Feasts and Festivals among Contemporary Siberian Communities

The chapter provides an overview of contemporary religious and secular festivals today in Siberia, which have originated in diverse Indigenous religious practices, institutionalized religion, and the secularized rituals of Soviet times. Many public festivals like the Sakha “Yhyakh” or the widespread “Day of the Reindeer Herder” serve as displays of ethnic identity, but Siberian feasting culture contains also intimate and sometimes hidden local ritual practices like shamanic rituals, sacrificial rituals, or the bear ceremonialism celebrating and negotiating the relations to supernatural power and non-human agents. The chapter will explore how Siberian feasts and ritual practices can represent, perform, and also transform social relations in local communities and the society at large.