Chapter 25 Part III Supplements of Grassland Shaman Culture-1

The morning breeze blows the grass waves The sheep kisses the fragrance The whip shattered the mist The song calls to the morning sun Beautiful Hulun Buir Grassland you are my lovely hometown you are like a blooming flower always exudes fragrance ... I like grasslands. Hulunbuir used to be my most enviable dream. This dream does not disappear because of my many visits. With the extension of time and contacts, the dream becomes stronger and stronger. In the Ewenki Autonomous Banner of the Hulunbeier League, I met Tu Jianjun who had already worked at the Institute of Ethnic Studies of the Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Sciences in Hohhot. He accompanied me on the visit.At Jianjun’s house, they always let me drink spring water from the Vina River, 180 kilometers away.In the valley on the north side of the Wena Mountains at the northern foot of the Great Khingan Mountains, the Weina River gushes out eight springs in the open ground folds. It is said that this is divine water. The water flowing out of different springs can cure different diseases. Therefore, it is named Heart Spring, Stomach Spring, Head Spring, Ear Spring, Nose Spring, Gastric Acid Spring, Universal Spring, Bathing Spring, etc.It is hard for people to think that this kind of spring water directly from the spring is rich in foam and tastes like soda.

The shaman culture of the grassland has entered a period of decline in its own life, a stage in which memories are more than reality.The elderly here more or less retain some fragments of memory. Of course, there are many cultural experts of their own ethnic groups. Some of them can speak, some can write (such as Haher and He Xiuzhi of the Ewenki nationality), and some can perform.There are also several old shamans who are still alive.According to statistics, by 1979 there were less than 10 Ewenki shamans still alive.It can be seen that we are picking up those precious souvenirs on the riverbed of the long river of history.

There are different ethnic groups living in the grassland, including Mongolian, Daur, Ewenki, Oroqen, Han... There are historical memories of different ethnic groups, as well as regional cultural phenomena and cultural accumulation.In the words of some Ewenki friends: Oroqen are our uncles and brothers, and Daur are our cousins ​​(brothers-in-law). my country's Ewenki population is 26,315 (according to the 1990 national census), of which 22,808 live in Hulun Buir League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.According to scholars' research, due to historical migration and the dispersion and isolation of living areas, the Ewenki people were once divided into three groups: "Sauron", "Tungus" and "Yakut".Among them, the Saurons are the most, engaged in nomadism, hunting and agriculture; the Tungus are Ewenki living in Chenbarhu Banner, mainly engaged in animal husbandry; Yakut is a small part of the Ewenki, living in Ergu Nazuo Banner is mainly engaged in hunting and raising reindeer.Due to scattered regions, different production activities, and different influences from external advanced production methods, their social development is extremely uneven.The two groups of people called "Sauron" and "Tungus" entered the patriarchal feudal society a long time ago, while a small group of people called "Yakutia" were very productive due to their relatively primitive hunting production. Low, before liberation, it was still in the historical stage of patrilineal family communes at the end of primitive society.

The social and historical investigation of the Ewenki began in the middle of the 20th century, with Guobuku, Lu Guangtian, Wuyun Dalai, etc. as the main investigators on the spot, involving the social organization, economic life, history and culture, language and literature, and shamanism of the ethnic group. Faith, these results are mainly included in the "Survey of Ewenki Social History" edited by Lu Guangtian (Inner Mongolia People's Publishing House, published in 1986) and some individual scholars' works. In the early 1990s, a special survey on Shamanism represented by ethnic scholars and ethnic cultural workers was launched.During this period, the surveys covered the main settlements of the Ewenki people, and the survey results were unprecedented.The main achievements include a batch of shamanic ceremony videos, a large number of shamanic costumes and other religious relics, shamanic songs and shamanic autobiography, etc. At the end of the 1990s, the Ewenki Ethnic Museum was established, and a group of excavated or replicated Ewenki Shamanic cultural relics were displayed together, which represents the main research results so far.

On August 10, 2003, 37 Ewenki hunters from 11 households in Aoluguya Township, Genhe City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and their hundreds of reindeer, took 17 trucks from the virgin forest in the hinterland of Daxing’an Mountains to the outskirts of Genhe City, Inner Mongolia. The third workshop - the new hometown built by the government to carry out "ecological immigration".This news was reported by CCTV and other media one after another. These hunters are called "the last hunters who came out of the virgin forest" in northern China, and their migration marks that this people has completely left their traditional homeland and started a new settled life.

