Research Focus Group Talk: Matchstick for Survival: Indigenous Writing in the Russian Arctic

As part of a new lecture series, “Children’s Literature, Cultural Preservation, and Language Revitalization,” the Global Childhood Media Research Focus Group invites you to a talk by Indigenous author Kseniia Bolshakova (Dolgan) entitled “Matchstick for Survival: Indigenous Writing in the Russian Arctic.”

Indigenous author Kseniia Bolshakova will give a talk on her decolonial book The Frost Also Melts. The novel explores the fate of Arctic Indigenous nomads through the personal story of a child raised in a traditional reindeer-herding family in the tundra. The Frost Also Melts is about the forever that is becoming finite: permafrost, tundra, reindeer herding, and native language. Both the child and adult voices of the author reflect in the novel on the far-reaching effects of ongoing colonization and assimilation. The original book is written in the Dolgan Indigenous language. The talk’s title refers to the fact that Kseniia Bolshakova’s book and all her work are like a matchstick, trying to keep the dwindling flame of her people alive.

Kseniia Bolshakova is an Indigenous activist and writer. She is a member of the Dolgan Tribal community Iydyna, born and raised in the Dolgan settlement and tundra of Popigai in the Russian Arctic. Kseniia serves as the Indigenous youth focal point for Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, Central Asia, and Transcaucasia at the United Nations.

Interpretation for the discussion will be provided by Karina Sheifer, a graduate student in the Department of Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara who works on endangered languages.

Zoom attendance link here

Cosponsored by the IHC’s Global Childhood Media Research Focus Group, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, the Comparative Literature Program, and the Graduate Center for Literary Research