Overview The reverence for bears is a prevalent practice in Siberia. The
Khanty and
Mansi peoples in the
Western Siberian taiga,
Oroqen (Ulta),
Ulch,
Udege,and
Oroch in the
Russian Far Eastern regions of
Sakhalin,
Lower Amur, and the Maritime coast respectively, and the
Nivkh and
Ainu have practiced bear worship.
Ritual Bear ceremonialism in Siberia varies by group, but central to these practices is the recognition of bear ceremonialism as a sacred undertaking, demanding adherence to established protocols and etiquette. In indigenous Siberian cultures, a fundamental tenet governing the relationship between humans and bears is the prohibition against hunting bears, except under specific circumstances. Bears are only pursued if they pose a direct threat to human life or property, such as in cases where they have caused harm or invaded dwellings. The traditional ceremony begins a few years before the sacrifice of the bear itself. The bear ceremony starts with a capture, whereby male hunters enter a forest to find a bear den, kill the mother bear and catch the bear cub to bring back to the indigenous encampment. The people in the region then raise the bear cub as if the bear cub is one of the tribes’ own children. The duration of raising the bear varies between different cultures, but the process can take anywhere from one to five years, depending on the age at which the bear reaches sexual maturity, as well as the sex of the bear. In most cultures, female bears are raised for a shorter amount of time compared to the male bears that are captured by the indigenous peoples. (A note on the duration of raising the bear cub: As mentioned before, the duration by which villages would choose to raise the bear cub also varies culture by culture. For example, the people of Gvasyugi choose to raise the bear for one to two years. Similarly, the Ulch people of the Amur region opt for a longer period, typically three to four years, before they perform the ritual sacrifice. These differences in duration reflect the diverse traditions and customs found across different communities, shaping their respective approaches to this practice.) The bear is raised in captivity in the encampment alongside the people’s animals and children. Usually, a family would raise the bear cub before sacrificing it, either within the confines of the family abode until the bear grew too big to be kept inside. According to one account of the Ulchi bear ceremony, “[the] bear slept with the dogs and came out to play and to be hand fed by the woman of the house". There have also been records of the bear cubs sucking on female human milk, and indigenous families’ children are reprimanded when they express jealousy toward how bears are treated in the encampment. Once the bear becomes too large to be kept inside a cage with the family pets, it would be transferred to a special hut until it reached sexual maturity, or was considered ready to be sacrificed — the standards for this decision vary region by region, and, even within regions, culture by culture. To prepare the bear for its sacrifice to the masters of the taiga, the people of the village may take different approaches depending on the culture. Importantly, bear ceremonialism is one of the few practices in indigenous cultures in Siberia that discourage and subvert the central role that shamans generally play in pagan societies in the northern hemisphere. This is particularly noted in bear ceremonialism practiced in the Amur region. Regarded as spiritual mediators between humans and spirits in Siberian cultures, the bear ceremony prohibits seances performed by shamans as this worship represents one of the few practices where humans are able to communicate directly with spirits without necessitating aid from a third party agent. During the sacrifice, it is crucial that the bear is shown respect. Some means of disrespecting the bear would include, for example, being barefoot or using a gun to shoot the bear. As such, the bear has to be killed with a bow and arrow, knife, or spear. Also equally important is the vocabulary used to describe the act of sacrificing the bear. It is common for indigenous peoples to use euphemisms such as “I obtained a child” to convey killing a bear, as using direct language can offend the sacred animal, as well as the gods and spirits presiding over the environment. The bear is sacrificed with an injury to its heart, after which the people at the ceremony follow a ritual of skinning the animal, cooking it, and feasting on the bear meat. As a celebration following the sacrifice, many activities can take place. Children put on plays, women play musical instruments, and specific dances, myths, and songs are performed as part of the bear ceremony. Importantly, Ob-Ugrians also believe that they have also descended from the god Torum, a belief that forms the basis of these peoples’ social relationship with bears, which is that of a patrilineal kinship. Also importantly, the Evenkis, Nivkhs, and Orochon all believe that all other animals have descended from the bear. For example, when any other game is hunted and killed in the forest, this game would then be considered children of the bear. In this way, by honoring and sacrificing the bear through bear ceremonialism, these indigenous peoples then pay reverence to all animals inhabiting the forest and nature, ensuring fruitful seasons in all kinds of game to come.
