Ket people

Kets ("Кеты" in Russian) are a Siberian people who speak the Ket language. In Imperial Russia they were called "Ostyaks", without differentiating them from several other Siberian peoples. Later they became known as "Yenisey ostyaks", because they lived in the middle and lower basin of the Yenisei River in the Krasnoyarsk Krai district of Russia. [cite web
url=http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/Russia/bibl/Ket.html
title=Ket: Bibliographical guide
publisher=Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences) & Kazuto Matsumura (Univ. of Tokyo)
accessdate=2006-10-20 ] The modern Kets lived in the eastern middle areas of the river before being assimilated politically into the Russia or Siberia during the 17th through 19th centuries.cite web
last=Vajda
first=Edward G.
url=http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ea210/ket.htm
title=The Ket and Other Yeniseian Peoples
publisher=
accessdate=2007-06-29 ]

History

The Ket are thought to be the only survivors of an ancient nomadic people believed to have originally lived throughout central southern Siberia. In the 1960s the Yugh people were distinguished as a separate though similar group. Today's Kets are the descendants of the tribes of fishermen and hunters of the Yenisey taiga, who adopted some of the cultural ways of those original Ket-speaking tribes of South Siberia. The earlier tribes engaged in hunting, fishing, and even reindeer breeding in the northern areas.

The Ket were incorporated into the Russian state in the 17th century. Their efforts to resist were futile as the Russians deported them to different places to break up their resistance. This also broke up their strictly organized patriarchal social system and their way of life disintegrated. The Ket people ran up huge debts with the Russians. Some died of famine, other of diseases imported from Europe. By the 19th century the Kets could no longer survive without food support from the Russian state. [cite web
url=http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/kets.shtml
title=THE KETS
publisher=The Peoples of the Red Book
accessdate=2006-08-05 ]

In the 20th century, the Soviets forced collectivization upon the Ket. They were officially recognized as Kets in 1930s when the Soviet Union started to implement the self-definition policy with respect to indigenous peoples. However, Ket traditions continued to be suppressed and self-initiative was discouraged. Collectivization was completed by the 1950s and the Russian lifestyle and language forced upon the Ket people.

The population of Kets has been relatively stable since 1923. According to the 2002 census, there were 1494 Kets in Russia. This compares with 1200 in the 1970 census. Today the Ket live in small villages along riversides and are no longer nomadic.

Language

The Ket language has been securely linked to the Na-Dené languages of North America in the Dené-Yeniseian language family. "Ket" means "man" (plural "deng" "men, people"). The Kets of the Kas, Sym and Dubches rivers use "jugun" as a self-designation. In 1788 P.S. Pallas published the earliest observations about the Ket language in a travel diary.Fact|date=September 2008

In 1926, there were 1,428 Kets, of which 1225 (85.8%) were native speakers of the Ket language. The 1989 census counted 1,113 ethnic Kets with only 537 (48.3%) native speakers left.Today the Ket language is still spoken by about 600 of the Ket. It is entirely different from any other language in Siberia.

Culture

The Ket traditional culture was researched by Matthias Castrén, Vasiliy Ivanovich Anuchin, Kai Donner, Hans Findeisen, and Yevgeniya Alekseyevna Alekseyenko. [Hoppál 2005: 170–171] Shamanism was a living practice into the 1930s, but by the 1960s almost no authentic shamans could be found. Shamanism is not a homogeneous phenomenon, nor is shamanism in Siberia. As for shamanism among Kets, it shared characteristics with those of Turkic and Mongolic peoples.Hoppál 2005: 172] Additionally, there were several types of Ket shamans, [Alekseyenko 1978] Hoppál 2005: 171] differing in function (sacral rites, curing), power and associated animals (deer, bear). Also, among Kets (as with several other Siberian peoples such as the Karagas, [Diószegi 1960: 128, 188, 243] [Diószegi 1960: 130] [Hoppál 1994: 75] ) there are examples of the use of skeleton symbolics. Hoppál interprets this as a symbol of shamanic rebirth,Hoppál 1994: 65] although it may symbolize also the bones of the loon (the helper animal of the shaman, joining air and underwater world, just like the shaman who travelled both to the sky and the underworld as well). [Hoppál 2005: 198] The skeleton-like overlay reresented shamanic rebirth also among some other Siberian cultures. [Hoppál 2005: 199] Some authors hypothesize that the Kets may descend from the ancient Dingling of the Tashtyk culture. According to Leonid Kyzlasov, the Kets were described by Chinese imperial historians as blue-eyed and fair-haired people of Siberia, but Kyzlasov does not mention to which particular Chinese source he was referring, and thus this statement is unsubstantiated. [Leonid Kyzlasov. "Tashtyk Era" (Таштыкская эпоха). Moscow, 1953. Page 13.]

