The Itelmen Khodila as a Song Genre: Nature, Consciousness and Time

Abstract

Anthropologist, Dr. David Koester is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has worked with communities of both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific and primarily, over the past 30 years, with Itelmen people of Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East. Founded on a long-standing interest in historical consciousness, Koester’s work with Itelmens has included research on Itelmen history, religious revival, and cultural, linguistic and musical revitalization. In his lecture he will explain how a form of Itelmen personal song known as the khodila maintains a traditional and unique type of expression of consciousness, focused on perception of the natural environment. There is evidence for the existence of this traditional form of human-environmental relations spanning nearly 300 years.