Search

FUNERAL RITES OF KET AND NAVAJO INDIANS: EXPERIENCE OF HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC COMPARISON // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2022. Issue 1 (35). P. 135-145

The study is carried out a comparative analysis of the memorial and funeral rites of the Indians of the Na-Dene (Navajo) group and the Yenisei (Kets). The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of ethnographic material in order to identify any cultural similarities and parallels in the memorial and funeral rites of the Navajo Indians and Kets and to collect data that would allow to analyze the nature of these ties themselves afterwards. As a result, the author of the article reached the conclusions that among the characteristics in the funeral ritual of the Kets and Navajo Indians there are both principal (the burials in a warehouse and on a tree, an explanation of human mortality and the orientation of the deceased in an eastern direction) and insignificant similarities among the characteristics in the funeral rituals of the Kets and Navajo Indians. There are cultural ties in memorial and funeral rites that allow (with great caution) to evaluate the existing similarities as cultural and genetic, which may become an additional argument in favor of the theory of the Na-Dene Indians’ and the Yenisei’s kinship.

Keywords: chum Kets, Navajo, funeral and memorial rites, burial, Dene-Yenisei language family