Evenki The Evenkis, by contrast, do not raise the bear before sacrificing it. Like the Ob-Ugrians, these indigenous people see the bear as an ancestor. When they hunt and kill the bear in its den, they must show it respect as well, by “addressing it in kinship terms and asking its forgiveness before preparing its carcass and portioning out the meat for the [bear] feast.”
History Colonial period As a pagan practice, tsarist Christianizing efforts often sought to suppress bear ceremonialism in Siberia due to it undermining
Russian Orthodox hegemony at the time. Until the early 18th century, the Russian tsardom did not necessarily seek to propagate Christian Orthodoxy among indigenous Siberian populations. Native Siberian paganism was not perceived as a faith altogether up until this spiritual worldview began to be perceived as a threat to the legitimacy of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Soviet period Similarly,
Soviet control of the Russian state also led to repressive attitudes toward bear worship among indigenous Siberian peoples. Although religion was
tolerated in theory, the socialist state sought to limit paganism as this practice was antithetical to the ideal of
Marxist-Leninist atheism adopted as the official attitude toward religion and spiritualism more widely in the Soviet Union. Bear worship, and paganism more generally, was also perceived as a threat to Marxist-Leninist ideology with regards to humans’ relationship with their surrounding natural environment. According to Stephen Dudeck, an anthropologist specializing in indigenous Siberian cultures, "The opposition between the ideological place of nature as a force to be conquered according to Soviet ideology, and the complex and negotiated social relationship with the environment reflected in Indigenous rituals, should not have gone unnoticed (even if people like Steinitz might have ignored this). On a practical level feasting was blamed for distracting workers in the newly created state-controlled enterprises from disciplined work (Slezkine 1994)". Meanwhile, bear hunting has led to conflicts between indigenous Siberian cultures and the Russian law as well. For instance, the Khanty have subsistence hunting rights in their traditional region, but the Russian legal framework imposes a heavy financial burden on this indigenous Siberian culture by mandating “expensive and difficult to procure individual species licenses for non-food hunting and trapping.” The “revenge on the bear” constitutes one of the beliefs in bear worship, whereby bears are never to be hunted unless they harm the humans first. This practice is particularly characteristic of societies living in the Amur region of Siberia. The financial burden on indigenous populations by the Russian Federation is additionally exacerbated by ecological deterioration. The ecological deterioration has been caused by the state’s exploitation of natural resources in Siberia, especially recently. Notably, the Russian oil and gas extraction industry has greatly undermined the state of bears’ natural habitats in the Siberian taiga, leading to the animals’ increased wandering into human villages and potentially attacking the inhabitants. Due to longstanding and deeply rooted custom, these inhabitants must then hunt and kill the trespassing bears. As a result, attacked inhabitants sometimes illegally practice acts of bear hunting due to the legal framework underlying this act within the borders of the Russian Federation. One member of the Khanty indigenous Siberian group remarks: “We protest the destruction of the natural environment in our area, which is turning into our own destruction. We understand that the country needs oil, but not at the expense of our lives! All local industrial works operate as if we weren’t here, as if our ancestors weren’t here, as if our existence were over. Where are the principles of government policy toward Native peoples?”
Revival in recent years Centuries-long state repression of cultural traditions and spiritualism has led to an overall decline in bear worship among indigenous populations in Siberia. Throughout the 20th century, bear ceremonialism in Siberia became a rarely observed phenomenon.
Significance Cultural significance Bear ceremonialism practiced among indigenous Siberian peoples holds a spiritual significance as this tradition is a manifestation of paganism in Russia. Believing that everything has a soul, bear worship thus represents a spiritual worldview, wherein humans are meant to live in harmony with the natural environment around them, rather than attempt to conquer it. Paganism promotes a relatively more egalitarian structure of existence, compared to the hierarchical one that lays the foundation for the modern extractive economy of the Russian Federation, which is based on oil and gas extraction, and previously, the politico-economic ideology of the Soviet Union. Additionally, the bear ceremony holds a special significance for men, who are the designated hunters of the village, as the practice is a means of ensuring future success in hunting. After sacrificing the bear in the forest, each male hunter in the Ulch culture must touch the skin of the dead animal in order to obtain the taiga’s blessing for a fruitful hunting season. ==Altaic peoples==