Hypotheses about the origin of the Uilta (Orok) of Sakhalin (second half XIX – beginning XXI century)
Authors:   Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Podmaskin Vladimir V. 
Published: December 2024

The objectives of the study are as follows: 1) to cobble together all known materials on the origins of the Uilta (Oroks) of Sakhalin in the broad sense of the toponym nani and 2) submit the author’s own version of the origins of the Uilta dating from ancient times. The author is quite conscious both of the complexity of the task and that of the proposed solutions, particularly in the case of the version of the homogenous origin of the Uilta. Some modern scholars identify the Uilta in the initial stage of their formation with the modern Evenks. The author’s version of the earlier appearance of the ethnonym nani is based on a set of known factors having overall credibility. If the version promotes the reader’s interest in the history of Uilta, it will mean that the author has achieved his objectives.
The objects of the study are the hypotheses for the ethnogenesis of the Uilta presented in the works of the Russian and foreign scholars of the second half of the 19th – the early 21st centuries. It can be argued that the issue of the origin of the people remains unsolved, for many authors fail to persuasively argue their different points of view. Many complicated and controversial issues arise concerning the origins of the ethnonyms, the formation of the ethnic territory, toponymies, the relations between the families, dispersion, the population size in different historical periods, and the development of deer breeding conditioned by their nomadism.
The Manchu-Tungus peoples of the Lower Amur and Sakhalin engaged in sea animal and taiga hunting, river fishing, gathering, and deer breeding had constant close links with their neighbours far and near identifying themselves as an integrated and indivisible whole: they all had the same name for themselves, nani, and their languages were broadly similar. Common generic names testify to their being closely related, too. It can be argued that the territorially subdivided «forest people», «Amur river people», and «sea people» formed a union with the deer breeders (the Tungus) and agriculturalists (the Manchus). Turco-Mongol, Ainu, and Nivkh cultural impact can be traced.
The Russian historiography plays a fundamental role in the solution of ethnogenesis of the island ethnos. More recently, there has been a growing interest in the topic progresses conditioned by the revision of received notions.
Two concepts have been advanced: that of the local (island) origin of the Uilta, and that of their land (northern and southern) origin. