The Chukchi (Chukchee) live in the far northeast of the Asian land mass. Chukchi were originally reindeer herders, gatherers, and formidable warriors whose tales speak of battles with Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) and Yukaghir communities. In recent centuries, Chukchi encroached upon Yupik territory and adapted their subsistence techniques. Like the Yupik, Maritime Chukchi fished and hunted large sea mammals such as walrus, seal, and whale. Chukchi, in turn, influenced Yupik material culture and social organization.

Reindeer Chukchi herded on foot and consumed all possible reindeer products including meat, blood, intestine, and the semi-digested moss in the animal's stomach. The products of gathering--seaweed, birds' eggs, shellfish, and wild tundra plants, were also an important source of food. The Reindeer Chukchi traded hides to the Maritime Chukchi in exchange for blubber, walrus and seal skins and sealskin thong. Reindeer skins were used for clothing, bed curtains, and beds; sealskins were for boots and men's hunting pants and sea mammal fat served for heating, light, and food.

The two Chukchi groups were closely related. Families with small herds practiced sea hunting as an additional source of subsistence and families that lost their herds would become sea hunters. Rarely, sea hunters became herders. The crew of a large skin boat was the basic economic unit of the Maritime Chukchi. The basic unit of the Reindeer Chukchi was the nomadic reindeer camp whose members herded together.

The traditional Chukchi world view held that all living things, including animals, birds, and trees, have spirit masters who can influence human activities such as hunting and fishing. When Bogoras studied the Chukchi, every family had someone who could beat a drum, chant, and communicate with these spirits. More powerful shamans entered trance and traveled to other realms, encountering spirits and pursuing lost souls.

In the 18th century, the Chukchi began to raid Russian outposts and caravans that were making incursions into their territory. A difficult and inconclusive struggle ensued. Refusing to pay fur tribute to the Russian Empire, the Chukchi retreated to the east of the Kolyma River until the mid 19th century. In like manner, the Chukchi fiercely resisted collectivization in the 1930s. Soviet authorities saw shamans as the fomenters of Chukchi opposition; Chukchi children in Russian schools were taught to report on the activities of their shamans and mock them in verses and plays. Reindeer Chukchi, living in relative isolation, were one of the last Siberian peoples to retain their language, culture and rituals, although much of this knowledge is now lost.

From the 1950s, Reindeer and Maritime Chukchi were settled in large multi-ethnic villages which were further consolidated in the 1960s and 1970s. In the post-Soviet era, Chukchi draw upon their proud cultural tradition, a well-established sense of themselves as one people, and their numerical strength in the far north to establish a revitalized identity. Politically active Chukchi have demanded compensation for lands contaminated by atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s. There were 15,184 Chukchi according to the 1989 census.

For more information:

S. A. Arutiunov, "Chukchi: Warriors and Traders of Chukotka," in Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, W. W. Fitzhugh and A. Crowell, eds. (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988).

Waldemar Bogoras. The Chukchee. Memoirs of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition volume 6, Whole Series Volume 10 (American Museum of Natural History, 1904, 1907, 1909).

Igor Krupnik, "Chukchi," in Crossroads Alaska: Native Cultures of Alaska and Siberia, V. Chaussonnet, ed. (Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, 1995).