Contemporary “Shamanising Persons” among the Tungus-Manchu (Evenki, Even, and Nanai): Case Studies about Common Collective Spiritual Representations
Résumé
This article studies common spiritual representations about contemporary
Tungus-Manchu “shamanising persons”. It analyses ethnographic material gathered
by the authors between 1994 and 2020 among the Evenki, Even, and Nanai of
Yakutia, the Amur region, Kamchatka, Novorossiysk, and Khabarovskii krai, as well
as the relevant scholarly literature. Under Soviet anti-religious policies, the traditional
shamans of these peoples went into significant decline: the last traditional shamans
passed away in the 2010s, thus potentially disrupting the transmission of the shamanic
function. Nevertheless, according to collective representations, the spirits are still
active and continue elect people to become shamans. Our paper argues that these
peoples are enduring “ritual wanderings”, wedged between a lack of individuals
able to transmit the knowledge required to become a traditional shaman and the fact
they reject urban/western neo-shamanism (in contrast to other Siberian peoples like
the Buriat, Tuva, Yakut, and Altai). Through the analysis of a mosaic of case studies
on shamanising persons who are neither traditional shamans nor neo-shamans, we
reveal many relationships with the spirits, the ways these people deal with shamanic
election, and the common core of the spiritual representations of the Tungus-Manchu.
This paper contributes to the study of contemporary shamanism, Tungus-Manchu
cultures, and human-nature relationships.