The Challenge of Language: On Developing Aboriginal Culture in Northern Russia

Abstract

In the fall of 1999, a University of Helsinki–Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) research team conducted a survey on the socio-economic and political cultures of some twenty-four different national minorities inhabiting Northern Russia (Sillanpää 2008), focusing primarily on traditional livelihood and cultural identity. No set of questions caused a wider range of emotion than those related to the respondent’s knowledge of his or her native language. These ranged from a fatal realism that recognized the dwindling of one’s ancestral culture all the way to full anguish. For many respondents, it was a source of humiliation, a stark reminder of the extent to which their ancestral culture had declined to the point of virtual extinction. While many older members we interviewed could claim a working fluency in the mother tongue, most of those in their twenties, thirties and forties would confess, often with tears, how they had completely lost any proficiency they may have once had in their mother tongue or could only remember enough to convey greetings and remember snatches of phrases. Many wondered if it would be possible for a culture to survive if so few were able any longer to communicate in the ancestral language. This chapter, excerpted from that study, will focus on situating the issues gleaned from the survey related to the preservation of ancestral languages.