Heterotopias of Indigenous Refusal: Spaces of Indigenous Siberian Survivance and Sovereignty

• In Event: Siberian Spatial Poetics

Abstract

In Anna Nerkagi’s short story “Aniko iz roda Nogo” Soviet spaces of education are illustrated as alienating and eliminatory for Indigenous children, who were forcibly placed in these boarding schools. On the other hand, Dzhansi Kimonko in his novel Tam, gde bezhit Sukpai views such educational spaces as liberatory. This space of education is only one example of the multiplicity of experiences of Indigenous Siberian peoples in the Soviet Union. Through literary works Indigenous authors discuss their experiences living in a colonial state that seeks to eliminate and place them firmly in the past. However, as this paper argues, Indigenous literatures serve as vehicles that explore possibilities beyond the current paradigms of colonialism, and a part of this is the creation of heterotopias within structures of space (educational, community, and urban), which are used to assert Indigenous sovereignty and refuse the structures of Soviet (settler-)colonialism. Engaging with current Indigenous critical theory on the politics of Indigenous refusal and land-based pedagogies, this paper discusses the multiple ways heterotopias emerge as generative spaces within Siberian Indigenou literatures to better understand Indigenous perspectives in the Soviet Union.

Author

• Brian Yang, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign