Ket people


Kets are a Yeniseian people in Siberia. In the Russian Empire, they were called Ostyaks, without differentiating them from several other Siberian peoples. Later they became known as Yenisey ostyaks, because they lived in the middle and lower basin of the Yenisei River in the Krasnoyarsk Krai district of Russia. The modern Kets lived along the eastern middle stretch of the river before being assimilated politically into Russia between the 17th and 19th centuries. According to the 2010 census, there were 1,220 Kets in Russia.

History

The Ket are thought to be the only survivors of an ancient nomadic people believed to have originally lived throughout central and southern Siberia. In the 1960s the Yugh people were distinguished as a separate, though similar, group. Today's Kets are the descendants of the tribes of fishermen and hunters of the Yenisei taiga, who adopted some of the cultural ways of those original Ket-speaking tribes of South Siberia. The earlier tribes engaged in hunting, fishing, and even reindeer breeding in the northern areas.
The Ket were incorporated into the Russian state in the 17th century. Their efforts to resist were futile as the Russians deported them to different places to break up their resistance. This also broke up their strictly organized patriarchal social system and their way of life disintegrated. The Ket people ran up huge debts with the Russians. Some died of famine, others of diseases introduced from Europe. By the 19th century, the Kets could no longer survive without food support from the Russian state.
In the 20th century, the Soviets forced collectivization upon the Ket. They were officially recognized as Kets in the 1930s when the Soviet Union started to implement the self-definition policy with respect to indigenous peoples. However, Ket traditions continued to be suppressed and self-initiative was discouraged. Collectivization was completed by the 1950s and the Russian lifestyle and language forced upon the Ket people.
The population of Kets has been relatively stable since 1923. According to the 2002 census, there were 1,494 Kets in Russia. This compares with 1,200 in the 1970 census. Today the Ket live in small villages along riversides and are no longer nomadic.

Language

The Ket language has been linked to the Na-Dené languages of North America in the Dené–Yeniseian language family. This link has led to some collaboration between the Ket and some northern Athabaskan peoples.
Ket means "man". The Kets of the Kas, Sym and Dubches rivers use jugun as a self-designation. In 1788 Peter Simon Pallas was the earliest scholar to publish observations about the Ket language in a travel diary.
In 1926, there were 1,428 Kets, of whom 1,225 were native speakers of the Ket language. The 1989 census counted 1,113 ethnic Kets with only 537 native speakers left.
As of 2008, there were only about 100 people who still spoke Ket fluently, half of them over 50. It is entirely different from any other language in Siberia. Alexander Kotusov was a Ket folk singer, composer and writer of songs in the Ket language.

Culture

The Ket traditional culture was researched by Matthias Castrén, Vasiliy Ivanovich Anuchin, Kai Donner, :de:Hans Findeisen|Hans Findeisen, and Yevgeniya Alekseyevna Alekseyenko. Shamanism was a living practice into the 1930s, but by the 1960s almost no authentic shamans could be found. Shamanism is not a homogeneous phenomenon, nor is shamanism in Siberia. As for shamanism among Kets, it shared characteristics with those of Turkic and Mongolic peoples. Additionally, there were several types of Ket shamans, differing in function, power, and associated animals. Also, among Kets there are examples of the use of skeleton symbolics. Hoppál interprets this as a symbol of shamanic rebirth, although it may symbolize also the bones of the loon. The skeleton-like overlay represented shamanic rebirth among some other Siberian cultures as well.
Of great importance to Kets are dolls, described as "an animal shoulder bone wrapped in a scrap of cloth simulating clothing." One adult Ket, who had been careless with a cigarette, said, "It's a shame I don't have my doll. My house burnt down together with my dolls." Kets regard their dolls as household deities, which sleep in the daytime and protect them at night.
Vajda spent a year in Siberia studying the Ket people, and finds a relationship between the Ket language and the Na-Dene languages, of which Navajo is the most prominent and widely spoken.
Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov compared Ket mythology with that of Uralic peoples, assuming in the studies that they are modelling semiotic systems in the compared mythologies. They have also made typological comparisons. Among other comparisons, possibly from Uralic mythological analogies, the mythologies of Ob-Ugric peoples and Samoyedic peoples are mentioned. Other authors have discussed analogies may be related to a dualistic organization of society—some dualistic features can be found in comparisons with these peoples. However, for Kets, neither dualistic organization of society nor cosmological dualism have been researched thoroughly. If such features existed at all, they have either weakened or remained largely undiscovered. There are some reports of a division into two exogamous patrilinear moieties, folklore on conflicts of mythological figures, and cooperation of two beings in the creation of the land, the motif of the earth-diver. This motif is present in several cultures in different variants. In one example, the creator of the world is helped by a waterfowl as the bird dives under the water and fetches earth so that the creator can make land out of it. In some cultures, the creator and the earth-fetching being compete with one another; in other cultures, they do not compete at all, but rather collaborate.
However, if dualistic cosmologies are defined in a broad sense, and not restricted to certain concrete motifs, then their existence is more widespread; they exist not only among some Uralic peoples, but in examples on every inhabited continent.

Origin

The Ket people share their origin with other Yeniseian people. They are closely related to other Siberians, East Asians and Indigenous peoples of the Americas. They are a Mongoloid population and belong mostly exclusive to yDNA haplogroup Q-M242.
According to a recent study, the Ket and other Yeniseian people originated likely somewhere near the Altai Mountains or near Lake Baikal. Many Yeniseians were assimilated into the modern Turkic people. It is suggested that the Altaians are predominantly of Yeniseian origin and closely related to the Ket people. Other Siberian Turkic groups have also greatly assimilated Yeniseian people. The Ket people are also closely related to several Native American groups. According to this study, the Yeniseians are linked to Paleo-Eskimo groups.