Siberian landscapes in Ket traditional culture

The Ket people and their linguistic relatives — the Yugh, Kott, Assan, Arin, and Pumpokol — are the earliest ethnically identifiable inhabitants across much of the upper and middle watershed of the Yenisei River. The Ket, who number today no more than 1,200, are the only one of these peoples to survive as an ethnic group. Living in Russianstyle villages with only remnants of their traditional culture and in imminent danger of losing their language, they often go unnoticed by the outside world. Central Siberia now is populated chiefly by Russians, who live alongside several small Turkic, Tungusic, and Samoyedic minorities — the neighbors of the Ket in pre-Russian Siberia. Though not the first and certainly not the largest native group to occupy the taiga forests along the Yenisei or its major tributaries, it is the Ket who have imparted to the region much of its underlying ethno-geographic flavor. Subtle echoes of their traditional culture have left an indelible imprint on wide expanses of territory stretching from the Altai-Sayan Mountains downriver along the Yenisei past the Arctic Circle. This vast and rich, yet isolated and often inhospitable, space cannot be fully comprehended unless viewed through the multifaceted prism of the original Ket worldview.