Kira Van Deusen – författare

The Udege, a small Indigenous group in the Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai regions of Russia, have a rich oral storytelling tradition. They speak the Udege language, and their religious beliefs include animism and shamanism. Over two decades, Kira Van Deusen travelled across Russia interviewing Udege storytellers in order to record their folktales.Tigers and the Internet recounts individual storytellers' lives and the stories that they related to Van Deusen. Combining the translated stories with detailed commentary, background information on the storytellers, and historical context to the themes they explore, Van Deusen provides a rich and moving text that allows the reader to travel with her through time and space. She respectfully shares the stories with a wider audience and preserves them in English for future generations. Readers will learn about the folktales of the Udege, but also about their contemporary lives and connections with other Indigenous groups.The Udege are not widely known outside of Russia. Tigers and the Internet provides a valuable collection of first-hand stories that shows this fascinating culture to those interested in folklore, Indigenous histories, and cultural studies.

Singing Story, Healing Drum explores the shamanic practices, worldview, oral traditions, and music of the Turkic peoples of Tuva and Khakassia (south Siberia), past and present. It is based on the author's fieldwork since 1993, conducting interviews, recording stories, participating in rituals and everyday life. Set in the context of social change in the post-Soviet period, it includes conversations, folktales, legends, and shamanic poems that illuminate spiritual traditions, and introduces ethnographic literature in Russian, mostly unavailable in the West. Wherever possible, the material comes through the voices of indigenous people: scholars, practitioners, and participants in cultural review.Kira Van Deusen presents an integrated, holistic picture of Turkic spiritual culture, exploring the inner world shamans and other visionaries describe and the ways they cross the boundaries between ordinary and non-ordinary reality. Since nomadic life is never static, its traditional expression comes through performing arts - music and oral poetry - more than visual representation. Most of these arts involve sound and the processes are equally as important as the results. They involve the whole community and are vital in the revival of indigenous culture today.

After decades exploring Siberian cultures, Kira Van Deusen turned to the Canadian north to ask many such questions, looking at them through the versions of one of their most respected legends - that of hero/shaman Kiviuq, an Inuit counterpart to Homer's Odysseus - told by forty Inuit elders. The elders' voices engage us directly, inviting us to look at the unique qualities of arctic heroism and its application to present-day concerns. Rich details from each of the elders' families help explain interpersonal challenges to survival in the north and offer both practical and spiritual lessons. Van Deusen also points out intriguing cultural connections across the Bering Strait, past and present.

This collection of tales represents and preserves the oral heritage of Arctic and Subarctic ethnic groups, so that their stories are no longer in danger of becoming lost to future generations.Far North Tales: Stories from the Peoples of the Arctic Circle captures and preserves the wonderful tales of Siberia, Scandinavia, Greenland, Alaska, and Canada, and offers readers glimpses into the cultures and customs of the people who created them.Gathering more than 30 tales from the Arctic and Subarctic regions—many of them unavailable in contemporary publications and, thus, virtually unknown to readers today—the book provides a sampling of stories grouped by type or theme. There are tales of daily life; creation stories; tales of tricksters and fools; spirits, shamans, and shapeshifters; animals; and heroes and heroines. The ethnic source and country of origin is provided for each tale, as are notes on the tale itself. Background on the geography, history, and cultures of the native peoples round out a book that is a perfect resource for educators and storytellers alike.