Anthropological Fieldwork
In 1994 Richard Noll and his colleague from Ohio State University, anthropologist Kun Shi, explored Manchuria and Inner Mongolia and interviewed the last living Tungus Siberian shamans in the People's Republic of China south of the Amur river. The story of the life, initiatory illnesses, and shamanic training of the last living shaman of the Oroqen people, Chuonnasuan (1927–2000), was published in 2004 in the Journal of Korean Religions and is also available online. Noll's photograph of Chuonnasuan appears as the fronticepiece in Le chamanisme de Siberie et d'Asie centrale (Paris: Gallimard, 2011) by anthropologists Charles Stepanoff (l'Ecole practique des hautes etudes, Paris) and Thierry Zarcone (also EPHE, Paris).
A second published report of this fieldwork concerning the life and training of the Solon Ewenki shamaness Dula'r (Ao Yun Hua) appeared in the journal Shaman in 2007 (15: 167-174). Noll was introduced to the study of shamanism in the fall of 1980 by the anthropologist Michael Harner, then a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
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