Presented at "Sacred/Natural Sites" Conference, sponsored by UNESCO,
Paris, September 1998.

INTRODUCTION
The Eastern Khanty
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 the Khanty have occupied West Siberia for at least 3,000 years. The great basin of the Ob'-Irtysh river system, the world's third largest, drains Western Siberia to the north. A secondary basin along the Middle Ob' is occupied by the Eastern Khanty. This basin is drained by major tributaries of the Ob': Lamin, Pim, Trom-Agan, Agan, Vakh, Yugan, and Salim. The land is subarctic, boreal forest and bog, with an elevation between 25 and 100 meters above sea level, characterized by dark conifer-birch forests along the rivers and streams which drain higher elevation bog swamps, marked by islands and strips of pine forest (for overviews of Khanty culture, see Levin and Potapov 1956, Kulemzin 1984, Kulemzin and Lukina 1992, Balzer 1994, Golovnev 1995).

Khanty social organization is based on extended families or patrilineages, with related lineages grouped into clans (Khanty: cir). Khanty continue to live in widely scattered extended family settlements at the center of their 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. Eastern Khanty economy is primarily subsistence, based on fishing, hunting and trapping. There are significant differences, however. In the north, along the lower Ob' (Kazym region) and on the northern side of the upper Ob' (Lamin, Pim, Trom-Agan Rivers), this pattern is complemented by reindeer herding. Only in the south, on the Yugan River, does the pure fishing-hunting economy remain.
Today , West Siberia is the site of one of the world's most extensive petroleum developments (Wiget and Balalaeva 1997a). Activity began in the late 1960s with the first discoveries of oil. By the late 1980s all but a few areas (Kazym River, Yugan) had been seized for production by the Ministry of Energy and the government oil monopoly, and even today the region virtually supports a collapsing national economy by providing a cheap domestic petroleum supply and petrodollars generated from export. However it may be regarded elsewhere, the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is fair to say, has been devastating, socially, culturally, economically and ecologically for the Khanty and their land (Wiget and Balalaeva 1997c; Wiget and Balalaeva 1998a)). Production was turned over to regional oil companies, each driven by a sense of quick profits and minimal regard for the environment or the indigenous Khanty. After 3,000 years of occupancy, there are today virtually no traditional Khanty family settlements on Vakh, Agan, Salim and Vas-Yugan Rivers though these were all well-populated areas, rich in terms of traditional economy, only twenty years ago. Other river systems like Pim and Trom-Agan are very heavily impacted and the Khanty marginalized. Only the Khanty families on Lamin and Yugan River systems have been minimally impacted.

The Khanty Sacred Trust and Land-Use Atlas Projects and the Proposed Yuganskii Khanty Biosphere Reservehe
We began to work proactively in the region in 1992 on several projects funded by The MacArthur Foundation. The aim of the SACRED TRUST Project was to develop the basic data needed to support any plan for preserving Khanty sacred places and guaranteeing access to them. The Sacred Trust project was subsequently expanded and incorporated into The Khanty Traditional Land-Use Atlas Project, a two-year, international collaborative research project including colleagues from Urals State University. The Khanty Traditional Land Use Atlas will identify: traditional and contemporary settlements, both individual extended family settlements and villages; individual family hunting territories; places of cultural significance, including cultic sites, sites with mythical associations, traditional cemeteries; archaeological sites; other land-use features, such as reindeer trails, communal hunting lands, fishing, hunting, gathering and pasturing areas and so on. All data will be compiled into a computerized database and integrated with a GIS computerized mapping program (Wiget et al., Ocherki, forthcoming). These projects became both more focused and more urgent when the leadership of the Yuganskii Khanty community chose to integrate our work into their plans to create Yuganskii Khanty Biosphere Reserve, which, according to the proposal, would link under a co-management agreement the existing Yuganskii Federal Nature Preserve with the surrounding territory of traditional living of the Yuganskii Khanty. With stiff opposition from the oil interests, the Khanty are seeking international support and working UNESCO recognition for this proposed biosphere reserve (Wiget and Balalaeva 1997b).

NATURAL SACRED PLACES: THE KHANTY DOMAIN
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. These lineage deities are the seven sons of the high god, each a patron of a major tributary of the Ob=. Roughly speaking, the principal deities are responsible for cosmological-level events, their first generation offspring for the watersheds of the major tributaries, and the second-generation offspring for individual family lands along each watershed. Traditional Khanty thus believe that sacred power has been historically invested in both the landscape and the lineage.

