Mapping an emotional topography of an ecological homeland: The case of Sakhalin Island, Russia

Abstract

Attachment to local environments occurs worldwide, but especially where people use natural resources for everyday survival. On sub-arctic Sakhalin Island, Russia, subsistence and semi-subsistence resource use are increasingly important for many local and indigenous people since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. These people continue to struggle through socioeconomic, political and environmental transformation with minimal aid from the federal center while transnational hydrocarbon extraction in Sakhalin's offshore regions has transformed on- and offshore environments valued by the people of Sakhalin since the mid-1990s. Here, I explore and analyze narratives about emotions expressed about ecologies and resources from indigenous (Nivkh, Evenk) and local viewpoints. Through constant invocation and imagination of Sakhalin's ecological setting as an all-providing, nurturing environment by indigenous and local peoples, negative emotions are attached to current ecological transformation. Here, I argue that the concept of homeland – often explored culturally and politically in local contexts – must expand to include ecological aspects. Long-term subsistence use of Sakhalin's resources gives rise to understandings of the island as an ecological homeland with a specific emotional topography that can be mapped cognitively, providing new conceptualizations of emotional, ecological topographies.