The power of horse stories: Memory, healing, and resilience
This seminar is an outcome of research conducted in collaboration with horsemen who live in the trans-border region of southern Tyva and western Mongolia with the focus on the relationship of the Tyva horsemen with their horses and homelands. In this talk, Dr. Peemot will explore phenomena related to the role of horses in post-Soviet Tyva—in particular, the horses’ participation in the moral economy of human-nonhuman relationships, their contribution to postsocialist identity negotiations and imbrication in politics.
About the speaker
Dr Victoria Soyan Peemot is the Kone research fellow in Indigenous studies at the University of Helsinki. Raised by her grandparents in the Tyva Republic, she spent her youth riding horses and herding livestock on the steppes of Inner Asia. She takes a critical approach to these experiences in her recent book 'The Horse in My Blood: Multispecies Kinship in the Altai and Saian Mountains' (Berghahn Books, 2024).
Dr. Peemot's research interests include Indigenous onto-epistemologies, multispecies relationships, sustainability science, and material culture studies. She participates in the ongoing projects 'Biocultural heritage and non-linear time' (University of Helsinki), 'Entangling Indigenous Knowledges in Universities' (HORIZON-MSCA Staff Exchanges network) and 'Sensory Acts' (SSHRC, Canada), and a member of HELSUS (Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science).
Image by Stanislav Krupar, the Prague-based photojournalist.