Yakuts
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Predominantly Russian Orthodox Christianity, with a significant part of the population practicing Shamanism |
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Yakuts (Yakut language: Саха, Saxa) are a Turkic people[7] who mainly inhabit the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages. Yakuts mainly live in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taymyr and Evenki Autonomous Districts.
The Yakuts are divided into two basic groups based on geography and economics. Yakuts in the north are historically semi-nomadic hunters, fishermen, reindeer breeders, while southern Yakuts engage in animal husbandry focusing on horses and cattle.[8]
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Origin [edit]
Yakuts originally lived around Olkhon and the region of Lake Baikal. But beginning in the 13th century they migrated to the basins of the Middle Lena, the Aldan and Vilyuy rivers under the pressure of the rising Mongols, where they mixed with other northern indigenous peoples of Russia such as the Evens and Evenks.
The northern Yakuts were largely hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders, while the southern Yakuts raised cattle and horses.
In the 1620s Russia began to move into their territory and annexed it, imposed a fur tax, and managed to suppress periodic discontent of the Yakuts between 1634 and 1642..
Russian brutality in collection of the pelt tax (yasak) sparked a rebellion among the Yakuts and also Tungusic-speaking tribes along the River Lena in 1642. The voivode Peter Golovin, leader of the Russian forces, responded with a reign of terror: native settlements were torched and hundreds of people were tortured and killed. The Yakut population alone is estimated to have fallen by 70 percent between 1642 and 1682.[9]
The discovery of gold and, later, the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, brought ever-increasing numbers of Russians into the region. By the 1820s almost all the Yakuts had been converted to the Russian Orthodox church, sometimes forcibly, but more often peacefully, some of them, and have saved, and still retain a number of Shamanic practices and combine them with the Christian traditions.
In 1922, the new Soviet government named the area the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The last conflict of the Russian Civil War, known as the Counter-revolutionary rebellion in Yakutia, occurred here when Cornet Mikhail Korobeinikov, a White Russian officer, led an uprising and a last stand against the Red Army.
In the late 1920s through the late 1930s, Yakut people were systematically persecuted,[citation needed] when Joseph Stalin launched his collectivization campaign. The Soviet Union's Gulag system of involuntary labor increased the death rate among the Yakuts; only in the late 1960s did the Yakut population recover to pre-collectivization levels.[10][unreliable source]
Currently, Yakuts form a large plurality of the total population within the vast Sakha Republic. According to the 2010 Russian census, there were a total of 466,492 Yakuts residing in the Sakha Republic during that year, or 49.9% of the total population of the Republic. In addition, the Yakuts have a higher fertility rate than the Russians and the other Slavic peoples, while the median age of the Yakut population is much lower than the Russians. This means that the Yakut population is forecast to grow during the foreseeable future.[citation needed]
Cuisine [edit]
The cuisine of Sakha consists predominantly of traditional drink kumis, dairy products of mare and reindeer milk, sliced frozen salted fish (strogaanina), loaf meat dishes (oyogos), venison, frozen fish, thick pancakes, and salamat - a millet porridge with butter and horse fat. Kuerchekh or kierchekh, a popular dessert, is made of mare milk or sour cream with various berries. Indigirka is a traditional fish salad. This cuisine is only used in Yakutia.[citation needed]
See also [edit]
- Ajyhyt, the name of the mythic mother goddess of the Sakha people
- Music of the Sakha Republic
- Yakut American
Notes [edit]
- ^ Russia. Census 2010
- ^ a b c d Joshuaproject. Yakut
- ^ Всеукраїнський перепис населення 2001. Русская версия. Результаты. Национальность и родной язык.
- ^ yakuts in US.
- ^ yakuts in Canada.
- ^ Агентство Республики Казахстан по статистике. Перепись 2009. (Национальный состав населения.rar)
- ^ Yakut - a ethnic group in northeastern Siberia: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Yakuts
- ^ "Yakuts". Centre for Russian Studies. Retrieved 2006-10-26.
- ^ Mark Levene; Penny Roberts, eds. (1999), The massacre in history, p. 155
- ^ Sakha Republic (Yakutia)
References [edit]
- Leontʼeva, Sargylana (2002) "Comments on Ойуун Уол 'shaman fellow': a Yakut historical legend." In John M. Clifton and Deborah A. Clifton (eds.), Comments on discourse structures in ten Turkic languages p. 287-291. St. Petersburg, Russia: SIL International.
- International Business Publications (ed.) (2001) Sakha Yakut Republic Regional Investment and Business Guide (US Government Agencies Business Library) (3rd ed.) International Business Publications, USA, ISBN 0-7397-9012-9
- Opyt Etnograficheskogo Issledovaniya (ed.) (1993) Yakuty (The Yakuts, text in Russian, w/illustrations) Opyt Etnograficheskogo Issledovaniya, Moscow
External links [edit]
- Yakut language site with lyrics, mp3 and video
- Yakut newspaper site
- A good brief description of Yakut Society
- Russian translations of Yakut texts (heroic poetry, fairy tales, legends, proverbs, etc)
- A multi-language dictionary: Yakut - Classical Mongolian - Khalkha - Russian - German - English
- Historical and administrative background
- Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich (1980) "Sibirskie rasskazy i ocherki" Hudozhestvennaya literatura, Moscow in Russian
- Ethnic groups -Yakuts
- North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk
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