an official Russian name for the Dolgans inhabiting the Taimyr National Territory. The Dolgans themselves do not identify with the Yakuts, and they actually differ considerably from the Yak their language and their ethnic culture. The variety of self-designations reflects the ethnic history of the Dolgans, and the relatively short span this history encompasses. The name Dolgan became known outside the tribe itself only as late as the 19th century. The Dolgans inhabit an area in the southern part of the Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) National Territory, in the Khatanga and Pyassina river basins, and to a lesser extent on the Yenisey (the Dudinka district). A few dozen Dolgans live in Yakutia, on the lower reaches of the River Anabar. On the Taimyr Peninsula the Dolgans are the most numerous indigenous ethnic group.

The Dolgans are the part of the population in the Taimyr national region. At present day, the Dolgans speak a special dialect of the Yakut language. The Dolgans named themselves “dulgaan.” This is the name of one of the tribes. In the nineteenth century, it spread to all of the Dolgans. According to data from Russian sources, the territory of the contemporary Dolgans was occupied by the ancestors of the Nganasans. Groups of the Tungus origin (the Dolgans, Adzhin, Keryntuos, and Dongots) constituted later as the nucleus of the Dolgan nationality which lived at that time in the distant region from Taimyr. During the eighteenth century, the ancestors of the contemporary Dolgans moved to the northwest where they entered Yakut local settlement as separate tribes. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the process of mutual drawing nearer took place in that region. The Yakut language became predominant. In the past hunting, reindeer breeding, and fishing (in some districts) were the main occupations of the Dolgans. Not so long ago, the Dolgans lived a nomadic life. Reindeer-breeding is the main branch of farming at present. People have access to medical and general educational establishments. There are more than a dozen various kinds of their national clothing. One of the peculiarities is a rather long hem at back. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Dolgans made their clothes with some bought cloth. Men wore shirts and trousers of the Russian cut while the women wore dresses; however, they did not wear underclothes. In the summer and winter they put on woolen caftans. In frosty weather, they wore fur coats under the caftans. Their clothes were girdled with a belt embroidered with beads. A winter caftan for men looked almost like that of Evenks. At present time, the Dolgans wear ready-made clothes which they buy.

Dolgan means "people living on the middle reach of the water". The Dolgans live in the territory of Taimyr, Dolgan-Nenetsky Autonomous District, Krasnoyarsky Kray and Anabar Ulus, Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and in the vast territory from the west side of the Lower Yenisei river to the east of the Anabar river. The Dolgan's population is about 7,261 according to a census in 2002, and they are spread out between different locations. The most common language used is Yakut. The first writings in the seventeenth century were about Anabar where Dolgans have their settlements. The writings say that some marksmen groups were trekking from Mongolia to a new land on the Anabar River for the Tsar's army.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century on the Lower Anabar, there were ancestors of Avashsky Nganasans called Tavgi who migrated to the west. Under Tungus (Evenks) pressure, the ancestors were forced out of Central Yakutia. According to a famous Soviet historian, Gurvich I.S., the Yakuts pushed into the lands in the middle of the seventeenth century. There was a migration to the middle of Yenisei and Khatanga Rivers on the Taimyr Peninsula at approximately the same time. When the Russians came to Taimyr and the adjacent coastlands in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, different ethnic groups lived side by side on the severe land. With all the different groups mixing together in one area, it created the formation of a totally unique ethnic community. The different languages and life styles eventually became the primary foundation of the future Dolgan ethnic group today. The Dolgan have three tribal groups known as: the Dolgans, the Dongots, and the Edyans.

The Dolgan language is a Turkic language with 930 speakers, spoken in the Taymyr Peninsula in Russia. The speakers are known as the Dolgans. The word "Dolgan" means 'tribe living on the middle reaches of the river'. This is most likely signifying the geographical location of the Dolgan tribe. Its closest relative is Sakha.  The language is very local and restricted to a certain area and has declined in usage over the years. As of 2010 there are only about 1,050 speakers of the language. The language has expressed a few changes since the beginning of its formation, such as alphabet and phrasing terms. The issue as of recently has become the weak integration of this local language within families with mixed marriages. Instead of speaking either of the parents' local languages, the family incorporates Russian as the more dominant language to ease interfamilial and external communication. This results in children learning the language only slightly or as a second language. Over generations, the language continues to fade. Dolgan, along with its close relative Sakha (Yakut), belongs to the North Siberian subbranch of the Turkic language family. Like most other Turkic languages, Dolgan has vowel harmony, agglutinative morphology, subject-object-verb word order, and lacks grammatical gender. Dolgan is linguistically relatively close to its nearest relative Sakha (also known as Yakut), which has led researchers for a long time to account for it as a variety of the latter, cf. Dolgich's (1963: 129) statement in his well-known paper on the origin of the Dolgans: " ... долганский язык является диалектом якутского языка." ‘[ ...] the Dolgan language is a dialect of the Yakut language.’. Only in 1985 did Elizaveta I. Ubrjatova account for Dolgan as a separate language, namely in her monograph on the language of the Norilsk Dolgans.

Images

Movies