Introduction to Entangled Indigenous Historicities from the Eurasian North

Abstract

The present collection examines the ways Indigenous peoples across the Eurasian North—Sámi, Nenets, Khanty, and Tyva—deal with the past and how their conceptualizations of the past are entangled with dominant ideologies in Russia and Finland, human-environment relations, and the colonial experiences they went through. The authors operate with the notion of historicity, which is understood in François Hartog’s terms as a 'temporal experience'. In the present collection, we expand this notion towards a relational nature of 'temporal experiences' where 'their' and 'our' historicities are not necessarily 'the same' or culturally determined but have been situated in long-term peaceful and conflictual encounters. Through those encounters, the diversity of meanings of the past has been shaped and developed within and between local communities and communities of scholars. The collection comprises the work of scholars from Folklore studies, Ethnology, Cultural studies, and History, who analyse Indigenous historicities through deep archival and field research. Keywords: historicities, ethnohistory, Indigenous peoples, Eurasian North