According to several studies on genomic research conducted from 2014 to 2018, the Chukchi are the closest Asian relatives of theindigenous peoples of the Americas, as such they are descendants of the settlers of Beringia who remained on the Russian side when the sea levels rose.[5][6]
The majority of Chukchi reside withinChukotka Autonomous Okrug, but some also reside in the neighboringSakha Republic to the west,Magadan Oblast to the southwest, andKamchatka Krai to the south. Some Chukchi also reside in other parts of Russia, as well as in Europe and North America. The total number of Chukchi in the world slightly exceeds 16,000.[7]
The approximate distribution of Chukchi clans at the end of the 19th century
The Chukchi are traditionally divided into theMaritime Chukchi, who had settled homes on the coast and lived primarily fromsea mammal hunting, and theReindeer Chukchi, who lived as nomads in the inlandtundra region, migrating seasonally with theirherds of reindeer. The Russian name "Chukchi" is derived from the Chukchi wordChauchu ("rich inreindeer"), which was used by the 'Reindeer Chukchi' to distinguish themselves from the 'Maritime Chukchi,' calledAnqallyt ("the sea people"). Their name for a member of the Chukchi ethnic group as a whole isLuoravetlan (literally 'genuine person').[8][9]
The anthropologistMarshall Sahlins called the Chukchi "tribes without rulers". They often lacked formal political structures, but had a formal cosmic hierarchy.[10]
One of the Chukchi's forms of folk art is sculpture andcarving on bones and walrus tusks but only men engage in this. Common traditional themes of these arts are landscapes, hunting scenes, and animals. The women are skilled seamstresses. The traditional dress for both genders is made of skins and fur, decorated with beads and embroidery on holidays and special occasions. Men wear loose shirts and trousers made of the same material at important traditional events.[8]
In Chukchi religion, every object, whether animate or inanimate, is assigned a spirit. This spirit can be either harmful or benevolent. Some of Chukchi myths reveal adualistic cosmology.[11][12] A Chukchishaman once explained to theethnographerVladimir Bogoraz that "The lamp walks around. The walls of the house have voices of their own. ... Even the shadows on the wall constitute definite tribes and have their own country, where they live in huts andsubsist by hunting."[13] During Chukchi rituals, shamans fall into trances (sometimes with the aid of hallugenic mushrooms), communicate with spirits, allow the spirits to speak trough them, predict the future and cast spells.[8]
Early Russian ethnographers observed that Chukchi shamans were said to be called by spirits, dreams, or omens, and were believed to be capable of flight,exorcism, and healing. Some shamans were called by mystical forces to engage in a form of ritualized homosexual relations with other men. This ritual typically involved a gender change through a religious ceremony that, it was believed, transformed his genitalia into that of a female. After the change, he might dress in women's clothing and behave in feminine ways. He was then believed to "lose" masculine traits like hunting skill, and instead take on "feminine" traits, like healing and nurturing. Some of these shamans would take male lovers, and could even marry other men, and the shaman would take on a "wifely" role.[14][15]
Representation of a Chukchi family by Louis Choris (1816)
In prehistoric times, the Chukchi engaged in nomadic hunter gatherer modes of existence. In current times, there continue to be some elements of subsistence hunting, including that ofpolar bears,[16]seals,walruses, whales, andreindeer. There are some differences between the traditional lifestyles of the coastal and inland Chukchi. The coastal Chukchi were largely settled fishers and hunters, mainly of sea mammals. The inland Chukchi were partial reindeer herders.[8][17]
Beginning in the 1920s, theSoviets organized the economic activities of both coastal and inland Chukchi and eventually established 28 collectively run, state-owned enterprises in Chukotka. All of these were based on reindeer herding, with the addition of sea mammal hunting andwalrus ivory carving in the coastal areas. Chukchi were educated in Soviet schools and today are almost 100% literate and fluent in the Russian language. Only a portion of them today work directly inreindeer herding orsea mammal hunting, and continue to live a nomadic lifestyle inyaranga tents.[18]
Newlyweds Meet the Sun. Painting of Chukchi byNikolai Getman
The Chukchi participated inendemic warfare against neighboring tribes, especially theKoryaks.[19] Russians first began contacting the Chukchi when they reached theKolyma (1643) and theAnadyr (1649).[20] The route fromNizhnekolymsk to the fort atAnadyrsk along the southwest of the main Chukchi area became a major trade route. The overland journey fromYakutsk to Anadyrsk took about six months.[citation needed]
The Chukchi were generally ignored for the next fifty years because they were warlike and did not provide furs or other valuable commodities to tax. Armed skirmishes flared up around 1700 when the Russians began operating in theKamchatka Peninsula and needed to protect their communications from the Chukchi andKoryak. The first attempt to conquer them was made in 1701. Other expeditions were sent out in 1708, 1709 and 1711 with considerable bloodshed but little success and unable to eliminate the local population on the large territory. War was renewed in 1729, when the Chukchi defeated an expedition from Okhotsk and killed its commander. Command passed to MajorDmitry Pavlutsky, who adoptedvery destructive tactics, burning, driving off reindeer, killing men and capturing women and children.[21]