A scientific classification of Eastern Khanty sacred places has not yet been developed. Our more modest task has been to formulate a working typology, based on our field materials from six years of extensive ethnographic work, the work of folklore-ethnographic expeditions to the Kazym region by expeditions from Urals State University, and a review of the ethnographic literature (Balalaeva 1998, forthcoming). On this basis we can distinguish two main categories of sacred places: (1) unmodified features of the natural landscape, and (2) landscape features modified by the addition of cultural elements. It is this first category of natural sacred places that concerns us here. Eastern Khanty natural sacred places can be classified according to their basic elements into two groups, water features and landforms.

Waterforms
The first category includes a variety of phenomena connected with water: lakes, swamps, small rivers, ponds, whirlpools, confluences, rapids, and turns in the river. Khanty believe that they depend on the spirits living in these places for luck in fishing and good fortune generally, and try to make the spirits more benificent by throwing offerings of money or dried bread into the water. The size and nature of the offering is different in each case, and the importance of the offering also depends on the reasons for making the offering.
Large natural objects in this category are lakes, rivers and swamps. The name of the sacred water reserves can directly indicate the nature of these places. Such name can include lexemes such as yimyng, which means sacred, for example, Yimyng Maling, Sacred Lake, which is situated in Kazym basin not far from the mouth of the river, Yim Vosh Yuhan. According to the views of Mosyam Khanty, the waters of this lake have curative powers (Dmitrieva 53). A similar toponym also exists in the basin of Trom-Agan River, Yiming Tlor, which also means sacred lake. The territory of this lake was developed in the last decade by regional oil companies and the lake now has wellsites on it , which insults the religious feelings of the local population (Sopochin 1995). In the Kazym River basin, there is the Lake Sasi Tlor, which means Grandmother's Lake, a sacred place of Mozyamskii Khanty. The name is connected with the mistress of this place, Mosang Imi, or Grandmother, sister of the goddes Kazym Imi (Dmitrieva 61).
On the Yugan River, Lake Larlumkina is considered to be sacred. According to myth, warrior gods had a fight above this lake. When the local god was wounded, he flew up into the sky, transformed into thunder and became Chuv Iki. The reindeer drawing the sled of this god dived into the water during the fight, and now they are there, underneath the lake, two reindeer bulls. When the fishermen set the nets, sometimes the nets are are stuck, and the fishermen say that the nets are stuck on the antlers of these reindeer. It is tabooed to cross this lake; one must make a circle along the shore (Kurlumkin 1995). The belief that spirits of different kinds live in these lakes in widespread. In the basins of rivers Kazym, Vakh and Yugan there are sacred lakes where, according to local beliefs, there live water spirits which look like very big pike with horns.
The second subgroup of sacred water features are rivers of various sizes examples of which are everywhere in the Khanty cultural area. Yeming Yohan, Sacred river, which is situated above Kazym-sor, opposite the mouth of the channel Dry Kazym, and according to Kazym Khanty, people, both today and in the past, go there to make shamanic rituals (Dmitrieva 73). In the Yugan basin, for instance, there is the sacred place called Zolotaya Rechka or Golden River, tributary of M. Yugan, known in Khanty as Ewt Yewt Pisap (Kaimysov 1996). Passing this place for the first time in a year, people throw money in the water. Women are prohibited to go onto the shore there.
In the basin of Pim river is the sacred place, Var-Yaoun, which is a tabooed river because local Khanty believe a malevolent god lives there. It is prohibited to live on this river or even to stop for a night while travelling there, otherwise something bad will surely happen. When Khanty from other areas come there to hunt, they hang an offering of material near the river. In the Agan basin is a creek called Hlung Uri, which means Spirit Uri, located near Lake Sys Lor. The toponymic legend connected with this sacred place tells us that A Frog Goddess was going along Agan. She saw that the river didn't flow; it was all dried. She headed down the stream. Eventually these bad spirits, or they might be good as well, barricaded or blocked the Agan. She learned who did this, tore apart the barrier for good. It might have been a fish weir. They probably had good fishing. She chased these spirits all away. Some of them jumped into the lake yelling Sys, sys, sys. The others who jumped into the uri yelled., Hlung It, Sacred Uri. (V. Sopachina 1994)
Finally, we have placed swamps into this subgroup, although swamps can also include some other nature elements. For instance, on Kazym there are several sacred swamps among which is Von Kal, which means Big Swamp. This is a sacred place for Mozyam Khanty connected with the two main Mozyam Hlungs (Spirits), Great Hlung and Lesser Hlung. They tell that each of them wears A a white hat made of fur, white as snow, as ice. He doesn't take off this hat all year (Dmitrieva 56).
The subgroup of smaller water features includes ponds, as well as whirpools, rapids, turns and confluences of rivers. In the upper part of M. Yugan River, above Achimovy, there is also a whirlpool which is connected with mythological legends of Tondor Iki, the main deity of this river. According to local beliefs, one should throw two or three pieces of dried bread into this whirlpool. "If one does not throw the dried bread, this god, this Tondor Iki, won't like it and he might punish you" (Kolsomov 1996). Near this place on M. Yugan there is a bend in the river named Tlor Voyak Hlung, where according to legend a warrior named Loon was wounded. The place is considered to be sacred. The legend says: "The gods were fighting among each other at this place where the river makes a sharp turn. One of them dived to escape his enemy, and appeared {further] only in the swamp to get air. The second god [who also dived] sent ducks to the surface to breathe for him" (Kolsomov 1996).

