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In alliance with a nocturnal landscape: memory and water law in the north Baikal, Siberia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Veronika V. Simonova
Veronika V. Simonova*
Affiliation:
European University at St. Petersburg, Gagarinskaia Street 3, 191187 St. Petersburg, Russia ([email protected])
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Abstract

This paper examines the ethnography of nocturnal fishery and relationships with water, relevant for Evenkis occupying the northern coastal area of Lake Baikal, Siberia. The material arises from Evenkis of Kumora village who live near Lake Irkana and from archival sources. Although the nocturnal fishery is declared illegal in official legislation, local residents invoke memories to mark that practice as traditional and important for the local community since it is not merely a subsistence activity but also an emotional experience and long-term relationships with the landscape. This paper argues that local social memory devoted to this practice serves as a kind of fishing tool and a tool for supporting local ideas of how fishing should be governed. The collision between memory and water law is not discussed in terms of antagonism between local groups and authorities but as ignorance between memory-gifted people and the landscape, and memory-disabled official approaches to nocturnal fishing and its histories. Finally, memory-gifted human landscape relationships termed as ‘alliance’ are approached as a powerful conglomerate that ‘consumes’ authorised visions of fishing patterns in their own way.

Type
Northern fisheries
Information
Polar Record , Volume 50 , Issue 4: Northern Fisheries , October 2014 , pp. 414 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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