In 1742, the government at Saint Petersburg ordered another war in which the Chukchi and Koryak were to be "totally extirpated". The war (1744–47) was conducted with similar brutality and ended when Pavlutsky was killed in March 1747.[21] It is said that the Chukchi kept his head as a trophy for several years. The Russians waged war again in the 1750s, but some Chukchi did survive these extermination plans in the very far northeast.[22]
In 1762, whenCatherine the Great was crowned, Saint Petersburg adopted a different policy. Maintaining the fort atAnadyrsk had cost some 1,380,000 rubles, but the area had returned only 29,150 rubles in taxes, so the government abandoned Anadyrsk in 1764. The Chukchi, no longer attacked by the Russian Empire, began to trade peacefully with the Russians. From 1788, they participated in an annual trade fair on the lower Kolyma. Another was established in 1775 on the Angarka, a tributary of theBolshoy Anyuy. This trade declined in the late 19th century when American whalers and others began landing goods on the coast.[23]
The firstChristian missions from theEastern Orthodox Church entered Chukchi territory some time after 1815. The strategy worked, and trade flourished between theCossacks and the Chukchi. As the annual trade fairs where goods were exchanged continued, a common language between the two peoples was spoken. The natives, however, never paidyasak (a fur tribute), and their status as subjects was little more than a formality. The formal annexation of the Chukotka Peninsula did not happen until much later, during the time of the Soviet Union.[24]
Resettlement of the Chukchi in the Far Eastern Federal District by urban and rural settlements in%, 2010 census
Apart from four Orthodox schools, there were no schools in the Chukchi land until the late 1920s. In 1926, there were 72 literate Chukchis. The Sovietsintroduced a Latin alphabet in 1932 to transcribe their language, replacing it withCyrillic in 1937. In 1934, 71% of the Chukchis werenomadic. In 1941, 90% of the reindeer were still privately owned. So-calledkulaks roamed with their private herds up into the 1950s.
Population estimates from Forsyth:
1700: 6,000
1800: 8,000–9,000
1926: 13,100
1930s: 12,000
1939: 13,900
1959: 11,700
1979: at least 13,169
Chukchi jokes are a staple of Soviet humor[25], where they are depicted as primitive, uncivilized, and simple-minded, but clever in their own way.[26]
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state-run farms were reorganized and nominally privatized. This process was ultimately destructive to the village-based economy in Chukotka. The region has still not fully recovered. Many rural Chukchi, as well as Russians in Chukotka's villages, have survived in recent years[when?] only with the help of direct humanitarian aid. Some Chukchi have attained university degrees, becoming poets, writers, politicians, teachers and doctors.[27]
In the context of theRussian invasion of Ukraine since 2022, the Chukchis have been reported as one of Russia'sethnic minority groups suffering from a disproportionally large casualty rate among Russian forces.[28]
^Zolotarjov, A.M. (1980). "Társadalomszervezet és dualisztikus teremtésmítoszok Szibériában". In Hoppál, Mihály (ed.).A Tejút fiai. Tanulmányok a finnugor népek hitvilágáról (in Hungarian). Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó. pp. 40–41.ISBN963-07-2187-2. Chapter means: "Social structure and dualistic creation myths in Siberia"; title means: "The sons of Milky Way. Studies on the belief systems of Finno-Ugric peoples".
^Anyiszimov, A. F. (1981).Az ősközösségi társadalom szellemi élete (in Hungarian). Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó. pp. 92–98.ISBN963-09-1843-9. Title means: "The spiritual life of primitive society". The book is composed out of the translations of the following two originals:Анисимов, Ф. А. (1966).Духовная жизнь первобытново общества (in Russian). Москва • Ленинград: Наука. The other one:Анисимов, Ф. А. (1971).Исторические особенности первобытново мышления (in Russian). Москва • Ленинград: Наука.
^Murray, Stephen O.; Pilling, Arnold R. (1992).Oceanic homosexualities. Garland reference library of social science ; Garland gay and lesbian studies. New York: Garland Pub.ISBN978-0-8240-7227-8.
^Eliade, Mircea; Adams, Charles J., eds. (1987).The Encyclopedia of religion. New York: Macmillan.ISBN978-0-02-909480-8.
^Bockstoce, John R. (2009).Furs and frontiers in the far north: the contest among native and foreign nations for the Bering Strait fur trade. The Lamar series in western history. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 89–92.ISBN978-1-282-35178-3.
^Juha Janhunen, "Gendai Sobieto shakai no minshuu-denshoo to shite no Chukuchi-jooku." ("Chukchee jokes as a form of modern Soviet folklore", transl. by Hiroshi Shoji). – Kotoba-asobi no minzokushi. Ed. by EGuchi Kazuhisa. Tokyo 1990, 377–385
Bogoraz, Waldemar (1910).Chukchee Mythology(PDF). Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History. Leiden • New York: E. J. Brill ltd • G. E. Stechert & Co.
