Facing the Fire, Taking the Stage

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In the mid-2000s, Russia's government began to merge autonomous regions (okrugs), including the two regions held by its largest indigenous population, the Mongolic-speaking Buryats, into its Siberian administrative territories. As state institutions used public performances of Buryat culture to show support for this separation of nationality from territorial sovereignty, the resurgence of everyday rituals reinforced the same custodial ties to Buryat lands which the National Cultural Autonomy policy was designed to eliminate. In Facing the Fire, Taking the Stage, Joseph J. Long provides new insights into the connections between inward-facing Western Buryat shamanist ritual practices and outward-facing institutionalized performing arts. Both forms of cultural expression have created a space for Buryats to constantly negotiate, renegotiate, and make public different kinds of belonging and, in some cases, have blurred the line between private and public. Based primarily on anthropological fieldwork undertaken in Western Buryat territory during the process of dissolution, this book provides firsthand accounts and original photographs of everyday ritual practices, hearth offering rites, tailgan ceremonies, and dance and folklore routines. Facing the Fire, Taking the Stage explores the relationship between shamanic rituals and formal performing arts, showing how post-Soviet public culture and performances are shaped by one another to create new symbols of national identity