Eastsplainers #7: Indigenous Communities

For this session, we welcome pianist Aliya Ishakova, who aims to raise awareness of and generate broader audiences for classical music from her home region, the Republic of Tatarstan. Our second speaker, Lana Pylaeva, combines her work as a physicist (Utrecht University) with work as a coordinator of FreeRussiaNL – a grassroots community of Russian-speaking humanitarian activists in the Netherlands. Pylaeva is of Komi origin – an indigenous Permian minority. Pylaeva and Ishakova will discuss the various indigenous communities that live across the Russian Federation and the challenges that these communities face because of their background. Among other topics, they will discuss the history of what recent studies define as a colonisation of ethnic minorities and strategies to resist this process. Furthermore, they will discuss what it is like to practice indigenous social and creative practices.

Political anthropologist Malika Bahovadinova, lecturer at the Institute of History at Leiden University and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam, will moderate the session. Professor of Slavic languages and literatures Ellen Rutten will open the meeting with a short introduction of the Eastsplainers series as a whole.