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| Alona, showing us around the museum and explaining the artefacts to us. |
Alona works at the Baykit Museum. In fact she is taking a course in museology through Ulan Ude University. The museum is basically one room (yes, a fair bit smaller than the Turukhansk museum).
The sections, were:
1) Prehistoric artifacts from the local region. Tools from 7000 years ago have been discovered in Baykit. The first is an arrow, the second is a knife.
2) Evenki, Ket and Nenets artifacts from the period before Russian arrival and during the Russian empire. Evenki people had metal work before Russians arrived. Alona commented that beads came to the Evenki from the Chinese. I asked when this might have been. Apparently the answer is unknown. I commented that there are records in ancient Chinese annals about Siberian peoples, but that the Chinese have not cared to analyse these in modern times or tonshare this knowledge with the wider world. The answer is hiding in ancient Chinese records that no one has easy access to.
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a. A mock chum with artefacts in it. b. A bag that is harnessed to the side of the reindeer for traveling. c. saddles
d. Cooking utensils made of birch bark. e. Earlier cooking utensils. f. Boots, notice the bead art. g. Reindeer fur art.
h. A bag, notice the bead art. i. a coat. j. Nenets toys, made with bones. k. Khakas (some of whom migrated to Baikit in Soviet times) toys. l. Not a pre-Russian artefact. This coin is from 1791, and was probably used in trade with Evenki. They saw money as worthless however.
3) Artifacts and stories from the twentieth century when Russians settled in amongst the Evenki and made the Evenki settle in villages.
4) Animals from the region. The national symbol of Evenkiya is a bird called the "gagara" in Russian, which translates as "loon". The loon is an important Canadian symbol. We have not yet been able to determine if this the same bird. It is taboo to kill this bird, and would be considered offensive to have a stuffed one in the museum. Google images await when we have proper Internet.
5) A separate room dedicated to local people from the region who fought in the Great Patriotic War (World War II).
After the Museum we went to the Baykit "Club." What pray tell is a club? Well it's a multi purpose building. It has a hall with a stage. Discos get held there (I guess this qualifies as the local night club). Many other cultural activities occur there. The library is in the same building.
Yura and Alona took us to the office upstairs. A lady I had previously met works there. This lady, Ekaterina showed us a bunch of Evenki resources. She ended up gifting us with quite a few books and newspaper-magazines. We didn't want to take too much. One of the most interesting gifts is an audio recording of Evenki heroic folk tales. This would make an excellent resource for linguistic and cultural study. There is one small hitch- it is on an LP vinyl record (from 1990). I think our local library in Akademgorodok can play records, so we agreed to receive the gift. I hope we find a way to transfer the recording to digital safety. (Are you reading this Tim? :) )
It was at the library that we found out about the film. It turns out that Yura and Alona have a copy. So I have already watched the film once. I will be happy to watch it a second time with Melody.
2 comments:
from my quick, curious look, it appears there are five species of Loon. Three seem to be in both Russia and North America, while the Arctic Loon is only in Russia, and it seems the Common Loon (on the Canadian dollar coin) is only in Canada. I stand to be corrected as this was a quick read. Interesting looking bird though!
I still wonder if the Loon here has a song that is similar to the Loon in Canada.
Did you find a sound bite of a loon singing?
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