Koriak
have been described as a nomadic people, migrating with the reindeer
through rugged terrain. Their autonomy and mobility are salient cultural
features that ethnographers and state administrators have found equally
fascinating and menacing.
Tundra Passages describes how this indigenous people in
the Russian Far East have experienced, interpreted, and struggled
with the changing conditions of life on the periphery of post-Soviet
Russia.
Rethmann portrays the lives of Koriak women in the locales of Tymlat
and Ossora in northern Kamchatka, within a wider framework of sexuality,
state power, and marginalization, which she sees as central to the
Koriak experience of everyday life. Using gender as a lens through
which to examine wider issues of history, disempowerment, and marginalization,
she explores the interpretations and strategies employed by Koriak
women and men to ameliorate the austere effects of political and
socioeconomic disorder. Rethmann's innovative work combines historical
and ethnographic descriptions of Koriak life, narration, and practices
of gender and history.
With the demise of the Soviet Union, scholars have begun an active
discussion of the political processes that affect marginalized and
indigenous peoples in Russia. This work contributes to this discussion
by revealing the tensions and potentially contradictory strategies
of indigenous people within a world shaken by change, uncertainty,
and disorder.