Who is Niura?Niula used to be a famous female shaman among the "hunting people who came out of the primeval forest" in the Daxing'an Mountains. In the Ewenki Museum there is the most primitive buckskin shaman costume in China. Many visitors ask: Which shaman is this?The answer is: Niura's. Niura passed away in July 1997.I also visited her in late June, 1997. At that time, she was lying in her own home, unable to move, eating and defecating, and everything was on the bed. (1.) Her daughter was in charge of her service. Niura looked at me, and I noticed a gleam in her eyes, so sharp that it made people tremble.After staring for a while, she closed her eyes slightly, with a smile on her lips.Anyone who saw Niura's eyes at that time would not think that she would go so fast.

In mid-October 1986, the League Ethnic Committee invited Niula to hold a "celestial sacrifice ceremony" in Aoluguya Ewenki Ethnic Township. At this time, Niula was nearly 80 years old.She puts on the shaman costume, holds an oval single-sided drum, and beats the drum to worship the sky. (2) The ceremony is carried out in the forest, and the sacrifices are reindeer, one male and one female.The reindeer is killed, and the drum surface is painted with blood to worship the drum. On the altar are the deer's head, four hooves and some bone internal organs.Niura explained to the god why she sacrificed to the heavens (the purpose this time was to sort out Shamanism) and what kind of sacrifice she offered.She sometimes sits on the ground, sometimes beats drums and sings, begging the gods to bless the Ewenki people.This ceremony lasted until late at night, and Niura communicated with the gods from time to time. Teacher Su Ritai said that he heard Niura begging the gods to withdraw, saying that she was too old to dance and could no longer be a shaman.

Perhaps it is we, the excavators of national culture, who keep Niura from stopping. She is a shaman, and she will always be a shaman.Now Nyura can say goodbye to her shaman status and return to her gods to perform errands with them.Is she much more relaxed now? (3) (4) (5) The most precious treasure Niura left us is her shaman suit.Not only is it original (there are many copies, not used by shamans), but it is also adorned with symbols of various animal idols and deities of nature, among them the sun, moon, stars, thunder, snakes, swans, cuckoos Birds, fish, bears, wolves, wild boars, in addition to the symbolic spine, joint bones, hip bones, ribs, thigh bones, shin bones and blood vessels.These objects arouse the imagination of viewers and researchers, many of which may have been taken away by Niura. (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

What Niula left us is history, the history and culture that a nation once had, and the road that mankind has traveled.How lacking would man be if he did not know his own history?The nourishment of the human spirit is inseparable from history, and cannot be separated from the wisdom provided by various nations to the entire earth.Instead of just singing dirges for a lost culture, we should do something about it. But what can we do? Saying goodbye to the critically ill Niu La, we came to the streets of Aoluguya Township, which is no longer Niu La's era.The streets are flat, the houses are neat and bright, and the children in beautiful clothes are all speaking Chinese in elementary school. The township hospital is close at hand, and the school building stands majestically.Only the museum of the reindeer Evenki still conveys the message of the past.We visited several young people's families by the way. They speak Chinese fluently, don't wear traditional clothes, eat wild animal meat, drink alcohol is very common, even for young girls, you can't underestimate their alcohol consumption.

The township head, Gu Xinjun, is a young Ewenki. He is most worried about the establishment of a folk tourism village.He marked out a piece of land in the woods not far away, and wanted to make some ethnic-specific furnishings and service facilities in it.It can be seen that he is working hard every day in the folk village he built.He took us on a tour and explained his various plans along the way. All we can see now is a gate sign and a few simple "fairy columns". I suggest going to Liemin Point to have a look. In my imagination, Liemin Point has more cultural connotations than this folk village. Everything there is not specially arranged for tourist visits, but its features are the most attractive to tourists. Eyes, manage the hunters well, kill two birds with one stone, this is called doing nothing.

