GEOGRAPHY & HISTORY 

The peninsula of Kamchatka, with its 472.000 sq. km and 450.000 inhabitants, is at the extreme east of Russia, above Japan. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskij is the Capital and the only industrial centre of a certainimportance.
It borders at North with the Republic of  Ciukotka and is encircled, to the west, from the sea of Ochotsk and, to the east, from the Pacific Ocean.  Fishing is the most important occupation. Kamchatka appears to the visitors like a wonderland, a natural paradise. In its territory we found five Natural Parks. It is a vergin land, in fact the famous valley of the geyser wasn’t discovered until 1941. It is famous for its volcanos, more than 300, of  which 30 are active. The most imposing volcanos are dislocated in the east side and they are studied from vulcanologists all over  the world. Unforgettable for their beauty are the Kljucevskij that reach 4688 m and the group of the Tolbaci. The northern area is a mountainous plateau, that can be reached only by helicopter or with the traditional sledgedos. Its more recent history coincides with the Russian conquest of the East. In ancient times it was inhabited by native populations like the Itelmeny, Aleuti, Ciukci and the Koriaki, but ever since the middle of XVII century, that is when the Ataman Ermak crossed the Urals financed by the powerful Strogonov family, it has not taken too long in order to see the Russians’ apparition  in these far-away lands. After the first explorations of  Atlasov at the end of '600 , it began the adventure of Vitus Jonassen Bering who received from Peter the Great the task to discover if America and Asia were connected. During 1725, he crossed with his contingent of men 7200 kilometers of mountains, forests, swamps and steppes until catching up Ochotsk. They build as they could the ship Fortune, that, in 1727, transported them safely to the south of the Kamchatka. Kamchatka became therefore the base for expeditons towards America and it was Bering who found the passage towards the new continent, that was named in his honor. New cities were built, new settlers began to cultivate the land and to raise the cattle; expert craftsmen, merchants, soldiers, cossaks, and exiles arrived. After Cristianity, the revolution and the Soviet had come and Kamchatka became a forbidden land. Only in 1990, its frontiers were opened again for anyone who wants to go to the ends of the earth.

TRADITION AND GODLINESS

The populations that inhabited these lands did not have the concept of private property. The kamchadali lived in harmony with the nature  even if they had in some measure tamed. They carved  horns, mammoth ivory, wood and worked in leather. They made anticold  masks from the intestines of the bear, snow glasses from birch's bark or from woven hairs, false teeth from wood or ivory, incubators for premature babies from the bladder of the seals. The intestines of the whales were transformed into barrels, the vertebre into mortars, the veins and the nerves into robuste ropes. The reindeer breeding, is still widespread  in the north among the nomads of the tundra. More than transport, the reindeer supplies meat, garments and lining for the tents, called cium. The dried tendons becomes wires, from the horns are made tools and the bones are used like fuel. The  main food of the coastal populations is the meat and the fat of the seals and the fish flour, that can be stored for winter. The game is dried in thin stripes; the fish is generally eaten raw; an appreciated drink is the sap of birtch. Their spiritual life, based on animism, was disregarded from the Russians, that instead wanted to introduce the religion of their fathers and the cult of Ivan Ugodnik. For the native people however their life continued to flow according to their the tradition  till today: the  Great Bear is always  their celestial clock, and the year is divided in months of various length with evocatives names like " the month of the red fish ", " the month of the small white fish" or " the month of the great white fish". The great rituals of the " First Fish " and of the "First reindeer pup " are still celebrated, and these ceremonies are very important for these populations whose life cycle  is marked by nature. Other important ceremonies for the community occur at the equinox  when from the Ancestors a new spark lights the first spring Fire and in september when in the north they celebrate great rituals for the slaughtering of the reindeers, and in this occasion, they  eat in a ritual way muchomor,  the  fly agaric mushroom, in a ritual way. Of course the Russian colonization has changed a  lot the habits of these populations, but in the last years there is a strong revival of their native culture. The ancient communities, that were destroyed, are re-establed in obshine, creating a strong movement for the rebirth of the ancient traditions and for the recover of the old right for the exploitation of the lands and waters.
 
