A shaman, or medicine man, from the Altai Mountains. In full dress, and with sacred drum and image, he is ready to invoke the weather-gods on behalf of his people.
Please, when you see something written in Cyrillic, don't assume right away that it's russian. Russian is not the only language that uses Cyrillic. There are also Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Serbian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Mongolian.
It's a sensitive topic especially for us Ukrainians because russian language is a weapon. It's a colonial language, it's presented like one and only true slavic language, it erases and replaces other languages. Belarusian is literally on the verge of extinction because of russian. Ukrainian has been banned 134 times throughout history, it is still called a "village language", a dialect of russian. Russian colonialism is literally the reason why there are so many russian speaking people in Ukraine (I was one of them btw). Ukrainian is banned on russian occupied territories and people are getting in trouble or even killed for using it there, Ukrainian POWs in russian captivity are getting brutally beaten for speaking Ukrainian.
Like okay, I can get why there's this confusion, so here's a clue to understand that the language you're looking at definitely is not russian — the letter і. If you see ї (like i but with two dots) it's 100% Ukrainian. If you see j it's Serbian. Russian alphabet also doesn't have such letters as Ђ, Љ, Њ, Ў, Џ (dont confuse with Ц ). Yes, it's not always gonna be easy to detect that the language in front of you is not russian, but when you have trouble with it just ask or run it through any translation app and it'll probably tell you the language.
Before I start this post, I want to recomend you this video. Perhaps you can watch it as you read this, as I think it could make it easier for you to understand Sakha's history:
youtube
Ok, now lets begin!
Even though Sakha/Yakutia has been considered as an outsider by the other Siberian tribes for a long time, she actually does have her roots around the Lena River.
Sakha herself was born after the Yakuts, as we know them today, started living in the Lena Basin, but they originated in the Baikal and that's why she was called an "outsider". The name "Yakutia" is, in fact, the name that Evenki gave to her, which means "outsider" in her language.
That's why Sakha hates being called "Yakutia".
But that is not all. Actually, her first ancestors were already living around the Lena Basin, even before the arrival of Evenki herself!
Sakha has many ancestors, including:
Syalakh (4500 BC) : Coexisted with Yukaghir, the oldest among the Paleo-siberians
Ymyyakhtakh (1700 BC): This culture wasn't around for that much time, compared to others.
Ust-Mil (1300 BC): This was a culture that was spread across the Lena and other areas of Siberia. I must say Yukaghirs were also around, so perhaps Yukaghir influenced Sakha's ancestors as well.
Kurykan (600 AC approx.): This would be Sakha's "dad", her closest ancestor. This was a tribal society that was living in the Baikal. During this time, the First Turkic Khaganate was on its peak.
Kulun-Atakh: This was a culture that coexisted with the Sakha in the Lena Basin, but eventually was absorbed by them.
Once the Mongol Empire started to expand, some tribes, including the Kurykans, were pushed towards what we call today Siberia. The Sakha started to originate and migrate towards the Lena, where they would finally "settle", and Sakha, my OC, was born.