Siberia, the Yenisei River and the Ket nation, a people of survivors

The Siberian soul is made up of the arctic desert, the endless tundra, the green taiga ocean and the "father Yenisei", the pride of the Krasnoyarsk region.

Many people admire its power and beauty, but few know that Yenisei is one of the largest rivers in Russia. Its length is 3487 km. It is the deepest river in the country, in some places the depth reaches 70 m. The width of Yenisei does not exceed 500-700 m, but when it joins Angara, which is 3 times wider than the Yenisei, it widens to 2.5 km. but the widest part of the river is located near the archipelago of the Brekhovskie Islands, 75 km.

The river occupies a vast territory. Its basin comprises 184,000 lakes and more than 20,000 rivers. The basin is not symmetrical: the right part is 5 times larger than the left. The largest tributaries are Angara, Lower Tunguska and Podkamennaya Tunguska that flow to Yenisei from the right bank. There are few tributaries on the left side and they are not very large: Abakan, Sym, Elogui and Turuhan.

The largest tributary is the Lower Tunguska (2640 km), which begins on the northern slope of the eminence of the Upper Tunguska, not far from the Lena River. The lakes of the Lower Tunguska basin are Vivi, Tembenchi, Bajo Agata, Alto Agata, Nyagshinda and Pashkino. The Low Tunguska current can fascinate everyone.

Another large tributary of the Yenisei is Angara (1826 km). The name of the river comes from Evenkia. "Anga" means "the jaws of an animal". It leaves Lake Baikal, one of the largest lakes in the world. The depth of the lake is 1265 m. Its flora and fauna are unique (82% can only be found in the territory of the lake).

Podkamennaya Tunguska (1614 km) is also a large tributary of Yenisei. It is open for navigation only in spring, although it is the only road to the south of Evenkia.

The tributaries of the upper Yenisei are much smaller. Abakan - 512 km, Kemchik - 323 km, Tuba - 121 km, Kan - 643 m.

Yenisei is a clear river. Almost unaffected by human activity, although dams change their flow. There are several hydroelectric plants built in Yenisei and its tributaries. The water is clear, it is almost not mineralized and it is rich in oxygen that supports life. In the deepest part of the river, the water is rather confused. But nevertheless the light reaches lower layers of water.

In the sixties and seventies, fish acclimatization and flow regulation works were carried out in Yenisei. Some species of fish were deliberately introduced into the river. They are Baikal omul, gilthead, carp and whitefish from the north in the Krasnoyarsk water basin; Siberian salmon, humpback salmon and trout in the southern lakes of the region; Other species have reached the river independently.

The results of the acclimatization have greatly influenced the fauna of many lakes and rivers of the Yenisei River. Today the fauna includes 46 species of fish.

Geographic description

The Yenisei River (Russian: Енисей)? It is a long river of Russia (in Siberia that flows from the center of Asia towards the north draining in the sea of ​​Kara, Arctic sea.) It has a length of 4093 km, but counting the fluvial system Yenisei-Angarà-Lake Baikao-Selengá- Ider reaches 5539 km, which places it among the five longest rivers in the world.Its basin covers about 2 580 000 km².

It otiginates in Kizil (in China) where the rivers Bolshoi Yenisei (great Yenisei) and the river Maly Yenisei (small Yenisei) come from the Eastern Sayanes mountains along the Mongolian-Russian border, and flows into an estuary of some 400 km formed by Yenisei Bay in the Arctic

It runs through the center of Siberia in a South-North direction. Most of the river is navigable, except between November and May, which remains frozen. Its upper course is turbulent, which has been used for the construction of hydroelectric power stations, highlighting the dams of Sayan and Krasnoyarsk.

The most important cities on its banks are Kizil, Shagonar, Syanogorstk, Abakan, Krasnoyarsk, Yeniseisk, Lesosibirsk, Igarza and Dudinka.

The Yeniséi River has a length of 4,093 km, although it is usually considered divided into sections, the upper part being the Upper Yenisei, which in turn is formed by the union of the Great Yeniséi (Bolshoi Yeniséi) and the Small Yenisei (Maly Yeniséi) . The Angará River is 1779 km long, linking Lake Baikal with the middle course of the Yenisei River. The largest tributary of Lake Baikal is the Selengá River, with a length of 992 km. The Ideriin River, which runs through Mongolia with 452 km, is the longest of the two rivers that originate the Selengá River. The total system Yeniséi-Angará-lake Baikal-Selengá-Ider has 5539 km.

