Belonging to a Fractured Land: Ingrian Spirituality, Domestic Ecologies, and the Afterlives of Displacement
Publication information:
Abstract
This paper examines spiritual belonging among Ingrian Finns, Izhora, and Votes in Northwest Russia—Indigenous communities whose ties to land were repeatedly disrupted by Soviet displacement, repression, and cultural erasure. Drawing on family memory, local histories, and ethnographic literature, I argue that spiritual life persisted not primarily through institutional religion or formal belief systems, but through everyday, land-based practices: gardening, foraging, and inherited gestures of care toward the landscape. These micro-ecologies sustained continuity across generations despite the destruction of churches and sacred sites.
Presenter Biography
Dr. Shatilova is a Visiting Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. Her work engages new materialism, object-oriented ontology, environmental humanities, and sound ethnography, exploring music as a site of material, transnational, and ecological relations in the cultural histories of Russia and the post-Soviet world. This case study challenges rigid distinctions between religion, folklore, and tradition, showing how belonging endures as an ecological relation embedded in ongoing, intimate engagements with land in the aftermath of historical violence.