Landforms
The second major category of natural sacred places comprises landforms. Most prominent here are high places which include hillocks, hills, ridges, and very high hills. Another subgroup consists of promontories and islands, a group including higher, dry places in swamps. A third, smaller group consists of groves, mostly birch, small patches of forest. A fourth group consists of individual sacred trees of unusual shape or rare types and individual stones, also with unusual size or shape.
High places in the Ob' Basin are relatively rare. This singularity and the dominating character of such formations naturally predispose the sacralization of these objects. Almost all the distinguished high places have sacred status and accordingly ritual and mythological significance. On the rivers Yugan, Trom-Agan and Pim, sacred high places are most often called kot myx, meaning "earth house." A kot myx is a god's house. On Trom-Agan, above the mouth of its tributary, Ai-Trom-Agan, there is a sacred place for all Ob'Khanty, a hill called Torom Yaoun Kot Myx. Offerings are brought here regular at the beginning of seasonal activities and sporadically for other reasons. On the top of this hill is a high, distinguished pine tree on which Khanty hang pieces of fabric. Trom-Aganskii Khanty say that the mountain with the pine tree is nothing else than the house with the chimney pipe. There is a custom according to which newly married Khanty come to this place to pray and make offering at the beginning of their married life. Women are prohibited to go on top. In this case, the husband climbs to the top to make the offering and the new wife stays in the boat by the shore. Also usually it is tabooed to remove something from a kot myx (Sopochin 1995).

