Handiworks based on Yukaghir traditions
Elena Semyonovna Vorontsova comes from the village of Arylakh, Verkhnekolymsky District, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Member of the Union of Masters of Indigenous Minorities of the North of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Member of the Association of Yukaghirs of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), delegate to the VII Congress of Yukaghirs in 2023. Head of the ethno-folklore Yukaghir group ‘Kujoon Shorile’. The ensemble is organised at the A.E. Kulakovsky House of People's Friendship.
Expressing reverence for the traditions of her Yukaghir ancestors, Elena is engaged in handicrafts: she sews bags from fish skin, bones, scales; reconstructs Yukaghir ethnographic finds; makes wooden utensils and anthropomorphic figures that had a spiritual purpose in the Yukaghir dwelling. Elena realised her Yukaghir roots as an adult and notes that it is easier to learn the language through songs. In the video she will tell about her products, the interesting tradition of spiritual kinship of man with wood, and how she came to be active in the development of native culture.
Photos of Vorontsova Elena's products
When making her products, Elena turns to the Yukaghir people's researcher Lyudmila Nikolaevna Zhukova for ethnographic clarifications, and for folklore to Tatiana Innokentyevna Ignatyeva, a researcher of Yukaghir musical folklore.