The map that Ziniada showed me yesterday got me thinking. I have long known that the Evenki territory was large in Siberia. It is easy enough to say that they were the predominant people in northern Siberia for a long time.
I have also known for quite some time that the Sakha are relative new comers to Siberia. They are a Turkic people by descent, related to the Kirgiz, Kazakh, Altai, Khakass and Tuvans. The Turkic homeland is somewhere in central Asia.
The Sakha arrived in Siberia to their present location some 700 years ago. When you consider that there is easy evidence of human presence 7,000 years ago, and that the migrations to North America happened some 13,000 years ago, then 700 years pales into insignificance. The Sakha only beat the Russians to Siberia by 300 years.
Even in the 1600s the Evenki territory was very large, much larger than it is now. The Sakha territory was actually quite small compared to the present day. It was a pocket around the present day capital of Yakutsk. It was a pocket surrounded by the vast mass of Evenki population. I would love to see some population estimates from back then.
Ethnicity is an extremely complex topic. People groups often mix when they come into contact with other people groups. Various ethinicities also have their distinct cultural personalities.
I have also long known that the Sakha assimilated many of the peoples around them. I had to a point assumed that happened when they first arrived back in the 1300s. I now need to rethink this and research it further. It appears that the assimilation has been a long and slow process. There is a people group called the Yukaghir in the far north east of Siberia. They number around 1,000 people and speak an ancient language that is not related to any other in the world. They still had a large territory back in the 1600s.
We have met a few people who appear to be Sakha. They speak Sakha, all the other Sakha people view them as Sakha. Other ethnicities in the Sakha Republic are often ignored or misunderstood by Sakha people. But the flip side of this, is that these students we have met, who tell us they are Evenki, are also happy to be identified as Sakha.
So the questions begin to pile up.
How did the process of assimilation occur?
How many of the present day Sakha are actually descended from Evenki, Eveny, Yukaghir and other peoples?
How else would their population have grown so much larger than the other Siberian peoples around them?
As we have got to know Sakha people, we have realised that even though they come from the south, they are a very northern people. Their sporting event that they claim as their own "maswrestling" is actually also played by many other northern peoples including the Nenets, Evenki and Inuit. The Sakha did not invent or bring this sport with them, they picked it up from either contact with other northern peoples or by assimilation.
At the recent inter-ethnic sporting event in May, the Sakha presented the sport of maswrestling to the other nations present. Before each contest begins they count down from three in Sakha. Some of the competitors present, I think Chechens complained that this was being done in Sakha and insisted they count in Russian instead. The Sakha flatly refused and stated that this was their national sport and so they would do it in their national language. This is typical of the confidence that Sakha people show in their own ethnicity. They are very involved in the politics of their reublic. This confidence that they exude probably has something to do with their ability to assimilate,
This of course can still be a problem for minority peoples in their midst. It would be good if they allowed multi-ethnicity and multi-lingualism to occur.
The riddle extends further. I looked up Sakha on the iphone on my slow Beeline internet. At the top is a list of population of Sakha in various countries, information that I have by passed previously. There are 450,000 Sakha in Russia (I knew this) but what I had never taken note of is the numbers outside Russia. There are up to 200,000 Sakha people outside Russia who have left in recent generations. In the USA there are up to 40,000 Sakha who were born in Russia. This is a staggering figure. On top of this there are a further 60-70,000 people of Sakha descent living in the USA.
Some of the riddle can be solved from the Russian settlement of Alaska in the 1800s. But what of the 18,000 Sakha people living in Australia today? I had never realised this previously. I have never met a Sakha person in Australia before. My curiosity is very much piqued. Where do they live there? Why have never met one before? These riddles can not remain unsolved!
I had already begun the see the Lord's hand on us calling us to the Sakha people. It is now beginning to make more sense. They are a northern people, we have both always been more drawn to the northern peoples. Their identity is tied up with the Evenki and other northern peoples.
I can see I have a lot more research to do. We have a lot more questions to ask of people. We need to find Sakha (Yakut) people in Australia, Canada, USA etc too. Would you like to take up this assignment and help us? You can help solve the jigsaw puzzle, and my bet is that some of the 200,000+ diaspora are believers and need to be called here to reach the Siberian peoples.
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