Dmitry A. Funk

Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology,

Russian Academy of Sciences

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

Since the late 1980s, Teleut folklore performing groups have regularly been taking part in the El-Oyyn holiday in the Altai Republic and in other neighboring regions, including Khakassia; they are heartily welcome at celebrations held in the Tomsk Petroglyphs open-air museum near the city of Kemerovo. There is an active search on for new causes to celebrate Teleut holidays. At least since the mid-2000s, Teleuts have celebrated patron saints’ days on a large scale (St. Elijah’s day in the hamlet of Chelukhoevo, St. Nicholas’s day in Ulus, Pardakay [St. John’s day] in Chartu, St. Procopius’s Day in Shanda, and St. Paraskevi’s Day, or the Ninth Friday after Easter, in the village of Teleuty). These holidays cannot be said to have been forgotten in the Soviet era, but today, they have gained a special flair, attempts have been made to transform them into “organized” celebrations that sometimes are accompanied by sports games and theatricalized shamanic rituals. Videos of some parts of these celebrations have been uploaded on YouTube. There have been attempts, in imitation of southern Altaians, to hold celebrations that are also “congresses” of individual clans: for instance, in 2010, there was a congress of Teleut and Altai Merkits. In the summer of 2014, the village of Shanda held a large-scale Tele Kaan celebration marking the alleged date of the 400-year anniversary of the signing of the Teleut-Russian peace treaty; the celebration featured folklore performing groups, a beauty pageant, sports competitions, and cooking ethnic dishes. Since then, the Tele Kaan national unity celebration has been a regular event. 

Contemporary authors writing in Teleut include Marina N. Tarasova who authored a collection of tongue twisters Teleut Sylbyr Ermekteri (Novosibirsk, 2017), and fairy tales for adults From Grandmother’s Chest (Novosibirsk, 2019), she also writes “The Teleut Land” page in the Selskie Zori ( Rural Dawns ) district newspaper.