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov compared the mythology of Kets with that of Uralic peoples, assuming in the studies that they are modelling semiotic systems in the compared mythologies. They have made also typological comparisons. [Ivanov & Toporov 1973] [Ivanov 1984:390, in editorial afterword by Hoppál] Among other comparisons, possibly from Uralic mythological analogies, the mythologies of Ob-Ugric peoples [Ivanov 1984: 225, 227, 229] and Samoyedic peoples [Ivanov 1984: 229, 230] are mentioned. Other authors have discussed analogies (similar folklore motifs, purely typological considerations, and certain binary pairs in symbolics) may be related to a dualistic organization of society—some dualistic features can be found in comparisons with these peoples. [Ivanov 1984: 229–231] However, for Kets, neither dualistic organization of societyZolotaryov 1980: 39] nor cosmological dualismZolotaryov 1980: 48] has been researched thoroughly. If such features existed at all, they have either weakened or remained largely undiscovered. There are some reports on a division into two exogamous patrilinear moieties, [Zolotaryov 1980: 37] folklore on conflicts of mythological figures, and also on cooperation of two beings in the creation of the land, the motif of earth-diver. [Ivanov 1984: 229] This motif is present in several cultures in different variants. In one example, the creator of the world is helped by a water fowl as the bird dives under the water and fetches earth so that the creator can make land out of it. In some cultures, the creator and the earth-fetching being (sometimes named as devil, or taking shape of a loon) compete with one another; in other cultures (including the Ket variant), they do not compete at all but rather collaborate. [Paulson 1975 :295]

However, if dualistic cosmologies are defined in broad sense, and not restricted to certain concrete motifs, then their existence is more widespread; they exist not only among some Uralic peoples, but there are examples in each inhabited continent. [Zolotarjov 1980: 56]

ee also

*Ket language
*Yugh people
*Yeniseian languages
*List of indigenous peoples of Russia

Notes

References

*
* The book has been translated to English: cite book |last=Diószegi |first=Vilmos |title=Tracing shamans in Siberia. The story of an ethnographical research expedition |others=Translated from Hungarian by Anita Rajkay Babó |publisher=Anthropological Publications |location=Oosterhout |year=1968
* The title means “Shamans, souls and symbols”.
* The title means “Shamans in Eurasia”, the book is written in Hungarian, but it is published also in German, Estonian and Finnish. [http://www.akkrt.hu/main.php?folderID=906&pn=2&cnt=31&catID=&prodID=17202&pdetails=1 Site of publisher with short description on the book (in Hungarian)]
*
* The title means: “Language, myth, culture”, the editorial afterword means: “Languages and mythologies”.
* The title means: “Language, myth, culture”, the chapter means: “Obi-Ugric and Ket folklore contacts”.
*
* Chapter means: “The world view and the nature in the religion of the North-Siberian peoples”; title means: “The people of water fowls. Studies on lifes and cultures of the Finno-Ugric relative peoples”.

* Chapter means: “Social structure and dualistic creation myths in Siberia”; title means: “The sons of Milky Way. Studies on the belief systems of Finno-Ugric peoples”.

External links

*cite web |title=The Kets |publisher=The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire |url=http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/kets.shtml
*cite web |last=Edward J |first=Vajda |title=The Ket and Other Yeniseian Peoples |url=http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ea210/ket.htm
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ket Ethnologue on Ket]
* [http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~andreif/project/ket%20language.htm Ket Language]
* [http://lingsib.unesco.ru/en/languages/ket.shtml.htm Endangered Languages of the Indigenious Peoples of Siberia - The Ket Language]
* [http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/guest/cgi-bin/booksea.cgi?ISBN=0700712909 Yeniseian Peoples and Languages]
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6050673836854498204 The Ket People - Google Video]
* [http://www.altaica.ru/personalia/e_starostin.htm Starostin S.A.]