Arctic Pastoralist Sakha Quotes

“The yearly cycle of Sakha subsistence related to the natural environment is apparent in their calendar. The new year begins in May, or the month of fish spawning (Yam). June is Bes, or pine, July is Ot, or grass, August is Atyrd'akh, or rake, and September is Balagan, a style of Sakha house. Grass and rakes are, of course, references to grass cutting subsistence practices, while balagan are the traditional wooden houses that the Sakha use during the winter, as opposed to uraha, which are cone-shaped white birch houses used in summer.
The names for October, November, December, January, and February are Altynn'y, Setinn'l, Akhsynn'y, Tokhsunn'u, and Olunn'u. These mean, respectively, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months counting from the new year in May. The spring months of March and April are called Kulun Tutar and Muus Ustar, or the months of foals and flowing ice, respectively. These are references to the rush of foal births and the thawing of the Lena River. In actuality, foals are not born until April and drift ice does not appear until May. Although these last two months show a slight delay between events and names, the calendar indicates how the Sakha engage in pastoralism, grass cutting, and fishing activities throughout the year. It is also interesting that the winter months between October and February are given simple numeric names.”
― Hiroki Takakura, Arctic Pastoralist Sakha: Ethnography of Evolution and Microadaptation in Siberia

“There are also scholars who point out that the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and pastoralism is not an irreversible and one-directional process. That is, the choice of subsistence depends on the natural and social conditions available to a group, which means that transition from farming to hunting and gathering is also possible (Layton, et al., 1991). In fact, the concept of a hunter-herder continuum has been raised in the context of Siberia, where a shift from reindeer husbandry to reindeer hunting occurred during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (Ventsel, 2006) and again during the period of post-socialist transition (Takakura, 2008a).”
― Hiroki Takakura, Arctic Pastoralist Sakha: Ethnography of Evolution and Microadaptation in Siberia