Nganaasan Idols and Soviet Ethnographers Through the Lens of Critical Heritage Studies: From Sacred to Museum Objects

Abstract

This study examines the interactions between Soviet researchers and sacred Nganaasan objects known as koika-idols in the 20th century. The systematic ethnographic study of the Nganaasan people, the accumulation of knowledge about them, and the museumification of their culture began alongside Soviet modernization on the Taimyr Peninsula. The modernization process included efforts to combat indigenous peoples’ traditional beliefs, which simultaneously were subjects of interest for Soviet ethnographers. In the case studies researchers appear as observers of their informants’ practices of interaction with various idols, sometimes becoming involved in these practices themselves, describing both the objects and rituals, witnessing and participating in the collision between traditional beliefs and modernizing discourse, and, notably, bringing the idols themselves to museums, thus becoming actors in the process of indigenous heritage production. Drawing on L. Smith’s critical concept of authorized heritage discourse (AHD), the author attempts to describe the origins of indigenous heritage space formation in the USSR, trace decision-making processes, and analyze the knowledge production practices about the Nganaasans by some of their first researchers – A.A. Popov and B.O. Dolgikh. Various levels of problems related to the role of scholars in heritage production and indigeneity discourses are examined. The research is based on published and archival texts of Soviet researchers, materials from the author’s field research on the Taimyr Peninsula in 2021, 2022, 2024, as well as data collected from museum and scientific archives.