Reindeer People
On page 48, author Piers Vitebsky wrote that “the interior of the country was turned into a homogenized space in which Soviet citizens could be moved from one end of the country to the another and find almost identical conditions wherever they went.”
I have two questions about that statement: A) Was it true? B) What about here in America?
The Soviet Union was incredibly vast, did they manage to at least partly accomplish their goal of having a roughly homogenized state?
In America, we certainly have extremely different cultures based on our regions. Someone from Boston has a very different cultural norm than someone from New Orleans, who is incredibly different than someone from Anchorage, Alaska or someone from San Fransisco. Do we as American aspire for homogeneity as well? Or do we try to be different from each other? I’d say that we embrace common themes like language and common laws but then do as much as we can to differentiate ourselves within those themes. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Should we be pushing for more homogeneity or less?
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On page 262 the book goes into the religious aspects associated with reindeer hunting, and it brought up something I’ve always had a question about. “A hunter can kill a wild animal only when it offers itself at the behest of Bayanay, who decides whether to give an animal or withhold it, place it in the hunter’s path or send it off in another direction.” On page 263 it talks about how a hunter must treat the body of an animal correctly, or he won’t be presented with future animals while hunting.
My question is, if hunting doesn’t work without the intervention of Bayanay, why bother hunting at all? I don’t understand the motivation of a hunter who thinks it wouldn’t matter how hard he hunts or how good he is, his success is determined entirely by Bayanay. Why not sit at home or in camp and wait for Bayanay to deliver something to you?
I grew up in a religious household, and these kind of questions pervaded my thoughts for years. Most people I brought it up to would say “God helps those who help themselves.” Without getting too deep into a religious debate here, that answer satisfied me (kind of), but from what I can tell Reindeer People doesn’t mention that kind of thinking.
I don’t want to degrade the beliefs of the nomadic people in Vitebsky’s book (or anyone else, for that matter) in any way, but I experienced the same confusion as you while reading about their religious lore. It seems to me that their beliefs contradict each other in many ways- if Bayanay presents a hunter with a lot of kills, for example, it could apparently either mean that he is blessed, or that he is going to die. I think the simplest answer to your question is that they hunted because otherwise they would die. I know that’s obvious, but in my experience religion is often superceded by the natural will to live. I would guess that the origin of beliefs of Bayanay began after hunting was already an established practice of obtaining food, so the stories about Bayanay were created to fit into the lives of the hunters, rather than direct them.
You might be a little bit mistaken in your interpretation of Bayanay. I remember a paragraph where Vitebsky wrote that hunters who took care of their bodies were rewarded with kills by Bayanay. This makes sense, as someone who maintains or builds their strength is probably going to be a better hunter than someone who doesn’t. This is another instance of “perspective reversal” where instead of attributing one’s own volition to what happens them, they attribute it to their environment. Instead of “I am strong, so I killed a reindeer,” they perceived it as, “I am strong, so Bayanay rewarded me with a kill.” At this time, they might not have understood why being athletic or being strong was associated with getting more kills, so they attributed their success to a god instead of to principles of biology and physics that we understand and take for granted.
I disagree. I think that you’re right in saying the strength or physical fitness aspect would play into it, but I’m talking about the actual act of hunting itself. Being the strongest man in the village wouldn’t help your hunting prowess in the least bit if you just sat at home all day. What I’m wondering is why bother going to hunt at all, if your success is determined entirely by Bayanay?
Because again they don’t attribute their behavior to their own volition. The fact their hunting is a behavioral response initiated by the need for food. The mistake we make in our modern thinking is that, when we think about our behavior, we think like, “I’m hungry, so I’m going to decide to eat,” when the behavior is more accurately explained as “eating behavior is initiated by the need to eat.” Hunting is a system of behaviors, a system that self-evolved over time. While it includes humans, the system is consists of the environment, the hunted animals, and the collection of humans involved that all act interdependently to form what we call a hunt. While we perceive the people, the animals, and the environment as distinct parts, that’s just an illusion created by our brains.
So, my impression is that the hunters during this time had yet to develop the perspective we have, meaning they didn’t see themselves at the center of their decision-making. Their hunting behaviors are initiated and executed, outside their own free well, by 1) their hunger, which they have no control over, 2) the constraints of their bodies, like their strength, 3) the constraints of the environment that determine where they can go and what they can do, and 4) the behavior of the hunted animals. None of these things they can attribute to their own free will. The error that our brains make automatically is that we perceives ourselves at the center of this system. When I watch myself do something, I unconsciously think, “I did that because I decided to,” when in fact I did that because the interactions between my brain and the environment produced a semi-predictable reaction that “I” was not involved in creating. We assume we are the centers of what we do and what happens to us, when in fact there is no center and this interdependent system carries out on its own. We are just along for the ride, and in this sense the Reindeer People are right.
Ah okay that makes more sense to me now. Thanks for clarifying that up!
When trying to make sense of Bayani and the concept of animals “delivering themselves” I find it helpful to look back at Ingold’s article, “From Trust to Domination” which talks about how hunter gatherers understand their relationship with prey animals (and how domestication changes that understanding).