The Fast Runner and Otherness

Last night we had an informal Alaskan culture night at the apartment. Well, we ate some really delicious King Salmon and watched "The Fast Runner," the award winning film about Arctic nomads (the Inuktitut people) in Canada and (close to) Alaska. I found the film through a friend here in Kyzyl. I'm constantly surprised throughout this experience how all the things I need just seem to drop into my hands. People here have managed to get their hands on all sorts of materials pertaining to Tyva and American culture. People have recently loaned me The Fast Runner, three excellent books to help my students prepare for the TOEFL, pretty much every single book ever written by Westerners about Tyva, and the 10 part JAZZ documentary by Ken Burns. It's pretty interesting how it seems like fate is taking care of all my academic needs! I guess I mostly can be thankful to earlier Western visitors to Tyva who have left these materials lying around waiting for me...

We had bought the salmon for New Years dinner, but weren't hungry enough to cook it up. So yesterday I made a sauce from butter and lots of vegetables, poured it over the salmon steaks and baked it. Yum. Every time we have fish here it is my job to cook it, because the Tyvans say they are a land-locked people with no experience with fish. I shrug my shoulders and say "ok." I really don't know how to cook fish, except that it should usually be baked with some kind of seasoning. I should have put some lemon in there yesterday, but oh well. You can't really ruin salmon!

Watching the film with Namdolma and her husband was really interesting. They disapproved of some parts; the infidelity, the running naked on the ice sceen, etc. We all had a big shock when at one point Huun-Huur-Tu, the Tyvan musical group we went to see last week started to sing on the soundtrack. Namdolma and her husband started shouting "They're speaking Tyvan, they're speaking Tyvan!!" This group is especially close to our family because Namdolma's husband is buds with one of the guys in Huun-Huur-Tu. I guess I would be pretty excited to if my friend's band made a surprise appearance in a movie I was watching...

Namdolma's overall reaction to the film was "I didn't know they didn't wear underwear back then!" To which her husband replied, "What, you think we wore underwear back then??"

It was really interesting to watch this film with Tyvans, because people are always asking me questions about Eskimos and "Indians" of North America. Tyvans like to tell me that they are genetically related to our Natives, which could very well be true. There is certainly a large resemblance; the actors in the film last night looked like a lot of my students/friends here, and the little kid was pretty much identical in appearance and mannerisms to the almost three year old ball of joy that has been bouncing around our apartment for the past week. All the same, I am hesitant to make assumptions; there are probably anthropologists and geneticists who can answer these questions better than I. But for practical purposes, it seems to be important to Tyvans that they identify with our Native peoples.

All the same, it was shocking for Namdolma and her husband to actually see a fairly representative portrait of North American Natives. They were pretty disapproving of much of their lifestyle--either their behavior was immoral or their lifestyle "too hard"; but they are pretty conservative people. The Tyvan lady who gave me the film is more free in her worldview, but she believes strongly that a brotherhood exists between native peoples around the world, so she's interested in looking for similarities.

I guess I can talk a bit about how my experiences in Tyva are making me rethink my experiences at home, growing up in the wild and beautiful land of Alaska. In my town in Alaska the Native population is much smaller than here in Tyva. Here Tyvans are 70% majority; they are the dominant culture. At home Natives are much less; 15% is what I think I remember reading. At home we talk a lot about Native rights; there are subsistence hunting rights, Native Corporations, and many scholarships for Native students. Yet, here the Tyvans have something that the Alaska Natives lack; a majority population.

For reasons of language preservation, the situation here in Tyva is far preferable. I feel like a dolt a lot of the time for not speaking Tyvan language, and also unsure if I'm even qualified to try, because of my white skin. I feel a bit uncomfortable trying to speak Tyvan in public because of the assumptions people make. I guess race in Russia is a little baffling (I guess it has that in common with race in America). It's more complicated here because instead of ethnicities, people here talk about nationalities. For example there are two ajectives: Russki and Rossisski. The first describes someone ethnically Russian, the second describes someone who just happens to live in Russia--could have white or any other color skin.

Also, I'd just like to say that maybe I'm making these feelings up; I would like to emphasis the subjective nature of my experiences, and also make it clear that I grew up in a monotone racial environment, without much experience contacting issues of race. I had some minority friends, but I was always part of the majority, i.e. not in a position where I was actively questioning my racial identity. So I suppose it's a really good thing I came to Tyva and am finally having the minority experience. And I have to say that my students and family here have been so welcoming that often I forget there is any difference in our appearance. Certainly I have less to worry about here than Tyvans do in Moscow, where their lives are under constant threat from skinheads. If anyone knows any good articles about ethnic-phobia and fearing an "other," please hook me up! I'm trying to learn more about this stuff...

Regardless of the complicated identity issues, I had a good time watching the film with my host family, and I think that it got the point across to them that life is just as multifaceted and complicated in America as it is in Russia. I can't tell you how many times people here tell me, "Oh, you're an American. I know how you live; I've seen it in the movies." I mean, it's a lack of information that causes these attitudes; to some extent I am convinced that it's a willful action of the Russian government to keep their people in the dark, by limiting sources of outside information and actively promoting stereotypes, but really a lot of the times blaming things on governments is a way of scapegoating, and really the people and their (lacking)curiosities are more at fault. Or maybe it's just an example of fearing that which you don't know; which I think is an understandable attitude. I myself certainly indulge from time to time...

So, I can't say what I've concluded, except that I will show the film to more Tyvans and see what they say, and use it as a springboard for talking about Native peoples of Alaska. Also, I will return to Alaska with a hell of a lot more compassion for minorities and an understanding that the way we have things is not the only way it can be. I suppose that is one of the goals of this whole wonderful government-sponsored inter-cross-cultural program anyways... :-)

Ok, I'm off to watch some more JAZZ and continue my scholarly pursuits. Peace to you, big world!
Riley