The Mansi. Modern Culture and Crafts, Folklore Groups, Professional Art

In the late 1980s-early 1990s, the Khanty-Mansi autonomous area – Yugra launched a large-scale ethnic cultural movement spearheaded by the Save Yugra Association. The dynamic ethnic education changed the status of traditional Khanty and Mansi cultures: while in the Soviet time, they were labeled “backward,” “conservative,” and “peripheral,” in the 1990s, they started to be called “unique” and “original.” Ethnic intelligentsia now could express their own perceptions of their cultural values. 

Since the late 1980s, Finno-Ugric studies have emerged as the main area of scholarship in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous area. In 1991, the Regional Executive Committee issued a decision establishing the Research Institute for Socioeconomic, Ethnic, and Cultural Revival of the Ob-Ugric Peoples to be based at a laboratory of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Native Language Office at the Further Pedagogical Training Institute. Simultaneously, work started on founding folklore archives and collections that ultimately resulted in the Regional Academic Archive of the Folklore of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of Siberia being reorganized in 1994. In 2000, the Institute was reorganized into the Ob-Ugric Peoples Research Institute, and in 2002, into the Research Institute for Ugric Studies (Tatyana V. Voldina, Director), and in 2005, the Research Institute for Ugric Studies and the Regional Academic Folklore Archive were merged into the Ob-Ugric Institute of Applied Research and Development. The Institute primarily studies the Khanty and Mansi languages, ethnic history, traditional culture and use of nature, as well as today’s ethic economic and social trends. Furthermore, it develops innovative programs on neo-traditional lifestyles, conducts expert assessments of literary texts, and puts the results of theoretical research into practice.

An important event in the ethnic rallying campaign was the opening of the Torum Maa Ethnographic Open-Air Museum (Khanty-Mansiysk) in 1987. The Museum was established upon the initiative of the ethnic intelligentsia. Its location is meaningful: it was sited on one of the sacred hills at the confluence of the Ob and the Irtysh. The Museum coordinates academic and field ethnographic research, holds exhibition, is engaged in education activities intended to consolidate indigenous peoples of Yugra, revive ethnic holidays and traditions. The Museum offers tours, workshops, master classes, holds rites and holiday celebrations (the rites of worshipping the Water Spirit and the Muksun Day, the Wagtail Holiday (Vurshchil Khatl), A Feast for the Moon (Tylashch pori)). 

At the same time, Agang Moshch-Ne and Yeshak-Nai folklore ensembles were founded. The area, including its “oil” cities, was engaged in active educational activities intended to increase interest in the traditional rites of the Khanty and the Mansi. The Yomvosh Yokh folklore studio at the Regional Folklore and Crafts House is one of the unique folklore ensembles of the Khanty and Mansi peoples. Its name translates as “People of Khanty-Mansiysk.” Its members are talented local Khanty women who speak their native language, know their folk traditions, and are skilled at making Khanty traditional items used in everyday life. They have a diverse repertoire that features folk songs, songs written by famous folklore song performers, songs written by the group’s members, songs with lyrics composed by local authors set to the traditional music performed on the nars-yukh, a musical instrument. The Khanty-Mansi has the Living Tradition Arts and Crafts Shop that is the center of preserving, developing, and making national clothes of the Ob Ugrians. The Shop studies traditional clothes of various local Ob Ugrian groups to be made by the shop's seamstresses: dresses, robes, breast ornaments, shoes, long socks; they hold events promoting preservation and development of intangible and tangible heritage of Ob Ugrians, workshops, master classes, exhibitions, and competitions.

A new phenomenon is the revival of nearly forgotten holidays such the Day of the Oblas (a boat), Feast for the Moon, Day of the Moose, Day of the Raven, et. On April 30, 2011, the area adopted the law “On the Holiday and Memorial Day of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area – Yugra” that declared the second Saturday of April the “Raven Day, the Day of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area – Yugra,” and the Ob-Ugrians’ Raven Day was granted the status of a regional holiday. 

Bear Games played a momentous role in the cultures of the Khanty and the Mansi. Since the 1990s, the Bear Games have been revived. In 1997, the Yugra governor signed the order “On Supporting the Unique Ethnic Creativity of the Indigenous Peoples of the Autonomous Area, the Bear Games Ritual Rite,” and the games celebrating bears were held in Yugra regularly becoming a revived tradition. In 2010, the Bear Games won the “Seven Wonders of the Finno-Ugric World and Samoyed Peoples” international competition in the “Holidays” nomination. For several years, Yugra has been discussing the matter of having Bear Games put on the UNESCO’s Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage as a tradition of tremendous ethnological, historical, and artistic value demonstrating the Arctic’s cultural diversity.