Yukaghir song “Chakhadan“ by Irina Duskulova

Yukaghir is an unique Paleo-Siberian language with very few native speakers. Irina Duskulova, then a 19 y.o. Yukaghir girl from Nelemnoye, a village on the Yasachnaya river (Chakhadan by its Yukaghir name), was the first to perform a modern song in the Kolyma Yukaghir dialect at the “Sana Yrya“ song contest in Yakutia. Here’s a video of her performance, which earned her the “Discovery of the year“ award. Irina is a niece of a well-known Yukaghir writer and poet Gennady Dyachkov, and a songwriter herself (as well as a winner of several local beauty contests). While most of her songs are in Yakut, she also sings in Russian and her native Kolyma Yukaghir. By now, she’s a head of the “Yarkhadana“ ethnocultural center in Nelemnoye, which hosts cutural events, promotes healthy lifestyles among the local population, and helps to preserve folk traditions in one of the few places where the Yukaghir culure is still alive. Currently there are two dialects of Yukaghir (also spelled Yukagir or Jukagir): Tundra and Kolyma (also Southern or Forest Yukaghir), sometimes considered separate languages. The total number of speakers doesn’t exceed few hundreds, while the number of L1 speakers is even maller (especially for the Kolyma dialect). It’s a language isolate with no known relatives, although the controversial Uralic-Yukaghir hypothesis connects it to the Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic languages, and it’s generally believed to be one of the oldest indigenous minority languages of North-Eastern Asia, along with Nivkh, Ket and Ainu. The Kolyma dialect is currently taught in a school in Nelemnoye, and the Tundra one is taught in Andryushkino. A Yukaghir language center also exists in Yakutsk. Interestingly, there’s relatively a lot of modern literature in both Yukaghir dialects, and the amount of talented Yukaghir writers and artists is suprprising for such a small-numbered ethnic group. Yukaghir tribes once populated the vast expances of Eastern Siberia, until most of them were assimilated by Chukchi, Tungusic peoples (Evenks and Evens) and, later, Yakuts. Genetically, they exhibit roughly equal frequencies of Y-DNA haplogroups N1c (typical for Uralic peoples), Q (typical for Native Americans and Paleo-Asiatic/Siberian peoples), and C2 (typical for Altaic and Paleo-Siberian peoples, and some Native Americans like Na-Dene). The origins of Yukaghirs can be traced back to Neolithic Ymyyakhtakh culture (2200-1300 BCE) which was spread across Eastern Siberia, with some Ymyyakhtakh-like artifacts found as far as in Alaska and northern Scandinavia. After a series of smallpox epidemics, the total Yukaghir population dropped under 1 thousand by the end of XIX century, and survived only in two remote regions in the extreme north of eastern Russia. Long considered an ethnic group soon to be extinct, the Yukaghir population is now fairly stable in numbers, although they remain one of the smallest minority ethnic groups in Russia, and not many of them still speak their language. Much like the language, the Yukaghir culture is quite unique, although sharing many elements in common with other indigenous cultures around the Arctic Circle. Yukaghirs are known for their surprisingly vast medical knowledge, for their pecular pictographic writing system (a very specialized one, mostly used in love letters and improvised maps), and a great degree of equality between men and women (some argue that it’s possibly indicating of a earlier matriarchal state of their society). The traditional lifestyles of Tundra and Kolyma Yukaghirs differ significantly, the former being nomadic reindeer herders, and the latter - sedentary hunters and fishermen. More on the Yukaghir people, culture & language (both articles leave much to be improved, though): A Russian-language Facebook group dedicated to the Yukaghir issues: Lyrics for “Chakhadan“ (in Cyrillic):