The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia

by Anna Reid

Release Date: October, 2002

Edition: Hardcover

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Stalking the Siberian Shaman

Readers who anticipate an account of the shaman's role in the various native Siberian tribal cultures will be sorely disappointed. Despite her title and introductory emphasis on the shaman's central position historically, the author is forced to admit that, by the 1970's, "shamans still existed, just." That being the case, the impetus for her journey to post-Soviet Siberia some thirty years later seems dubious. She alludes to a "native Siberian renaissance," of which shamanism would be one indicator. The substance of her book is almost completely at odds with both a general and particular cultural rebirth. An awkward pastiche of travelogue, historical anecdote and ethnography, it evokes the Siberian scene following the collapse of Communism, dominated by a Russian presence and the virtual destruction of indigenous cultures.
Reid anticipates the refutation of her renaissance notion with her description of a conference on shamanism which she attended in Moscow. Funded and dominated by Californian shamanists (who else?), "at its back, ostentatiously bored, sat a row of real live (sic!) shamans--plump, middle aged Asian women, tricked out in nylon robes, neo-Celtic jewellery and gypsy scarves." (8) Her ambiguous description of these conferees is reinforced by one of the few extended accounts of her actual witness to contemporary "shamanistic" practice. The Tuvan clinic, a "swanky outfit" in Kyzyl, gives her occasion to observe the practice's "senior partner" performing a 30 minute ritual, after which, upon payment of his fee, "he gave me something suspiciously close to a wink." (114)
Although Reid's bibliography includes a number of Western scholars studies, their Russian counterparts' contributions are almost entirely lacking. Nor does she offer much in the way of detail regarding traditional shamanistic belief and practice. No mention is made, for example, of the role played by the fly agaric hallucinogen, which figured prominently in the mystic rituals of many Siberian tribes.
In general, Reid focuses more on the Russian expansionists' attitudes and behavior toward those they conquered than she does on the natives' existing cultures. It is the all-too familiar story of Western civilization's destructive impact on those ill-equpped to deal with it. That however, is a far cry from the book's declared purpose. Her belated attempt to reassert her cultural renaissance theory in the afterward is unpersuasive. Admitting that shamanism has been "reduced from a detailed, consistent way of apprehending the world to a rag-bag of vague disconnected beliefs and rituals" (201) she still insists that it is in "the process of reconstruction." Unfortunately, the details she has provided argue the contrary, revealing the rag-bag rather than the coherent whole. On this count alone, her work must be considered a failure.

Wonderful book on Siberian Natives

Only three native populations in the world today have been virtually whipped out, driven from their homelands and yet they remain, remnants and testaments to a different world. These are the American Indian, the Aborigine of Australia and the Natives of Siberia. This essential work tells the stories of the tribes and the peoples of Siberia 'from their view'. The Siberian natives, from the Buryat to the Khant are a diverse people from many walks of life and of different races. Many of these people were disastrously affected by the coming of Communism and the upheavals of Stalin and industrialization. Yet they remain in pockets in some of the harshest landscape in the world. This is a wonderful book that sheds light on these fascinating people.

Seth J. Frantzman