Lena and Nadia Kurlumkin of B. Yugan River
The Khanty, called Ostyak in the Russian ethnographic literature, are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people numbering approximately 22,000, and one of the most numerous and widely-dispersed of the 26 indigenous tribal peoples of Russia. Archaeological evidence indicates that they have occupied West Siberia for at least 5,000 years; linguistic data indicates that this region is part of the Priuralic homeland of the proto-Uralic peoples, who include not only tribal peoples like the Khanty, Mansi and Nenets, but also Finns and Hungarians. During the past five millennia the Khanty have adapted themselves to significant climactic changes and to historical influences from Bronze Age Indo-Iranians, medieval Tartars, and, from the end of the sixteenth century, Russians.
The 1989 census listed approximately 31,000 Ob'-Ugrians living in this Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug (Map 1, both Mansi (8,461) and Khanty (22,521). Three Khanty groups -- Northern, Southern and Eastern -- can be distinguished by differences in dialect, subsistence patterns and material culture . The land is subarctic, boreal forest and bog, with an elevation between 25 and 100 meters above sea level. The great basin of the Ob'-Irtysh river system, the world's third largest, drains to the north, and is the result of a subsidence of land that created a huge sea east of the Urals during the Quaternary Period bring Arctic waters south beyond the Upper Ob'.
Subsequent glaciation left behind two terminal moraines that run east to west on either side of the upper Ob' and create a secondary basin drained by the above-named tributaries and occupied by the Eastern Khanty. Northern Khanty live in the Beloyarsk and Obdorsk regions. The Southern Khanty were virtually incorporated into Russian society by the middle of this century and no longer live a traditional life style.
Traditionally, the Khanty did not live in villages but in widely scattered extended family settlements, where they continue to avail themselves of traditional family hunting territories.
Many are literate in Russian and some fluently bilingual, but prefer to speak Khanty. And despite the efforts of the Orthodox Church, which in some areas has gained converts of varying degrees of allegiance, and despite the suppression of native religion under the Soviets, traditional belief and ritual still flourish. The economies of all three Khanty dialect groups have a strong fishing base, with a second layer of hunting and trapping.
There are significant differences, however, between the three (Maps 2 and 3). In the north, along the lower Ob' and on the northern side of the upper Ob' (Lamin, Pim, Trom-Agan Rivers), this pattern is complemented by reindeer herding.
In the south, along Irtysh, this pattern was historically complemented by agriculture. Only on the south side of the upper Ob' (Bol. Yugan River) does the pure fishing-hunting economy remain. Their diet is supplemented by store bought flour for bread, tea and sugar.
They make nearly everything they use including their home, small boats, winter clothes, and containers.
Khanty social organization is based on extended families or patrilineages, with related lineages grouped into clans (Khanty: cir ). The present settlement pattern has been influenced by migration and forced relocation within the Middle Ob' region, but there is evidence from the proposer's own fieldwork and the ethnographic record that different Khanty clans even today claim traditional use rights to different river systems tributary to the Ob', in part because they believe their lineage was founded by divine ancestors who were also responsible for the creation of the river systems on which the majority of the clan lives. Most Khanty extended families live on traditional family hunting territories, protected by family gods who are considered offspring of the lineage's founding deities. Khanty thus believe that sacred power has been historically invested in both the landscape and the lineage.
