Authors

Discussion

This paper explores continuities in the interrelation of community and place through ritual, poetry and craft, as it demonstrates the importance of museum artefacts to the study of Russian history. It describes the changing significance of a museum artefact – a nineteenth-century model of a Sakha Yhyakh celebration. The indigenous Siberian Sakha people have experienced considerable displacement since the advent of Russian settlers into what is now the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), in the mid-seventeenth century. This displacement has generated the adoption of foreign paradigms into Sakha interrelationships with their homelands, as it has required Sakha communities to adapt to new spaces and territories. The Yhyakh has continued to be a key event within Sakha (Yakutia)’s yearly calendar, despite these transformations. It is rooted in an ancient Sakha onto-epistemology, which itself is predicated on the indivisible connection between place and community. A key function of the Yhyakh was and is a combined affirmation and consolidation of the benevolent relationship between Sakha communities and their homeland, expressed and manifested in poetic prayer, craft and sacrifice. The story of the Yhyakh model illustrates the alterations and continuities in Sakha experiences of community and place that have occurred in tandem with Soviet and post-Soviet transformations. It helps us to explore the complex repercussions of Russia’s Imperial and Soviet history.