13 janvier 2015: Itelmen Resistance and Religiosity in the Flux of Russian and Soviet History, by David Koester

David Koester (University of Alaska Fairbanks, Visiting Senior Researcher at GSRL, UMR 8582 CNRS/EPHE)

Indigenous Itelmen people of Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East first encountered Russian Orthodoxy around 1705.  Very early on they recognized the close relationship between the Church and the power dynamics of the colonizers who had arrived in their homeland. 

As they began to accept Christianity in their lives and ritual routines, Itelmen ideas about the origins of the world, ethical relations and the afterlife variously submerged and reemerged in “ethnographic” accounts of Itelmen life and worldview.  This presentation describes an attempt to use Russian historical sources and Itelmen oral narratives to reconstruct Itelmen perspectives on religion and on Russian Orthodoxy in particular.  The introduction of the ideas of 'religion' and  'god' is discussed both from a comparative perspective on mission encounters and in terms of specific historical consequences such as the “Kutkh rebellion” of 1848 (Kutkh = 'raven god').  Itelmen religiosity in the Soviet period and immediate aftermath is presented on the basis of conversations with elders.  The presentation is based on research done in collaboration with Itelmen scholars Viktoria Petrasheva and Tatiana Degai.  

Séminaire Religions de l'Asie septentrionale et de l'Arctique, EPHE
Les mardis de 11h à 13h.
Bâtiment Le France, salle 124, 190 avenue de France Paris 13e.