 

MARIA TEPEVNOVNA ETNEUT

Maria Tepevnovna Etneut was born around 1920 on the banks of the Umievejem river, in the Ciukotka Oriental in a family of nomadic breeders of reindeers, grew up following the herds, helping her parents, collecting the berries and getting the water and in the evening next to the fire of the cium, nomads' tent, listening the ancient legends, the mythological and historical heritage  of her people. She still remembers her school's years, the school  was a barn without a roof, it was always very cold, but she was so eager to learn that she got over every difficulty and her teacher rewarded her, almost every day, with a piece of rye bread, a delicacy at that time, because in their traditional cuisine the bread did not exist! Then, the harder years arrived, with the repression and the war; Maria got married, working as a nanny and gave birth to  four children and another phase of her personal history began, when Maria became the one who today everyboby respects in Kamchatka. She understood the mythological songs and her Ancestors' dances on the creation of the world, she knew what the heritage of her nation was, she started to celebrate healing rituals, and to search the curative herbs in the tundra. Every day she performed the rituals dedicated to the Fire and she  never forgot to nourish the wooden idols of her clan. In the '80s, she decided to create a folk  group the Vejem, conducted by her son Valerij, and in few years they  became famous all over Russia and abroad. Their songs and their dances  are magical and powerful, and every time before a performance,  Maria Tepevnovna celebrates a ritual to the river's clear waters. "… our songs are healing-songs. When we go on stage  and perform our dances and sing our songs  the people feel better,  and also every little animals, every small bugs, the fresh herbs  and  the trees.  Everything will feel good! " This is Maria Tepevnovna. Now, after Valerj’s tragical departure, her last effort is to transmit the magic of her  people to her daughter Ljudmila.
 
 

CURIOSITY
MUCHOMOR: THE MUSHROOM THAT MAKES YOU SING

The muchomor, known by the scientific name of muscaria amanita or fly agaric, it is a mushroom, believed poisonous by mistake, it is known in all Siberia for its hallucinogenic qualities. We have found a lot proofs of its use among the Ostiaks, the Koriaks, Jakuts and other populations of this territory. For the millenarian history of its use as visionary and inebriating mushroom, it is considered to be the hallucinogenic mushroom  "par excellence ".
In old times, in Italy, this mushroom was habitually eaten after a preparation consisting in boiling with vinegar, or preservating under salt or cleaning in running water. The fly agaric grows nearly everywhere in Siberia, in the forests of birches and in the dry plains. They believe a mushroom of smaller dimension, with an intense red color, to have have  a stronger narcotic effects than those of larger dimensions.
When we went to collect the muchomor with the shaman Vagal, she told us she prefered the smallest ones. Before venturing in the forest to search the magical muchomor, she  lighted  a fire, made offerings of cookies, bread, beads, tobacco, seal's fat and hare's down to the Spirits of the Nature. When finally the muchomor is found, one must display great joy, with a song or thousand wheedling as a child, and then smoothly, and collect it using a little branch being careful to maintain the muchomor entire.
The usual way of eating the muchomor in Siberia is to dry at least for two weeks and  to swallow rolled up in ball shape, after a long mastication; to avoid digestives trouble. Traditionally the muchomor, must always be assumed in uneven doses one and half, three, five, seven and so on. The narcotic effects manifest approximately after half an hour, when unconsciousness is accompanied by joyful feelings, songs and visions. The inebriating state that it generates corresponds to the mood felt at the moment when it was collected. If we were dancing for the joy of the discovery of precious muchomor, desire of dancing will be perceived, if during the harvest we were  singing, the same melody will be modulated.
The shamans eat the muchomor for its power of vision. Before eating, they prepare themselves  in a ritual way and then they formulate  the questions to  the muchomor in order to receive answers during their ecstasy. The visions induced from mushroom will guide the shamans  in their healings, will help them to boost the ceremonies, to reveal the future and to improve their  power of vision to help the others. The ecstasy  induced by the muchomor is very powerful, it can last several days.
The ritual ceremonies are very striking: the shaman incessantly strikes the drum, jumps and dances, guided by the slow rhythm of the melody of its muchi, as it is confidentially called, in search of the vision for himself and his clan. They continue day and night, around the primordial Fire, that burns in the center of the tent, in the Spirits of the Ancestors' company, with joyful dance, steps whispered from the joyful little mushroom.