New thoughts

Well, it's been a busy last week. Probably the highlight was a trip I took out to the villages, to the village of Teeli, regional center of the Bai-Taiga region in the far West of Tuva. The Tuva I saw there was quite different from Kyzyl-Tuva. For one thing, it was one of the cleanest places I've ever been, as opposed to this city, which is one of the dirtiest. For another it was real village life. It reminded me a lot of trips I took in high school with the Fairbanks Symphony to the villages of Alaska. But also it made me consider and reconsider Tuvan nationalism, Russian nationalism, the commons, and the legal status of indigenous culture...

First of all I'd like to quote some websites. Specifically this; Elinor Ostrom's interview http://onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2675. I think this lady is my new hero... she's really cool. I did a project in high school on "The Commons" and never really felt like it got anywhere beyond what Garret Hardin had already said. Well, a lot has changed since those years and it seems like the ideas have kept developing in the meantime! And this woman reminds me of a grandmother, yet she won the Nobel Prize, so I think she's just about the coolest thing ever...

I guess I started thinking about the commons because of the idea of giver/taker cultures. This sort of dichotomy has been explained in books like Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael." Basically the idea is that Western civilization is a "taker" culture; we take resources for our own wealth, enjoyment, enrichment and don't think so much about the health of the environment. But there are other cultures, especially in historical view, that do otherwise. Many indigenous cultures are included in this category... incl the traditional image of Tuvan culture.

How do I see this in real life? Well, most concretely, most inescapably, it is visible in my host family and how we relate to space and food. Food especially. In the weeks before this last trip to the villages, I was being a little bit of a rebel. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was doing things like buying grapefruits and chocolate and eating them at work so I wouldn't have to share! This is really against the sharing protocol in the Tuvan household. In our house, all food is absolutely common property. We eat and cook together; it's like a sacrament of the house and living together. If a guest comes we share everything, holding nothing back. It's not cool to cook something just for yourself or buy something just for yourself...

Before my trip to the villages I was finding this rigorous definition of sharing a little tiresome and was trying to escape or just generally having a bad attitude about things. Well, going to the villages reminded me again of what sharing is all about in the context of Tuvan culture. Basically all that I did in the village was be a guest at very many people's houses. We left Kyzyl early Sat morning (at 7am) drove until 2pm and then went and had tea at seven people's houses in a row. At every house we brought gifts. My stomach felt like it was going to explode after the seventh bowl of Tuvan soup and probably thirtieth cup of tea, but I was into the experience so it didn't matter much. Then the next day we did the same routine of visiting until noon, when we headed back for Kyzyl. Here are some pics:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044658&id=14402335&l=881ab40bbc

The village itself was really small and pretty similar to the village where I lived last summer in Buryatia (are you reading this matt and vito??). The high fences around small, hand-built wooden houses with the ever-central brick stove, the outhouses, the line of shops at the center of town, the dogs and cows lazily wandering about, people walking slowly--looking you in the face, shepherds with their cows grazing on the perimeters, really bumpy roads, old guys drinking vodka at 9am, etc.

The main difference I noticed from Buryatia is that there's a larger police presence in Tuvan villages, which is likely to do with the drug trade in Tuva. In Tuva cannabis grows wild and is probably the republic's main economic product. In the autumn there is harvest season in the fields and whole families including little children gather to support themselves through the winter. Tuva supplies Russia with a lot of its cannabis. On our drive out to the village we stopped to visit some relatives and we saw a couple young village guys get arrested with a 5kg flour sack of hashish. I was surprised at how calm the drug-bust was... the village guys didn't panic, just kind of resignedly climbed into the police jeep. The drug dog was the most excited member of any party. Anyways; the police were pretty obvious in the village and on the roads. They stopped us a couple of times to check our papers, but I got no hassle with my papers thanks to the glib explaining of my hosts (big thanks to them!!)

The Tuvan landscape was gorgeous, beyond par, reminding me a little bit of the most beautiful moments in the drive through Denali park in Alaska. However, the terrain in Tuva is much rougher. The mountains seemed vaguely volcanic to me, but I don't really know anything about the geology of Tuva. There were a million little rivulets in the slopes and no trees except rarely in the riverbeds so everything was really visible. It looked to me a lot like New Mexico, except more dynamic. And from what my hosts were telling me, there's a real almost religious relationship with the landscape. Different mountains have different names and stories associated with their shape and history and these stories live in the minds (and hearts) of the Tuvan people. Anyways; totally gorgeous place, drug busts aside.

I guess all of this leads up to a synthesis of Tuvan nationalism and the Tuvan "nation" which I'm not sure I can adequately articulate. I guess one of the most interesting parts of this year for me has been the experience of living A) in another culture and B) with an indigenous people. In Kyzyl the community of artists and educated people put a lot of energy into creating displays of Tuvan culture. Folk concerts, folk music, the national costume, etc. For me it's very interesting because all of this dialogue is largely being generated by people with the relics of a Soviet mindset. From my understanding, the USSR and Stalin himself put a lot of energy into creating a myth of the USSR as union of people of many cultural backgrounds. I guess nationalism in Russia and former Soviet Union is an endlessly fascinating topic. Here I brush up against it all the time; the concerts I go to are very much engaged in the official national myth, the school curriculum, the concourses that my students participate in (and take more seriously than classwork), and even the signage around the city. I guess, going back to my nationalism class last Fall... that what makes a modern nation distinguished from a traditional culture is that here the government, and the agents of modern media (TV, radio, internet) are engaged in making the myth a living part of people's consciousness, whereas earlier it would all have happened word-of-mouth, oral tradition, one shepherd says to another shepherd, etc.

This official myth is also very interesting to compare with anecdotal evidence I hear of rural Tuvans being violent towards Russians when they meet in Kyzyl. I've heard some really awful stories lately about incidents at the high schools, kids getting smashed on the head with glass bottles, etc. Plus just the overuse of alcohol in the community and general frustration with poverty (which is intense here) and lack of opportunity creates a lot of anger, which results in people lashing out with deathly consequences. It's hard to reconcile the violence of this community with the beautiful natural environment in which the Tuvan people live.

Which leads me to my final consideration, which is the fact that I'm somewhat uncomfortable being a white person here. It sounds kind of silly to write it; and maybe some more culturally sensitive and aware people will have harsh words for me--I would welcome it because my identity is really complicated here and I'd love some insight (that's not an invitation to get up all up in my grill though.. only helpful words please). Growing up in Alaska we had the same kind of landscape, same kind of native community nearby, but I rarely crossed over the divide and was mostly just content in my majority status and study of primarily Western cultures and languages. Then I journeyed to the East for college, and my legs took me even further to the East, to Siberia, and now it's almost taken me home again. Maybe I'm being a little dramatic here, but the experience of living in Tuva has a lot of resonance with the experience of living in Alaska. Both are crazy beautiful, isolated places with an indigenous population, and a main stream, modern national government with its own ideas about how to use the land for the benefit of the nation. I think that if I ever have the chance again to live in Alaska I will really invest a lot more time and energy getting to know native culture and language.

Ok, that's about enough pontification for the present time. I have to go prepare a lesson about the Legends of King Arthur for my smiling students. Peace, Yo!