Narrative Objects: Museums, the Sakha Summer Festival, and Cultural Revival in Siberia

In 1867 a unique mammoth ivory model carved by a Sakha craftsman in the far east of the Russian Empire was exhibited at the Paris International Exhibition and subsequently purchased by the British Museum. This model depicts in miniature participants in yhyakh – the annual summer celebration of the Sakha people. 150 years later the model was loaned to the National Museum of the Arts of the Sakha Republic and became the focus of conversations and artistic engagements concerning how historic objects can contribute to wider processes of cultural revival. As Sakha people revisit past histories and reconstitute cultural knowledge following decades of Soviet rule, the model’s return generated narratives which speak to wider concerns in anthropology, material culture studies and history about how knowledge is both suppressed and engaged with, how art can be a focus for cultural pride, and how skilled practices are entwined with oral histories. Written by a Sakha anthropologist and a museum specialist, the book draws on fieldwork, museum, and archival research in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Paris and London.
The regional focus on the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) will appeal to scholars working in the subarctic, as well as to those with interests in the post-Soviet states. A further audience is museum anthropologists concerned with the potential of museum artefacts for fostering creative practice and cultural renewal.