Excellent book about the people who live on the northeastern tip of Siberia. The book is fiction but based on stories that have been passed down orally as well as the life of the author's grandfather who was a shaman. ( )

This was desolate at the end… except for the fact that the author has written this book. Native cultures of Siberia were declared worthless in the 20thC, and the main character sees his children schooled to be Bolshevik – and not Chukchi. Then I found out that Rytkheu - the main’s grandchild – toed this line for much of his life, and comes late here to celebrate Chukchi culture. Quote from A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581-1990, By James Forsyth: "Rytkheu even came to regret the Communist Party’s indiscriminate campaign against the primal religion of his people and to feel a new sympathy not only with its inherent respect for nature, but even with the shaman, whom he no longer saw, in the stereotype of anti-religious propaganda, as merely an ignorant, predatory charlatan, but in many cases as a highly gifted person with a skill in healing, wisdom above the average, and the spiritual elevation of a poet." [p.408]

The author's grandfather, whose story is two-thirds of the book, was ‘the last shaman of Uelen’. He has failures and difficulties with his calling, but is steadfast in sticking to his beliefs, even though, as arguably the wisest of his tribe – at least the most-travelled - he has learnt Russian and American and has brought home surgical instruments from San Francisco, to help a shaman’s practice. It began with Bogoraz, a political exile who devoted his time in north-east Siberia to anthropology; after aiding him in his study, Mletkin – our last shaman – decides he wants to do anthropology of his own and signs up on a whaling ship. He didn’t mean to sign up (no-one told him what the fingerprint was for) and he sees, from the perpetrators’ side this time, the exploitation that goes on, along with the disastrous effect on sea-animal numbers.

His people descend from a whale – not from apes, like the foreigners, or made as in the Bible. The epigraphs at the start of this book are:

And God created man in his own image.
(Genesis)

Men make gods in their own likeness.
(Mletkin, the last shaman of Uelen)

It’s what he learns. His people’s name for themselves, Luoravetlan, translates as the True People. This is so of most tribes, who simply have ‘humans, people’ in their own language for a name. Horizons are widened, for better or worse, through this book, that starts with the Raven’s creation of the earth, goes on through first discoveries – of reindeer-herding (on the face of it a wonderful idea: ‘food on four legs’ in handy vicinity of the tent) and onwards to first contact with the Cossacks.

The book is titled as it is for more than one reason. A Bible features: Mletkin’s grandfather trades for a Bible at a fair, out of curiosity about these Russian shamans and their abilities. It remains in the family – no-one reads, and no-one’s Christian – until Mletkin, known also for his curiosity, pulls it out to startle a Russian trader - ‘What’s a Bible doing here?’

There’s a hot trade in vodka or any alcohol, and its ravages are pitiful. The Russian government attempts to ban the trade. They also leave the Chukchi to their ways, in a pact with them: don’t attack your neighbours, we won’t force-convert you. It’s not always abuse. Mletkin finds a friend in Nelson, a black sailor; he thinks of the anthropologist Bogoraz as a friend, with different attitudes than most of his kind – yet their acquaintance ends on a note of the alienness between them, as Mletkin settles down to family life in Uelen. With a girl he fixed on in his youth… who failed, twice over, to wait for him (he did take years, and no-one comes back from San Francisco) but that does not deter Mletkin, though he has to resort to an old cultural practice to get her.

As I say, the end is sad. The only consolation is the book.

There's lovely description of the tundra and the sea, as - I had to feel - only an eye native here can see them. I also felt (though this is not a tract) that the questions put by Uelen's inhabitants are a fundamental sort that is hard for us, who aren't Chukchi, to even think to ask. Not because we're pigs. But the questions are so simple and direct, and asked from a sense of the absolute worth of Chukchi knowledge and ways. ( )

This is a wonderful, collection of myths, folk tales and short stories that build from the creation of the Chukchi in the harsh Arctic tundra, how the generations evolved from seafaring people to deer herders, to traders with the "hairmouths" from Russia.

The writing is poetic and the stories fascinating. We are treated to descriptions of the icy tundra in the Chukotka Peninsula and the various rituals of the shamans. We see a society evolve from a simple fishing and whaling clan who occasionally raid other clans for women to marry, who later assimilate with the deer herders in the grassy tundra so they would have warm meat, and who are later discovered by Europeans. With the influx of more explorers, their world expands and they now have different choices available to them, some good, some bad and some which would have repercussions on this tribe of people. ( )