There is a whole group of memorates concerning people who violated this taboo, for example, by breaking a branch of a tree on a kot myx, with the result that the offender's arm withered or he died. The owner of a kot myx could be not only one of the river patron dieties, venerated by the whole community, but also a family spirit. Thus on Kanterov family land in the Pim river basin there is sacred Ochet Vut Mutikh Kot Myx. This is a Kanterov sacred place where their family hlung (spirit) lives. Women of this family take wood from this place for the images they make of their personal protecting spirits (Kanterov 1996).
Kot Myx are a particularly threatened group of sacred sites. In the lower part of B. Yugan, it is said, there was a sacred place for all Ob' Khanty mentioned long ago by Dunin-Gorkavitch (II: 150), Yegutskaya [Evutskaya] Gora. Khanty from different places came here to make offerings. In the Seventies this sacred mountain was within a territory of oil development and almost leveled, but there are still stories devoted to this mountain in local oral tradition. On Trom Agan a high place dedicated to Yaoun Imi, the Old Woman of the River, was destroyed entirely. Now only a large hole in the ground exists where once a hill stood (Sopochin 1995). This is because these hills are made entirely of sand which is dug up to provide the material for the raised roadbed constructed throughout Western Siberia.
The second subgroup of sacred places includes such landforms as islands and promontories. Kulemzin reports that Vas-Yugan Khanty worship the promontory, Pyay Imi (Old Woman), located in the Lake Tukh-Emtor, and brought her offerings there. The sacred legend about the origins of this promontory is probably a fragment of ancient cosmogonic myth: "One family, the head of which was Old Woman, decided to go down Ob' and get to Vas-Yugan. They say they never found Vas-Yugan, but they got on Nyurolka river, and began to go up the river Tukh-Sigeh, which goes to Nyurolka and stream out of Lake Tukh-Emtor. A famine began. There was a custom there: if there was nothing to kill, one should bring a gift. On one promontory on Tukh-Sigeh, an old woman sacrificed as a gift one of her sons, killed him and left him in the forest under a cedar. She gave him as a gift to the promontory." ( Kulemzin and Lukina 1973: 24)
A third subgroup includes sacred groves and strips ( Russ., bory) of forest. Some groves, for instance, birch groves, Kulemzin writes, were worshipped like protectors of settlements, and the people should follow a number of rules in such groves. In these groves are special places which serve as protectors of individual families. According to the reports of early ethnographers such as Castren and Karjalainen, one could often see wooden images or faces of protective spirits carved on trees. These images were destroyed everywhere during the involuntary baptizing in the 18th century, in the Thirties of the present century as part of the Soviet atheism campaign, and also in the last two decades as part of the process of oil development, when acts of vandalism take place. Sacred bory can be found in the basin of r. Kazym. One such place is situated on the lrft bank of river Kazym below the mouth of Xul-lorskaya protoko, Sopir Neh Angkhim, which means Sopir the Ravine-Forest Woman. This is a beautiful place with hills with an unmixed pine forest on them. Here also is a sacred pine tree which only men are permitted to come to. This yar (ravine-forest) is marked by legend. According to local belief, a forest woman lives there. Some say one leg of this woman is human, the other a moose leg; in other variants, both legs are moose, or one is moose, one is bear. This person is surrounded by a cycle of living oral tradition, which includes not only narratives but songs performed by Khanty during sacrifices. In one of these variants, it is said that the forest woman met a hunter. She asked him to marry her, promised hunting luck, proposed a whole box of clothes, but he refused. Then she prophesied misfortune for him, and misfortune came (Dmitrieva 38).
Finally, individual trees and stones are also considered to be sacred, "visible images of the spirit owners"( Kulemzin Znakomtes 98). In the materials we have collected, most often sacred trees are pines or larches. For instance, in the upper part of M. Yugan, between the uppermost part of the river and the tributary Kol Kuchin Yagun, near the swamp there is a tree without branches and with a pine cone on its top. It is a sacred pine tree, called Tondor Iki Vyaekh, which means "Stick of the God Tondor Iki"(Kolsomov 1996) In Kazym region, there are a number of examples of sacred trees that are worshipped. On the left bank of the river Voch Pai Yuhan, there is a sacred larch, with the carved image of the god Nyangk Vongkhip Iki [The Old Man Carved on the Larch]. This tree is situated near the road, and formerly, when they passed by this place with their reindeer, they stopped and prayed: "This god helps us to shoot well during the hunting" (Dmitrieva 66). Another example is Saxil Yukh [Russ., talnik, var], near village Rezany, on the right bank of the Ob', a large tree covered with moss, which looks as if it is dressed in a winter fur parka. Nothing near this tree can be touched. (Dmitreiva 76)
The stone cult is widespread throughout Siberia and the Far North and considered to be one of the most ancient forms of religion. A number of examples can be met in the region of the B. Yugan. For example, on the upper part of M. Yugan, there is a sacred stone in the water near the shore, the shape of which reminds Khanty of the head of a bear. Near this stone there always stand "skis with heels", that is, traditional Khanty skis [pokh zhon imeyish]. This stone is oiled with fish grease as a sacrifice to the spirit. They say that the head of Pupi [bear] is above the water, and the spirit himself, dressed in the clothes is under the water (Kolsomov 1996). Another sacred stone is situated in the middle of M. Yugan River near Kinyamino. This is the spirit Kon Pal Iki. The stone is very big, about a meter and a half long. "If somebody doesn't know its there, he can hit it with the motor or something else. When the water is low, it sticks out. They throw coins into the water at this place" (Kolsomov 1996). Pimskii Khanty from Kanterov family told us that in the uppermost parts of Pim and Kazym, there is a sacred stone having the shape of a 4-cornered table. "Kazym Imi left it for Pimskii and Trom-Aganskii people who can't come to her own place, so that they could leave there fabric for her or cut a reindeer." The sacred stone is called Kazym Imi Pesan (Kazym Imi's Table) (Kanterov 1996)
Lastly, we should mention tabooed places. For instance, there is a sacred complex on Kazym with the name, Piltyng Kal. In this swamp there are "high hills, like chums, seven high hills, where according to legend live seven deities called Piltyng Kal Yokh, or Piltyng Kal Iket. They are worshipped by Amninskiye Khanty. It is tabooed to go to this sacred place. Offerings and sacrifices were made on the left bank of the Amni River in the forest. They have made a labas for the deities and dressed the wooden images there in white robes" (Dmitreiva 46). There is also data that the upper part of r. Lamin is also a sacred place where people could neither live nor hunt (V. Sopochina 1994). Khanty ethnographer, Agrafena Sopochina (Pesikova 1995) thinks that the basic function these tabooed territories was to provide a haven for the reproduction of game animals. This is why from ancient times these territories were considered taboo. Nobody could disturb animals or plants there.

