Simonova V.V. The Wild at Home and the Magic of Contact: Stories About Wild Animals and Spirits from Amudisy Evenki Hunters and Reindeer Herders. Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, 2018, Issue. 49, pp. 1-26.

Abstract

This paper is about human-animal spiritual relations among Amudisy Evenki hunters and reindeer herders of Kalar district (Zabaikal region) in Siberia. Based on narratives describing the practice of bringing wild animals into human places, this anthropological study examines the network of relations between human and non-human actors in an attempt to answer the following questions: why do Evenki hunters bring wild animals into their camps? Why are they so interested in observing the ways in which animals expose themselves and become a part of a human world? Why do “human nature” (chelovecheskaia priroda) (as it is called by our informants) and wild animals share certain similarities in local spiritual beliefs? By creating a dialogue between ethnographic examples and the theories of mimesis and perspectivism, this paper shows that this complex subject should be approached in terms of a “magic of contact”. This is also true of local perednik beliefs, where the human and animal worlds coincide: in such beliefs, human nature (chelovecheskaia priroda) is held to be partially constituted by an animal spirit. The analysis of data as well as writing up was sponsored by RSF grant 14-18-02785.

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