Sharing one’s history with the community at rituals enhanced the likelihood that one’s history would be preserved in the event of one’s death or forgetfulness, however this was rarely the initial motivation for sharing. An additional safeguard for remembering is the ceremonial retelling of one’s history.
In the past, when life was more uncertain, people would store their memories in various places and with various people—including relatives and clansmen, paraphernalia, and the mediator-shaman—to make sure that memories would remain even if these places and people were destroyed or lost. According to oral recollections, many families lost relatives and children were forced to leave their homes. Being able to tell relatives from enemies when lineages reassembled was crucial, particularly while facing a shared adversary. This was achieved by the use of clan uraa and tales about an individual’s background.
The Buryats had more foes than allies, according to the ghost accounts. To subdue the Buryats, the Russians used both Cossacks and indigenous Khamnigans. The Mongol khans sought to subjugate the Buryats and compel them to pay taxes, as they were compelled to do the same by the Qing emperor. Agamben (1998) defines the Buryats as “bare life” biopolitical beings devoid of identity, territory, and fundamental human rights. Maybe it’s because the Buryat people have put so much effort into preserving, caring for, and passing on their memories in the face of challenges to their identity, such as cultural assimilation and even genocide, which have occurred on varied degrees.
They infuse their recollections into many places—real and imagined—including landmarks, artifacts, genealogy, origin spirits, and communities—in order to increase their memories. Their senses, ceremonies, and bodily habits, such as carrying, caring, respecting, visualizing, communicating, and for shamans—being possessed by spirits of origin, are also involved in the process of remembering.
A layered, dispersed, multiplied, and movable set of memories is the end product. Various components of memory are represented by a shaman decked out in all his regalia, including ancestry, homeland, moveable history, the spirit realm, and warriorism. A fully decorated shaman becomes a statement of cultural distinctiveness and immortality due to the delicately designed objects of paraphernalia that are richly symbolic and endowed with the protecting qualities of the origin spirits. Therefore, in a colonial setting, a shaman represents the antithesis of “bare life.”
