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 "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 up to 2.5 km. but the widest part of the river is located near the archipelago of the Brekhovskie Islands, 75 km away.

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 Lower Tunguska (2640 km), which begins on the northern slope of the Eminence of 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 current of Lower Tunguska 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 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. It is 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, almost non-mineralized and is rich in oxygen that supports life. In the deepest lower part of the river, the water is rather confusing. But nevertheless the light reaches lower layers of water.

In the 1960s and 1970s, 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, dorado, carp and northern white fish 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 acclimatization results have greatly influenced the fauna of many lakes and rivers of the Yenisei River. Today the fauna includes 46 species of fish.

  

Geographical description

The Yenisei River (in Russian: Енисей)? it is a long river of Russia (in Siberia that flows from the center of Asia to the north draining into the Kara Sea, Arctic Sea. It has a length of 4093 km, but counting the river 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 is born in Kizil (in China) where the Bolshoi Yenisei (great Yenisei) and Maly Yenisei (small Yenisei) rivers that come from the Eastern Sayanes mountains along the Russian-Mongolian border meet, and flows into an estuary of about 400 km conformed by the bay of Yeniséi 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 that remains frozen. Its upper course is turbulent, which has been used for the construction of hydroelectric plants, highlighting the Sayan and Krasnoyarsk dams.

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 (Bolshói Yeniséi) and the Small Yeniséi (Maly Yeniséi) . The Angará river has 1779 km, and joins 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 already runs through Mongolia, with 452 km, is the longest of the two rivers that originate the Selengá River. The Yeniséi-Angará-Baikal-Selengá-Ider total system is 5539 km long.

Ket ethnicity

One of the oldest natives of the Middle Yenisei are the kets, which are also called ostyak. Modern kets lived along the middle eastern section of the river before being politically assimilated to Russia between the 17th and 19th 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 the fishermen and hunter tribes of the Yenisei taiga who adopted some of the cultural forms of those original ket-tongue tribes of southern Siberia. The previous tribes were engaged in hunting, fishing and even the breeding of reindeer in the northern areas.

The Ket were incorporated into the Russian state in the seventeenth century. Their efforts to resist were useless, as 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. 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. [4]

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

The population of Kets has been relatively stable since 1923. According to the 2002 census, there were 1,494 Kets in Russia. This compares to 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 resulted in some collaboration between the Ket and some villages in northern Athabaskan.

Ket means "man" (plural deng "men, people"). The Kets of the Kas, Sym and Dubches rivers use jugun as their 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 accounted for 1,113 ethnic kets with only 537 (48.3%) native speakers.

As of 2008, only about 100 people continued to speak 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, he shared characteristics with those of the Turkish and Mongolian peoples. In addition, there were several types of Ket shamans that differ in function (sacred 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 the shamanic revival, although it can also symbolize the bones of the loon (the shaman's auxiliary animal, which joins the aerial and underwater world, as well as the history of the shaman who traveled both to heaven and the underworld.The skeleton overlay also represented the shamanic revival among other Siberian cultures.

Of great importance for the Kets are the dolls, which are described as "a bone of the animal's shoulder wrapped in a piece of cloth that simulates clothes." An adult Ket, who had been neglected with a cigarette, said: "It is a pity that I do not have my doll. My house caught fire along with my dolls." The Kets consider their dolls as domestic deities who 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 is the Kets, also the Ostiaks streets that live in the Middle Yenisei region. Modern Kets used to live along the middle eastern section of the river before being politically assimilated 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 himself