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"You've been after me for three years to show you an ancient shamanic rite," said the Russian poet Yuvan Shestalov, rubbing his hands in anticipation, "and now we're only a short ride from the village." We had just landed at the airport in northwest Siberia's Khanty-Mansi National District, an oil-rich territory the size of France. Its coniferous forests, or taiga, and vast frozen tundra are the homeland of the Mansi people--reindeer herders who number about 7,000--and of the Khanty, who are about 21,000 strong. These Finno-Ugrian peoples, who live along the northern tributaries of the Ob River, have never been won over to Christianity, Islam, faring, or city life.
A jeep containing our official welcoming committee, including the region's president, rolled toward us across the tarmac. As she greeted us, the president began unconsciously imitating my friend's eccentric hand movements. Yuvan, a native of the region, whispered to me that his grandfather had been a celebrated shaman, and that he, too, had been ordained by the spirits to become one. Instead, I knew, he had attended university in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg again) and become well known for writing mystical poetry celebrating his Mansi roots. "Each time I come home to this land of the Mansi and the Khanty," he added, "I feel a mysterious power coursing through my veins."
A few hundred years ago, the Khanty and Mansi, then known as Ostyaks and Voguls, had ranged into western Russia, but more aggressive tribes drove them back across the Urs into Asia. In the sixteenth century, during the rule of Ivan the Terrible, the Cossack chief Yermak conquered the vast Siberian lands for Russia. Although all of Russia had officially adopted Christianity in 988, shamanic folk religions prevailed for centuries in outlying districts. Today they survive only among the Siberian hunters and reindeer breeders we had come to visit.
We had traveled to Yuvan's homeland specifically to attend a bear festival, an ancient spectacle that is rare in the modern world. Lasting anywhere from several days to a week, this end-of-winter holiday begins when a hunter kills a bear and the locals decide that they must placate the animal's disturbed spirit. During the Communist regime, this popular folk holiday was banned and its practitioners persecuted...