THE PROBLEMATICS OF CREATING TYPOLOGIES OF NATURAL SACRED PLACES FOR REGIMES OF LEGAL PROTECTION
The preservation of sacred places is one of the keys to insuring cultural survival. However, achieving this goal requires overcoming not only the acknowledged variety of difficult sociopolitical problems, but also some very important theoretical and methodological ones. On the one hand, the development of national or international regimes of legal protection requires generalized categories of sites which can accomodate the dynamic character of tradition. On the other, generalized categories have the potential for missing the site-specific or culture-specific features of a place from which its sacred character derives. One solution might be to generate simple lists or registers of identified sacred places, but such lists require some generalized principles to justify the inclusion of places in the register. They also lack the ability to guide planners in terms of what to take into account in the development process, and tend to be generated by the development projects that disclose the existence of sacred places at the last minute. This tension between generalized (emic) typologies and culture-specific (etic) typologies is especially felt in developing protection regimes for natural sacred places of indigenous peoples. Our concerns focus on three main areas of confusion.

Problems of Form
It is typical to identify natural sacred sites according to particular elements of landscape. For the Khanty, these would include: lakes, rivers, swamps, uris, whirlpools, rapids, turns and confluences of rivers, hills, ravines, islands, promontories, sacred groves, individual sacred trees and stones. Two difficulties emerge with such a simple strategy: the problems of Complexity and Scale.

Complexity
Such a simple model of identification does not take into consideration that natural sacred places may often be composed of several natural elements. On the Yugan, Pim and Kazym rivers, for example, the majority of sacred swamps include different kinds of high places: hillocks (R., bugor,), ridges (R., gryady), "islands" (R., ostrov), or isolated trees, although there are several examples that indicate that simply swamps themselves can have special status. Sometimes different toponyms point to the same place. Iming Soyem (Sacred Creek) is located in the Trom-Agan basin near Jubilenie village, is also called by local people call this place Svetoe Ovrag, Sacred Ravine. The problem is even further complicated when one considers that such natural sacred elements may also include cultural elements, such as contructions to house the spirits. The region of Lake Larlumkina on Yugan river is considered in its combination of several natural and cultural elements: the lake itself and high places near the lake shore, as well as a three shrines, a cemetery and two archaeological sites. One very knowledgeable Khant suggested that the entire basin of the Pim River is considered by many to be sacred (Pesikova 1995).

Scale
The complexity of such forms raises the question of what exactly should be protected in a site-based regime of legal protection. This is a matter of both Area and Access. Area questions have to do with establishing boundaries of sites to be protected; in very large areas, like Larlumkina, this may involve developing zonation strategies. Access questions are raised by the scale of a site as well as its function: Does access require a special route to the site that should be incorporated into a protection plan? Do the functions need to be protected from observers?

Problems of Function
We found it very difficult to strictly categorize sites according to their presumed function. When a place is referred to as sacred, what attributes of it are actually being pointed out. Our experience with the Siberian Khanty, as well as with American Indians (see Kelley and Francis 1994), suggests that a place is typically referred to as sacred because of its association with religious belief (myth) and/or cultic practice. Yet even these terms acquire a certain flexibility as tradition begins to shape itself out of the seeds of an origin long since lost to cultural memory.

Cultic Functions
Because of the high visibility of and anthropology's bias towards cultic activity, sites associated with offerings, sacrifices or other forms of cultic behavior are often foregrounded in typological systems, in a manner parallel to the foregrounding of sites marked by constructions as opposed to sacred natural features. This poses several problems, not the least of which is the fact that the sacredness of cultic sites may be reconfigured. Cultic practices may persist even after any memory of the mythic event or association which focused attention on the place has been lost. We have contemporary data that the religious power that once energized recently destroyed sacred places can be communicated to newly revealed sacred places, or, simply, new sacred places, hitherto unknown, may be revealed to the community through dreaming or other culturally-sanctioned channels (Kantirov 1996). These places have no mythic associations.

