Singing Story, Healing Drum: Shamans and Storytellers of Turkic Siberia (review)

Reviewed by: Singing Story, Healing Drum. Shamans and Storytellers of Turkic Siberia Lenore Grenoble (bio) Kira Van Deusen. Singing Story, Healing Drum. Shamans and Storytellers of Turkic Siberia McGill-Queen’s University Press 2004. xxvi, 206. $80.00 Òhe stories and tales in this collection come from several sources. Some were previously published in the Tuvan or Russian and appear in translation here; many were gathered by Kira Van Deusen herself over a series of trips to Khakassia and Tuva, beginning in 1993. All appear for the first time in English, making this a valuable collection for anyone interested in the stories themselves. Van Deusen is a storyteller, and this book is a fine collection of stories of and by shamans in Tuva and Khakassia, along with the author's own accounts of their collection, the context they are created in, and her own journeys into Siberia to gather them. The book is divided into seven chapters, beginning with a (very) brief history of Tuva and Khakassia followed by discussions of shamans in both regions and of spiritual geography, and then a chapter on the storytellers themselves. A chapter is devoted to the important relations between music 'as a point of entry to the inner world,' as is another to the role of language as such a point of entry. The book concludes with a discussion of contemporary shamans in Tuva and Khakassia. Stories are interwoven throughout each of the chapters, embedded in discussions of their context. Van Deusen has interviewed shamans, storytellers, and scholars of Siberia to help understand them. In places the book would have benefited from more editing. Some stories are left dangling. There are at times abrupt transitions between paragraphs; cross-referencing in the text would also have helped make this a more coherent volume. That said, it is a very readable account. It is important to take this collection for what it is, a collection of stories as retold by a storyteller, grounded in her experiences and perspectives. It is not an ethnography and not a scholarly book, as it is lacking in critical analysis and scepticism. Òhe stories are held together by descriptions of the context, historical, political, and ethnographic, of Khakassia and Tuva, usually presenting the view of the people themselves, as told to Van Deusen. At times they become superficial and too cursory, even misleading. Repeatedly throughout the book Khakassians and Tuvans are referred to as indigenous, with reference to a broader Siberian indigenous identity. But this assumption of a shared Siberian indigenous identity completely overlooks the differences between these two Turkic groups and others (such as the Itelmen, Nivkh, or Ket) whose experiences – both historically and in the modern day – are radically different. Throughout, there is a strong tendency to romanticize the lives of the Tuvans and Khakassians, without much analysis of the day-to-day realities. To be sure, there are references to the problems which plague native Siberians today, such as the high suicide rate, but others (low life expectancy, high alcoholism rates) are not mentioned, and the negatives are overwhelmingly buried in discussions [End Page 297] of such topics as the 'richness in the languages of indigenous peoples, speaking to a wealth of individual spiritual understanding.' It is unclear how such social problems coexist with such spiritual richness. This is perhaps an unfair critique, as it is not the author's intent to discuss social structure but rather the spiritual nature of these societies, yet the two are intertwined. Another example is the recurrent theme of the shift in the nature of shamanism. Historically and traditionally, shamanism was a gift of sorts, bestowed upon a person who really had no choice but to accept it or be ill. Unlike other kinds of spiritual leaders, shamans simply acquired their craft, from the spirits, without formal training. At present, however, particularly in southern Siberia, it is possible to take shaman lessons. Van Deusen mentions this as coming about through necessity, owing to the destruction of traditional culture by the Soviet government. More discussion of this phenomenon, its roots and implications for modern-day shamanism, would be welcome. Despite my reservations about the critical value of this volume, it is an...

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