The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia |
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The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia
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by Anna Reid
Sales Rank: 79267
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List Price: $13.00
$10.40
At Amazon
on 6-21-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 224 pages
Published by: Walker & Company September 1, 2003
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0802776760
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0802776761
Book Dimensions:
8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
Weighs: 12 ounces
Susan Salter Reynolds, The Los Angeles Times
What a journey.
Product Description
The fascinating history of an unknown people
A vivid mixture of history and reporting, The Shaman’s Coat tells the story of some of the world’s least-known peoples—the indigenous tribes of Siberia. Russia’s equivalent to the Native Americans or Australian Aborigines, they divide into two dozen different and ancient nationalities—among them Buryat, Tuvans, Sakha, and Chukchi. Though they number more than one million and have begun to demand land rights and political autonomy since the fall of communism, most Westerners are not even aware that they exist.
Journalist and historian Anna Reid traveled the length and breadth of Siberia—one-twelfth of the world’s land surface, greater than the United States and Western Europe combined—to tell the story of its people. Drawing on sources ranging from folktales to KGB reports, and on interviews with shamans and Buddhist monks, reindeer herders and whale hunters, camp survivors and Party apparatchiks, The Shaman’s Coat travels through four hundred years of history, from the Cossacks’ campaigns against the last of the Tatar khans to native rights activists against oil development. The result is a moving group portrait of extraordinary and threatened peoples, and a unique and intrepid travel chronicle.
Reader Reviews
The long and cold journey across the tough, far-flung landscapes of Siberia is most likely one I'll never attempt myself, so I have to thank the author of this highly interesting book for doing so in my stead and generously taking me along in spirit. Chapter by chapter the author treks ever eastwards, starting in Saint Petersburg in European Russia and ending up on the frozen shoreline of the Bering Strait right across from the American continent, encountering an intriguing range of folks along the way. The book is part travelogue and part history; on the one hand, the author deftly describes each region and the people she meets and interviews there in vivid detail. On the other, the convoluted, complex, and often sad tale of the many various Siberian indigenous peoples' vicissitudes under Russian expansion and annexation and Soviet Communist assimilation, abuse, and persecution is related anecdotally from a number of perspectives, when at all possible from the point of view of the Siberians themselves. But by no means is this the same story again and again. Each ethnicity has its own distinct and particular culture and historical experience, so that generalizing is clearly impossible. Nor is this a simple tale of conquest and loss, for the valiant attempts on the part of many Siberians to navigate their situation with dignity and agency really comes through. Still, loss is a big part of the picture. Presumably the author started out considering the relative vigor of shamanism--native Siberian religiosity--as a barometer of indigenous cultural autonomy and independence. In most cases, though, depopulation through disease and war coupled with the aggressively anti-religious Marxist ideology of Communism especially but not only under Stalin has all but made of shamanism a thing of the past, to say nothing of decimating a once flourishing Buryat Siberian Buddhism into utter oblivion. What few shamans we do happen to meet in today's Russia, er, Siberia are, for all their sincerity and hard work, pale imitations cobbling together a few minor genuine practices they happen to remember with some New Age fluff and some Buddhist and Christian Orthodox chunks all sort of smoothed over with some creative fudging. Given everything they've had to face over the decades, though, this is of course an impressive and inspiring accomplishment on their part. But anyone who, say, reads Mircea Eliade's studies in shamanism and hopes to hop over to Siberia to see what he's talking about firsthand is going to be in for an initial let-down. As a book this is a fine introduction for the interested generalist. The tone is sensitive and perceptively astute without being preachy or browbeating. It does not intend to be exhaustive in a scholarly fashion but it is carefully researched and sufficiently detailed to paint a fascinatingly multifarious picture of this vast tract of land and its many peoples--where most of will never go and whom most of us will never meet, except within the pages of this fine, eminently readable book.
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The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia
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Price: $10.40
Updated on 6-21-2008.
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