Major subjects of Siberian regional history in Anglo-american scientific periodicals

The article examines major subjects of Siberian regional history based on the content of the journal “Sibirica” in the context of contemporary approaches in public policies for indigenous peoples. The author discovers that among the basic approaches, which are “paternalistic”, “market-based”, and “neo-traditional”, the latter has quite a lot in common with the “wildlife co-management” trend widespread in Western historiography. Since this approach requires coordinated management efforts made both by the state and indigenous representatives, with its help the authors of “Sibirica” suggest to solve the problems of the preservation and development of traditional livelihoods, culture, national languages and religions of Siberian peoples. Analysis of articles on the Russian Federation’s language policy in relation to indigenous people demonstrates that an ineffective policy in the field of popularizing national languages, as well as the ongoing unification of educational standards for all of the Russian Federation subjects, lead to extinction of the national languages. In addition to the national language, another important issue of the indigenous people’s self-identification is the preservation of the traditional economic livelihoods and fisheries. The Western scientific periodicals quite often broadcast the idea of returning to the community-based self-governing of indigenous peoples as the only way to preserve traditional livelihood and national culture, as well as the opportunity to interact “with the center” to jointly make important decisions about their own present and future. The work also addresses a religious issue that is an integral part of the identity of indigenous peoples. Traditional beliefs, primitive pagan cults and other religious forms that can be found among the indigenous Siberian peoples, as well as the study of factors that influenced the choice of beliefs and finally the study of the role that religion plays in the peoples’ determination of their identity - all these issues become the object of scientific interest of foreign researchers. Having studied the main issues of Siberian studies in the Anglo-American scientific periodicals, as well as current approaches in public policy, where a predominantly paternalistic approach turns out to be as destructive for indigenous peoples as a market-based one, we can conclude that only neo-traditionalist approach can enable indigenous peoples to revive traditional lifestyles. Neo-traditional approach which means co-management of biological resources, a well-designed language policy of the state and creation of mechanisms for selfgovernment of indigenous peoples can give them opportunity to directly formulate their vision and ways of solving economic and social problems.

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