Book Review

Comparative/World

In 1999, a brilliant indigenous Altai ethnographer, Svetlana Tiukteneva, explained to me that the Altaitsy have remained predominantly shamanist throughout a long history of contact with Russians. When they pray to spirits in sacred groves, they first pray for the well-being of the whole Altai and its people, then for their locality, then for their extended families, and, only last, for themselves. This ethnic and ecological sensitivity extends through the Altai region, encompassing several indigenous groups. The historical roots of these multilayered identities are, however, less clear, and subject to controversy.

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Andrei A. Znamenski's complex and subtle monograph on the mutually influencing relations of Russians and indigenous peoples in the Altai, Chukotka, and Alaska sheds light on important issues of identity formation and religion in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Examining uneven indigenous responses to Russian Orthodox missions, he suggests several models of interaction. In Alaska, the marginalized hunting and fishing Dena'ina forged aspects of Russian Orthodoxy into an indigenous Christianity in the unstable and disruptive "gold rush" context of postimperial Americanization pressure. In remote Chukotka, many nomadic, reindeer-breeding Chukchi rejected mis-sionary overtures and remained aloof, non-taxpaying shamanists. In the Altai, where enormous Russian Orthodox and tsarist resources poured in along with land-hungry Russian settlers, indigenous responses were more mixed and less consistently patterned along cultural group lines. Znamenski's comparative approach is reminiscent of Native Americanist anthropologist Fred Eggan's classic "method of controlled comparison," although his conclusions rely on sociologist Ann Swindler's more tautological, dualistic model.

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