作為政治標記的神聖石堆：內蒙古布里亞特蒙古人的領地、政治及身份認同

This paper explores the relationship between oboo sacred cairns and the political recognition of the Buryat people in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (PRC). It shows how oboo sacred cairns and their annual rituals have always served as powerful symbols for the Buryats’ identification throughout the 20^th century. 

Numbering today around 8,000 people, the Buryat pastoralists live in Hulun Buir prefecture where they settled from Russia after the October Revolution. The erection of the first Buryat oboo on Chinese territory in the 1920s coincides with the recognition by the local court (yamen) of Buryat refugees as new citizens of China. Following waves of migration, the Buryats gradually expanded their territory, constructing new cairns one after another.

I argue that by serving as a territorial marker that connected a group of people to its collective territory and legitimatized the use of pastureland, the oboo was also an essential material and symbolic monument for the political recognition of a given “ethnic group.” Considering the oboo cairn as a support for local history, I will show how previous and contemporary oboo construction and worships link territory, politics and identity in Inner Mongolia’s most multi-ethnic area.