"I had been following a herd of reindeer for some long time, about six hours, I believe. As I searched the track, I had a strange feeling I was being watched. I looked up and saw an old man, about twenty metres ahead of me. He smiled at me. I asked him who he was, but he did not answer me. Instead, he gestured with his hand, showing me that I should follow him. I thought he had a cabin close by and some food, so I did so. All the time he did not speak. I noticed his footprints were those of a reindeer. 'Strange', I thought, because the man was wearing kamus (skin-covered) skis. But then I thought I was just hallucinating because I was tired and hungry. We walked up a hill and behind it was a huge camp. There were people of all ages, children playing, old men sitting smoking, and women cooking. The old man took me to his tent. He spoke to his wife by grunting just like a reindeer, and she grunted back. I did not understand. 'Who are these people?' I thought. The woman served me food, and I saw it was not meat, but moss. I ate it and it was not too bad. As time passed and we sat there in the tent, I started forgetting things. I thought, for instance, about my wife, who was waiting for me back home, but I realized I had forgotten her name. Then we went to sleep. I dreamt that I was surrounded by reindeer. Someone said to me, 'You do not belong here, go away'. I do not know who spoke. I woke up and thought I had to get away. I sneaked out of the tent and started walking home. In the village, people were very surprised to see me. They said they thought I had died. 'What do you mean?' I asked them, 'I have only been away for a week'. 'No,' they said. 'We have not seen you for more than a month'. It seems that the people I met were reindeer, and I should have killed them, but at the time I did not know.[5]" -  [Willerslev 2004:634-635]

[#5] "It should be pointed out that this story, expressed here as something that happened to the teller, also appears as a common myth. Thus, two different elders told me essentially the same story about how the hunter, while out hunting, becomes able to see the world from the perspective of his prey. We also find this theme used strikingly in myths among other groups of northern hunters, such as the Cree and Ojibwa Indians of the Canadian sub-Arctic (Brightman 1993: 41-8; Hallowell 1960: 36; Tanner 1979: 136-7) and the Inuit (Saladin d'Anglure 2001). The theme is also found among hunting peoples of Southeast Asia, such as the Chewong of the Malay tropical forest (Howell 1996)." -  [Willerslev 2004:649]

リンク

• ユカギールの悲劇
• 極北の先住民族
  

文献

• Willerslev, Rane. 2004. Not Animal, Not Not-Animal: Hunting, Imitation and Empathetic Knowledge among the Siberian Yukaghirs. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 629-652.
  
• - Brightman, R.A. 1993. Grateful prey: Rock Cree human-animal relationships. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• - Hallowell, A.I. 1960. Ojibwa ontology, behavior and world-view. In Culture in history: essays in honor of Paul Radin (ed.) S. Dimond, 19-52. New York: Columbia University Press.
• - Howell, S. 1996. Nature in culture or culture in nature? Chewong ideas of'humans' and other species. In Nature and society: anthropological perspectives (eds) P. Descola & G. Pilsson, 127-44. London: Routledge.
• - Saladin d'Anglure, B. 2001. Erotic dreams, mystical kinship, and shamanism. North Atlantic Studies: Shamanism and Traditional Beliefs 4: 1-2, 5-12.
• - Tanner, A. 1979. Brinj?inj? home animals. London: Hurst.