Cultural Identity
The total language death of Sireniki Eskimo language means that now the cultural identity of Sireniki Eskimos is maintained through other aspects:
- Some of these factors are still of linguistic nature. Although during the language shift the language of Ungazigmit (one of Siberian Yupik languages) has been adopted, but they speak it with some variation, making a dialect.
- Younger generations do not speak any Eskimo language (neither that of Ungazigmit), they speak Russian. But the cultural identity is maintained not only through linguistic factors, there is also a "sense of place" concerning their village. Sireniki is the only Eskimo settlement in Siberia that has not been relocated, thus it has preserved its 2500 year long anciency.
The cultural identity of other ethnic groups living in Sireniki settlement has been researched as well.
Read more about this topic: Sirenik Eskimos
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or identity:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“For the mother who has opted to stay home, the question remains: Having perfected her role as a caretaker, can she abdicate control to less practiced individuals? Having put all her identity eggs in one basket, can she hand over the basket freely? Having put aside her own ambitions, can she resist imposing them on her children? And having set one example, can she teach another?”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)