Country: Russia
Group: Koryak
Date Finalized: 3/1/2022
Team: Katherine Edwards (lead), Natasha Chandra, Jihui Kuang
Content Warning: violence, discrimination, racism
Approximate Time Period: 1970-Present
Evidence suggests that Koryak in Russia have face repression of their culture through
erasure of their native language, forced assimilation, and loss of ancestral lands. In 1970, “Koryak children were forced to kneel on rock salt and had their mouths washed out with soap for speaking their native language” (King, 2016). One Koryak women remembered Russian government agents forcibly capturing her from her home as a girl and forcing her to go to school. She recalled being stripped, washed in a trough outside the school, and then having her head shaved (King, 2016). Even though many Koryaks now have assimilated more with Russian culture, they are still not given the same rights as people who are Russian (King, 2016). In recent years there has been developments with the physical land where the Koryaks live. In 2005 there was a vote held to combine two neighboring regions; the Koryak Autonomous Zone and Kamchatka Oblast. In 2007 the regions combined, becoming Kamchatka Krai. Later in 2014 this region put out a proposal to reduce the land that native people had to cultivate and use. This meant many people were not able to practice their traditional ways of survival (Minority Rights 2015).
Data quality: The data quality was rated as a 1 out of 3 because the sources available were helpful but limited.
Sources
- King A. Documenting Koryak: Endangered Languages and the Legacy of Arctic Colonialism. Society for Cultural Anthropology. Accessed February 15, 2022. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/documenting-koryak-endangered-languages-and-the-legacy-of-arctic-colonialism
- Koryaks. Minority Rights Group. Published June 19, 2015. Accessed February 15, 2022. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/koryaks/