Mnemonic-Iconic Function
As American anthropologist Keith Basso has demonstrated, the association of place with myth and legend often gives sites a substantive mnemonic function as a culture's beliefs, values and normative practices are mapped onto a landscape filled with stories. For example, on B. Yugan, below Talakhova village near Kykalova, there is a sacred whirlpool which is marked by the following legend. "When people came and began to travel along the Yugan, and the [god's] wife was probably very ill-natured. She began to confuse people in order to delay them. Later, the grassy bank there, when it dried entirely [after the water lowered later in summer] became like stone. Her husband became angry and kicked her. Below this place appeared a deep, deep whirlpool. 'If you don't want to look at people, then you should live in a deep whirlpool,' [so the husband addressed the wife]"(Kurlumkin 1996). It is important to understand that even if no cultic practice emerges from this association, the association is functional in the strictest sense. Nevertheless, there is as much flexibility with this mnemonic-iconic function as with the cultic function. Religious belief can be enlarged from a mythic association to include associations with legend. An archaeological site, Vosh Vort Pai, on the upper M. Yugan is considered sacred because of its legendary, quasi-mythic associations: To this place sand had been brought to create an island in the middle of the swamp on which a fortress had been built of large, palisaded logs. Other logs were dragged up the slope and stacked for defense; when the enemy attacked, the logs were released to roll down upon them. According to legend, people known as Arex Yakh, The People Sung About, lived there: "The people were about three meters tall. What was strange about them was that they had no navels. These warrior giants'names were Nyomyl and Toruk" (Kaimysov 1996). Interestingly, other texts we recorded from different sources (Kanterov 1996) say that the gods had no navels.
While many countries have a regime of legal protection for cultic places categorized as places of religious worship as well as a regime of legal protection for places with a mnemonic-iconic function categorized as places of cultural significance, it is unclear whether the legal systems of most countries comprehend the ambiguity in and linkage between these categories from an indigenous perspective. The result is a scattershot pattern of protection that focuses on some sites highly-marked by Western standards, while overlooking the broad and complex network of functionality that links these more visible sites with the other, less-visible ones

Problems of Participation
The complex relationship between social structure and indigenous religious belief and practice is also a cause for confusion. We have identified over 150 sacred sites in the Middle Ob' region, but the fractions of the population who participate, through knowledge, belief or practice, in the traditions associated with these sites varies considerable and poses problems not only for developing both typologies and regimes of legal protection.
Khanty social organization is based on extended families or lineages, with related lineages grouped into clans (Khanty: cir ). While the present settlement pattern has been influenced by migration and forced relocation within the Middle Ob' region, evidence from our own fieldwork and the ethnographic record indicates 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 (Pupi [bear] cir: B. Yugan River; makh [beaver] cir: Malyi Yugan River). Most Khanty extended families live on traditional family hunting territories, protected by family gods who are considered offspring of the lineage's founding deities. These lineage deities are the seven sons of the high god, each a patron of a major tributary of the Ob' Roughly speaking, the principal deities are responsible for cosmological-level events, their first generation offspring for the watersheds of the major tributaries, and the second generation offspring for individual family lands along each watershed. Traditional Khanty thus believe that sacred power has been historically invested in both the landscape and the lineage.
This, however, creates a apparent problematic hierarchy of interest. Khanty do distinguish between obsche (community) sites, clan sites and family sites. Nevertheless, because each category is embedded in the one above it, all, even a particular extended family's sacred place, have a bearing on the success and prosperity of the Khanty. Consequently, it would be incorrect to view community-wide sites as somehow more significant than the sacred places of individual, extended families.

CONCLUSION
Just as Khanty oral tradition shapes the concept of the surrounding landscape, so the same tradition models the Khanty concept about themselves. Our work demonstrates how two basic resources of ethnocultural semiotics, language and land, are used by a people for establishing the norms of social behavior and moral values reinforcing these norms. To ignore this complex relationship means to deprive a people of their cultural niche, their surrounding world constructed in their own perspectives of time and space. Protecting the cultural landscape that forms the basis for national self-consciousness for an indigenous people will be immensely difficult, and for many, like the Khanty, time is quickly running out.

REFERENCES
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