Culture Sakhalin region - National Congress Bureau

Traditions and customs

Sakhalin Region has become home to many nations. Here Tonchi, Ainu, Nivkh, Evenki, Uilta, Nanais lived. Representatives of a large number of nationalities live in the region now. Currently, a little more than 4 thousand representatives of the indigenous peoples of the Sakhalin Region live here: Nivkhs, Ults, Evenks, Nanais. These peoples belong to the Indigenous peoples of the North.

more than 4 thousand

representatives of indigenous peoples

On the island of Sakhalin, 56 family farms and communities located in places of traditional residence and traditional economic activity are registered.

households and communities

Nivkhi is now the largest of the Sakhalin peoples existing. In total, about 4,500 Nivkhs remained in the world, in the north of Sakhalin there are about 2,200 of them.

Each March in the north of Sakhalin (Nogliki, Poronaysk) the Nivkh “Bear day” is celebrated. "Bear day" - is a complex of rituals associated with the cult of the bear. Rites are accompanied by playing musical instruments, ritual and entertaining dances, and singing.

In June, the ritual festival of nature renewal “Pitul” takes place. For the first time, after many years of oblivion, the celebration of the renewal of nature took place in June 2013. In 2013, the event was attended by seven national teams of six municipalities of the region (a total of 135 people) and more than five hundred spectators; as well as guests from the Khabarovsk Territory. Especially for this event, boats were made using traditional technologies. Men of the Tympingun clan, following an ancient tradition, rafted along the Tym River from the village of Chir-Unvd to the village of Nogliki, where the meeting of the Nivkh clans took place.

The first Nivkh writer Vladimir Mikhailovich Sangi became the ideological inspirer of the revival of this ancient holiday. Sangi Vladimir Mikhailovich - prose writer, poet, translator, public figure, member of the Higher Creative Council of the Union of Writers of Russia, creator of the modern Nivkh alphabet, primer and textbook of the Nivkh language, founder of Nivkh literature, member of the International League for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms at the UN Economic and Social Council.