People of the Deer Living near Lake Baikal: Dynamics of Ethno-Cultural Identity of Modern Tofalars (Northern Asia, Eastern Siberia)
The article presents the results of an integral study of the ongoing ethnic and cultural identification of the Tofalars, an indigenous small-numbered Siberian people who belong to the Turkic group and are concentrated in the Irkutsk Oblast.The main methods of analysis were repeated interval field studies, comparative studies of the historical dynamics of Tofalars ethnic transformation, critical analysis of scientific sources. The author interprets the obtained results and gives certain forecasts of the ethnic, linguistic and cultural transformation of the Tofalars in the 21st century.As the main conclusion, it should be noted that the increase in the number of Tofalars has been replaced by stabilization. The Tofalars make up more than half the population in Tofalaria. However, as regards the language, it is on the brink of extinction, the process is irreciprocal, the linguistic indicator is rapidly approaching zero with every decade, as generations change. Due to the limited number of representatives of any other nation, the number of mixed marriages has ceased to grow, and even has begun to decline, but still this indicator remains high. As a result, the share of ethnically and anthropologically mixed population for the Tofalars is on the rise: practically all Tofalars of the younger age groups are mestizoes.