Dolgansky Talk

In August-September 2025, an expedition from the Arctic Research Center of the MAE RAS conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the eastern Dolgans of the Taimyr Dolgan-Nenets Municipal District of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The study focused on the renewal of the ethnic identity of the Dolgans, the youngest indigenous small-numbered people of the North, whose culture was formed through complex ethnocultural interactions. The methodological basis of the study is the concept of new ethnography, which assumes the multi-subjectivity of the ethnographic narrative: along with the author's research perspective, the article presents the voices of the culture bearers themselves, articulating their own positions and interpretations of their culture's image. Key markers of Dolgan identity are presented: awareness of their complex, multicomponent origins; an aesthetic code (including traditional costume and ornamentation), ethical norms (the custom of sharing the first catch, mutual aid practices), rituals (alastyr, algys, delbirge), and dance tradition (heiro). Contemporary strategies of cultural adaptation are considered. It is shown that the eclecticism of Dolgan culture should be interpreted as an adaptive strategy that ensured the formation of a flexible cultural system capable of incorporating innovations without losing core values. One of the issues of research interest is the study of the ethnic history of the Dolgan people from the perspective of the ethnography of communications, with an emphasis on the distribution of living and working space between them and neighboring peoples and the interactions of various ethnic groups during the development of Taimyr

Dance · Eclecticism · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Field research · Indigenous · Participant observation · European Linguistics and Anthropology · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies