«ПИШУСЬ МАНСИ»: ЭТНИЧНОСТЬ И УКОРЕНЕННОСТЬ НА КОНДЕ

Abstract

The article explores the identity of indigenous peoples in a multinational urbanized society, where mixed marriages prevail, the languages of national minorities are lost, and the way of life is not associated with traditional nature management. What does it mean to be indigenous in these conditions? Is ethnicity still linked to blood and land? The institute of ancestral lands of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug — Ugra is considered as a variant of (re)rooting of titular peoples who were earlier deprived of their rights to land and resources by the Soviet government. The author traces how the introduction of support programs for indigenous minorities provoked an instrumental approach to identity in the 1990s. The correction of genealogy was widespread and led to an unnatural jump in the number of indigenous peoples. The status of the subject of the law of the territories of traditional nature use (the user of ancestral lands) turned out to be equally problematic in the Konda river region. Against the background of ambiguous federal and regional projects to support indigenous peoples, the article examines the concept of indigeneity, which seems adequate for the territories of strong mixing of cultures, to which the Konda river region belongs. The right to determine membership in indigenous communities belongs to the members of these communities, as well as the choice of criteria by which this selection will be carried out. Global experience shows that heredity and consanguinity are not exceptional qualities for inclusion in the “indigenous slot”, but their core is formed by ethnic communities, as the most consolidated groups.