The so-called hunting spot is the place where the Ewenki people raise reindeer in the mountains. More than 40 people from nearly 20 households have contracted the reindeer.They live in the mountains, living in tents, and several hunters or families share reindeer. The reindeer here follow the traditional form. People put the reindeer in the mountains and let them feed freely without following them.If you want to saw the antler, you have to recall the deer first. I saw people picking up some dry firewood and branches and lighting them. The thick smoke drifted to the forest. After a while, the deer were running here. The reindeer are in the pen, (20) choose the antler among them, and once selected, hold the deer down and saw its antler.The women explained to me that there are countless mosquitoes and flies in the forest in summer, and the hunters always use smoke to drive away the mosquitoes and flies that bite the reindeer. Whenever the white smoke rises, the reindeer will run to the place where the smoke is. Just use this method to recall the reindeer.As for winter, salt is fed to the reindeer, and the dependence on salt makes the reindeer inseparable from people. (twenty one) After the huge deer antler is sawed off, (22) there is always blood fluid left on it. Someone told me that deer blood is the most precious medicinal material, and the blood drop of deer antler is second only to deer blood.So if you buy deer antler, you have to see if there is blood in it. Aoluguya is located at the confluence of Jiliu River and Aoluguya River. During the flood season, the river floods, houses are flooded, and deer enclosures are destroyed.Such continuous disasters have forced the Genhe Municipal Government, where Aoluguya belongs, to consider the issue of ecological migration. The purpose is to keep the property and life of hunters away from the threat of floods that they face every year. In 1999, the state issued a one-time poverty alleviation policy for ethnic minorities with a population of less than 100,000. The local government decided to build settlements for Ewenki hunters in accordance with this policy, allowing them to live a permanent settled life.The address of the ecological resettlement was chosen at the third workshop on the west side of Genhe City. The government intends to develop the new Ao Township into a deer breeding and deer product processing base, so that the hunters can get rid of poverty and become rich.Schools, hospitals, museums, nursing homes, etc. are also in the government's construction plan.This settlement is also an ethnic tourist village, through which the history and culture of the Ewenki hunters are displayed to the world. However, in Shi Xin's "Tribal Changes—New Homes of the Ewenki" published on the 25-26 edition of Southern Weekly on August 28, 2003, we see that the local government's aspirations have not been met by the hunters. Agree, they believe: "It doesn't matter where the home is, but the reindeer can't go down the mountain."Traditional life tells them that reindeer are looking for places where there are few people and rich moss, so hunters are destined to follow the footprints of reindeer and keep wandering.The local government's plan to raise reindeer in captivity is still inexperienced for hunters, so hunters are worried about this "ecological change".Compared with their own reindeer experience passed down from generation to generation, they think that the breeders appointed by the government do not understand reindeer at all. Facing the ideological resistance of the hunters, the local government decided to make concessions.Seven days after the first group of hunters moved to their new location, the government agreed to return the first group of reindeer to the mountains.The reindeer returned to the forest, and the hunters were all smiles. Regardless of the mosquito bites on the mountain, the representatives of each family crowded into the tents on the mountain to be on duty.Now the 48 deer pens at the new site in Ao Township look empty. The hunters are neither willing to go down the mountain nor eager to return to the forest. Is it really just out of consideration for the survival of the reindeer? The complete tribal social life of the Ewenki has long since declined, and there are very few traditions left over from the clan organization and clan system.Shamanism, the primitive religion that once concentrated on the life of reindeer, has become people's memory with the death of the last old shaman.The remaining traditional resource is its main economic way of life - reindeer. Therefore, the reindeer is a concentrated display of the Ewenki tradition. For this nation, the reindeer is the "lifeblood", and a nation's cultural identity is built on its "root", and thus expresses the self-awareness of a group. Reindeer, on a spiritual level, represent the consciousness of "us", honoring and energizing the Evenki people. The tradition left by the ancestors is the embodiment of cultural inheritance and the root of the group consciousness of the Ewenki people.This is a signal of collective identity and carries a very important socio-psychological value, which is not fully understood by the local administration. This ecological migration also reveals the general mentality of Evenki hunters in the face of huge and unpredictable changes.They lack a sense of cultural security and express their sense of self-protection by rejecting external influences.The hunters fantasized that their isolated homes could last, and this continuity was obtained through the persistence of the reindeer up the mountain.Relocation means a change in lifestyle. Thinking of this, the hunters will burst into tears. I am moved by the hunters' insistence on tradition, but I have to question how long they can persist.Seeing myself taking pictures of Ewenki children in front of Aoluguya Primary School, it is hard to imagine that the future of these children is still in the mountains?Is there something missing in our education, or is there something our hunters have to learn under passive cultural transformation? Feelings of insecurity are perfectly natural when the core of a nation's culture is weakened.If we love rare natural species, we will also cherish the collective identity and national culture of ethnic minorities.In the government's decision-making, should we also strengthen communication with ethnic minorities, listen to their opinions, and take care of and solve problems that disturb them from different angles and aspects.How to effectively protect the livelihood security of ethnic minorities, promote their economic development, and realize their cultural interests is a major task entrusted to government departments at all levels by the times. People of insight in today's world regard the establishment of a global community that highly respects local traditions and cultural diversity as a rational pursuit of globalization. They advocate global symbiosis (global associationalism), through which those very different interests More or less are systematically combined for the benefit of the whole.Such a goal not only enlightens people's understanding of modern pluralism, but also hopes that people will pay attention to cultural differences.These vivid differences are also part of the world and have equal status in demonstrating the diversity and richness of the world's cultures.The attitude of caring for differences is also a kind of broad humanistic spirit.