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Victoria GOLBTSEVA
Chief Engineer, North-East Complex Research Institute,
Russian Academy of Sciences (Far East Branch)
(Anadyr, Russian Federation)
Role of Modern Technology
in Preserving Linguistic and Cultural Diversity
of Indigenous Chukchi Peninsula Communities
According to a 2003 census, 14,600 of the Chukchi Peninsula’s inhabitants
are representatives of small indigenous peoples, such as the Chukchi, Koryaks,
Eskimo, Chuvans, Evens, Evenki, and the Yukaghirs. Younger generations in
such communities are facing the challenge of preserving the cultural heritage
and linguistic diversity of their ancestors.
With every passing day, the local indigenous communities have fewer
elders who could pass on their impeccable command of the language, their
expertise in reindeer breeding, sealife hunting, medicinal herbs’ application,
and in traditional dressmaking, as well as their knowledge of folklore,
rituals, traditional dance and festivals and, importantly, that of the history of
their ethnicity and its most outstanding representatives.
What should be done to preserve all that wealth and to hand it down to
posterity
This problem wasn’t addressed in earnest until the late 20th century, when
the Russian ethnographers V. Leontyev and I. Krupnik embaked on a quest
for possible solutions. They collected stories from indigenous sea hunters of the
Bering Strait and had them published.
Then the Programme for the Preservation of Cultural and Linguistic
Diversity of the Eskimo and Chukchi came along, as an unforced result of
collaborative efforts between these two renowned experts and the authors of
this report. With no official status, this programme is being run as kind of a
public movement, which engages relatives and fellow community members of
V. Golbtseva and V. Nuvano and representatives of other ethnic
communities. Also involved are research fellows from the following institutions:
• Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History
(Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.);
• Regional natural and ethnic park Beringia (Providence, Chukchi
Peninsula, Russia);