The ancient ket nation

One of the most ancient native people of the Middle Yenisei are the kets, which are also called ostyak. The modern kets lived along the middle eastern stretch of the river before being assimilated politically to Russia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. According to the 2010 census, there were 1,220 kets in Russia.

It is believed that the Ket are the only survivors of an ancient nomadic people believed to have originally lived in central and southern Siberia. In the 1960s, the Yugh distinguished themselves as a separate, albeit similar, group. Today's kets are the descendants of Yenisei taiga fishermen and hunters who adopted some of the cultural forms of those original Ket language tribes of southern Siberia. The previous tribes were dedicated to hunting, fishing and even reindeer husbandry in the northern areas.

The Ket were incorporated into the Russian state in the seventeenth century. Their efforts to resist were useless, since the Russians deported them to different places to break their resistance. This also broke his strictly organized patriarchal social system and his way of life disintegrated. The Ket people accumulated huge debts with the Russians. Some died of hunger, others of diseases introduced from Europe. By the 19th century, the Kets could no longer survive without the food support of the Russian state.

In the 20th century, the Soviets forced collectivization in the Ket. They were officially recognized as Kets in the 1930s, when the Soviet Union began to implement the policy of self-definition with respect to indigenous peoples. However, the Ket traditions continued to be suppressed and the initiative itself discouraged. The collectivization was completed in the 1950s and the Russian way of life and language were imposed on the Ket people.

The Kets population has been relatively stable since 1923. According to the 2002 census, there were 1,494 Kets in Russia. This compares with 1,200 in the 1970 census. Today, the Ket live in small towns along the banks of the rivers and are no longer nomads.

The Ket language has been linked to the Na-Dené languages ​​of North America in the Dené-Yeniseian language family. This link has led to some collaboration between the Ket and some villages in the north of Athabaskan.

 Ket means "man" (plural deng "men, people"). The rivers Kets of the Kas, Sym and Dubches use the jugun as self-denomination.

In 1926, there were 1,428 Kets, of which 1,225 (85.8%) were native speakers of the Ket language. The 1989 census counted 1,113 ethnic kets with only 537 (48.3%) native speakers.

As of 2008, only about 100 people were still speaking Ket fluently, half of them more than 50. [6] It is completely different from any other language in Siberia. [one]

The traditional Ket culture was investigated by Mathias Castrén, Vasiliy Ivanovich Anuchin, Kai Donner, Hans Findeisen and Yevgeniya Alekseyevna Alekseyenko. Shamanism was a living practice in the 1930s, but in the 1960s you could hardly find authentic shamans. Shamanism is not a homogeneous phenomenon, nor shamanism in Siberia. As for shamanism among the kets, it shared characteristics with those of the Turkish and Mongolian peoples. In addition, there were several types of Ket shamans that differ in function (sacral rites, healing), power and associated animals (deer, bears). In addition, among the Kets (as with other Siberian peoples such as the Karagas, there are examples of the use of skeletal symbols.) Hoppál interprets this as a symbol of shamanic rebirth, although it can also symbolize the bones of the loon (the auxiliary animal of the shaman, that joins the aerial and submarine world, as well as the history of the shaman who traveled both to the sky and to the underworld.The skeleton superposition also represented the shamanic renaissance among other Siberian cultures.

Of great importance to the Kets are the dolls, which are described as "a bone of the animal's shoulder wrapped in a piece of cloth that simulates the clothes". An adult Ket, who had been careless with a cigarette, said: "It's a pity I do not have my doll, my house caught fire with my wrists." The Kets consider their dolls as domestic deities that sleep in the During the day and protect them at night.

After the Russian invasion and colonization, most of the natives of the Yenisei basin became extinct. One of the few surviving ethnic groups are the Kets, also the Ostiaks streets that live in the Middle Yenisei region. Modern Kets used to live along the eastern half of the river before being assimilated politically to Russia between the 17th and 19th centuries. According to the 2010 census, there were 1,220 Kets in Russia.

It is believed that Ket are the only survivors of an ancient nomadic people believed to have originally lived in central and southern Siberia. In the 1960s, the yugh distinguished themselves