Splashing around in research once more.
I just found out that I am a (very grateful) 2010/2011 IHRC Grant in Aid recipient, which set me into some initial research frenzy. Picked up this interesting fact:
One ironic consequence of the [Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906] was that the destruction of immigration records and vital statistics held at San Francisco’s City Hall allowed many Chinese immigrants to claim U.S. citizenship and bring their families from China to the U.S.
I wonder if this could recur if a mass of digital records were accidentally erased?
Customs services in Russia’s Finno-Ugric republics to be liquidated
Translated by Adam Cullen
04.08.2010
Customs services in several Finno-Ugric republics located in Russia are to be liquidated as of this October, which will reduce the federal regions’ independence to a certain extent. Russia’s customs service on July 16 issued a directive by which the Mari El Republic’s customs are to be joined with those of Nizhniy Novgorod, the Udmurt Autonomous Oblast services will be merged with that of the Perm Krai and customs for the Republic of Mordovia will be combined with Ulyanovsk Oblast. Other regions to be left without their own customs service include the Chuvash Republic as well as the oblasts of Kirov and Penza. The liquidation of republic customs services is once again a measure to restrict regions’ sovereignty, at the same time that they were guaranteed near-state rights under the Russian Federation upon forming republics within the country. The customs service allegedly did not discuss the liquidation of customs with leaderships of the affected republics.
Sole Mari school in Perm Krai in danger of closure
Translated by Adam Cullen
23.07.2010
Authorities in Russia’s region of Perm Krai decided to make the territory’s sole ethnic Mari school into a primary school; local residents are however battling to keep the school functioning further. Residents of Mari villages in Perm Krai’s Suksun district gathered at a meeting in early June, during which authorities acquainted them with the plan to build them a new school. According to the plan, only a daycare and primary school would be left of the middle school currently in Vaskino village; however, preservation of the school has so far been allowed. Maris decided to turn to the krai’s Ministry of Education with a request to give the school the status of being an institution with intensive studies of the Mari language, history and culture. Although the curriculum is taught in Russian language, two additional hours of Mari language and literature are taught in the school each week. The school also fulfills the role of a cultural house, preserving and developing Mari cultural traditions.
Local residents threatened to keep their children at home in the event of the school’s closing. Individuals drafted a letter expressing deep dissatisfaction over broken promises. “If there is no school, then Mari villages will also not remain and Mari peoples will disappear from the entire Perm Krai,” residents complained.
A total 5,395 Maris lived in Perm Oblast in 2002, according to statistical data. The majority of Mari live in the Suksun district, where seven Mari villages are located: Vaskino (Engermutšaš), Ivankovo (Engertüng), Tebenjaki (Suli), Syzganka (Kyzgande), Krasnyi Lug (Olyk), Kamenka (Kalmašenger) and Tukmany (Tukman). The greater portion of residents in three of these villages – Vaskino, Ivankovo and Tebenjaki – are Mari and children there who have previously attended the Vaskino middle school also speak the language there. The Vaskino school was closed in the mid 1980’s due to structural damage and because of this, the children went to a middle school built in the neighboring Russian village of Bori. Yet in the wake of Perestroika, Russian villages joined into their own collective and opened the school once again. The communal farm has by now deteriorated and most residents of the Mari villages are unemployed. There are no mobile communications services in the villages. Roads connecting two groups of villages are lacking, although they are located just ten kilometers away from the other. Mari peoples in the Suksun district have never heard Mari radio nor seen television programs in their native language.
MariUver: В Пермском крае ликвидируют единственную марийскую школу.
Жители возмущены 14.03.08 Permi krai võimud arutasid viimase mari kooli sulgemist
