#uilta

Uilta Indigenous girl from Sakhalin Island of Siberia in traditional clothing.

Photo and text by: Alexander Khimushin, from "The World in Faces" photo project. Diversity of traditional cultures of the world through the portraits of Indigenous People.

"Uilta Indigenous People (also known as Orok) are one of the smallest ethnic groups of Siberia living the the Far East. There are only about 200 Uilta People living on this planet. The Uilta language that belongs to Tungusic language family is spoken today by just a very few elderly people.

Uilta Indigenous Peoples home is Sakhalin - the largest Island of Russia stretching for about 1000 km directly to the North of Hokkaido Island of Japan. Recent research indicates that Uilta People are related to Ulchi People and migrated to Sakhalin from Khabarovski Krai, the mainland Russia, around 17th century. At that point in time the Island was a sphere of influence of the Chinese Empire. A hundred years later Sakhalin become administered by both, the Russian Empire and Japan. A penal colony was established on Sakhalin bringing large numbers of Russian political exiles. One of them, Lev Sternberg, became an important early ethnographer on Uilta, Nivkh and Ainu People. After Japan-Russia war, in the 1920s, The Northern part of Sakhalin became part of Russia and the Southern Part became Karafuto Prefecture of Japan. This situation lasted until 1945, when Japan capitulated after the WWII. That's why Uilta People who lived in Poronaysk (also known by Japanese name of Sikuka) and born before 1945 have Japanese names.

My good friend and the spiritual leader of Uita People, Minato Siryuko, is one of them. Living on the shores of the Gulf of Patience every summer, Minato, an honorable elder of Uilta community, performs Feeding of the Spirit of The Sea ceremony, when all Uilta and Nivkh People gather together for an annual celebration that held at summer solstice. In the Sakhalin there were 3 Indigenous Ethnic groups - Ainu, Nivkh and Uilta. When Japan capitulated in 1945 Ainu People were taken by Japanese back to Hokkaido (the Ainu People historical homeland), the Nivkhs and Uilta were considered as natives of Sakhalin and left on the Island. Because of that some Nivkh and Uilta who served in the Imperial Japanese Army were held in Soviet work camps. There is a an abandoned memorial that Minato took me to, with the name of those Uilta who died at that turbulent time. In 2017 I was contacted by LeCiel Foundation team who were making a documentary about 12 highly spiritual elders of Indigenous People from all over the world. They wanted to include to the film Uilta People of Sakhalin as well. A Google search brought them my photos of Uilta. Guys from LeCiel called me from London and told me about their project, I thought it was really interesting and without much hesitation I agreed to take them to Sakhalin Island and to introduce them to Minato, acting as a local fixer and translator at the same time)) Then, during the filming, The LeCiel founders unexpectedly invited Minato to the United Nations. The invitation was also sent to all twelve Indigenous leaders who were filmed. She really wanted to travel there, but was afraid going alone, so I was offered to accompany her (I had to come back from Mongolia where I was filming my own project) This is how the Uilta Indigenous People spiritual leader from Siberia and a nomadic photographer, living in Australia at that time, ended up at the United Nations in New York City together!

Sakhalin, Uilta - Pouch, 19th. Century. Fish skin (Sturgeon) .

Sakhalin Uilta / Figurine, 19th. century. Wood and cotton. .

Sakhalin Uilta / Figurine, 19th. century. Wood. .

Portraits of the people of Siberia by Alexander Khimushin

I’ve been enjoying this series from one of the staff writers - they are well researched and articulate.

https://unseenjapan.com/uilta-sakhalan-japan-part-1/

There is a second part as well which is only available to patrons at present, but it seems their articles will open up after a period of time.

Abstract: Indigenous people are often depicted as helpless victims of the forces of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial empire building: forces that were beyond their understanding or control. Focusing on the story of a mid-nineteenth century diplomatic mission by Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw), this essay (the first of a two-part series), challenges that view, suggesting instead that, despite the enormous power imbalances that they faced, indigenous groups sometimes intervened energetically and strategically in the historical process going on around them, had some impact on the outcome of these processes. In Part 1, we look at the story of one Sakhalin Ainu family over multiple generations in order to highlight the strategic place of the Sakhalin Ainu in cross-border relationships – particularly in the relationship between China and Japan – from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

The Mission

In late December 1853, about six months after US Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Uraga Bay on his mission to ‘open’ Japan to the world, a Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw) elder named Setokurero set out from the village of Nayoro on the west coast of Sakhalin island on his own crucial diplomatic mission.1 He travelled in a convoy of fifteen dog sleighs through the winter blizzards, accompanied by a retinue of some twenty Ainu elders from surrounding villages and one Nivkh man from the Amur region of mainland Asia.2 They were heading for Kushunkotan on the southern shores of Sakhalin, where the Japanese had established a fortified trading post in the early nineteenth century, and where the Russians had also recently landed to stake their rival claim to the island. The aim of the Ainu elders’ mission was to learn more about Russo-Japanese competition for control of Sakhalin, to express their own views on the matter, and to seek Russian help in resisting Japanese exploitation of the Ainu.

The Ainu of Sakhalin, Hokkaido and the Kurile Islands, like the Nivkh and Uilta indigenous peoples who also inhabited Sakhalin, lived in small self-governing villages and did not have any single dominant chief, but Setokurero was a particularly well known and influential elder. He was respected for his oratorical skills3, and his village and family had a special place in Sakhalin history (which we will explore further). His coastal community of Nayoro was – in terms of the modern concept of towns or even villages – tiny. In 1853, it consisted of six houses on either bank of a small marshy river, containing a population of around fifty people.4 But it was a crossroads and emporium on a far-reaching trade route whose tentacles stretched, at one end, deep into the heartland of the Chinese Empire, and at the other end to the Shogunal capital of Edo (soon to become Tokyo) and beyond.5 From the Chinese side, items like silk brocade, cotton cloth, metalware, decorative blue beads, tobacco and smoking pipes flowed into Nayoro and other points on the Sakhalin trade route, and some of these goods (particularly Chinese brocades) travelled on to the luxury goods markets of Japan. From the Japanese side came items such as rice, saké, miso paste, and pots and pans. The medium of exchange was ‘soft gold’ (as the Russians called it): fur, in the form of the pelts of sable, fox, sea otters and other animals hunted by the indigenous people of the region.

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