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Objectclothes: Robe
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Type of arts & crafts
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MediumDeer's buckskin, textile, threads
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Geography details
Sakhalin Island -
Federal region today
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Federal subject today
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DateEarly-Middle XX century
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Composition
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Elements
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Type of sourceArticle “On the Question of Ethno-Cultural Relations and Semantics of the Uilta’s (Oroks’) Ornament. Part II. Zoomorphic and Anthropomorphic Motifs.”
Author(s) T. Yu. Sem -
Fund that the source refers toThe Russian Museum of Ethnography (formerly the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR)
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The pattern decorates the hem on the left side of a female robe and depicts a bear’s head. This is an example of typical Orok ornamentation.
The Oroks (Ulilta) of Sakhalin worshipped Dooto or Doocho – the master (or mistress) of bears and the keeper of taiga (perhaps the deity was also referred to as Buyo-Endur). The Oroks also thought that bears helped people with fishing, so they placed a figure of a bear’s head on the boats’ tops to increase their luck and catch a lot of fish. Moreover, as some Orok families claimed that a bear was their ancestor, they addressed the deity whenever they had problems, for instance, when some family member fell ill.
To sum up, the veneration of bears was related to both totemic features and traditional means of obtaining resources for life. That is why a bear was simultaneously considered a master of animals, a deity, and a relative of humans.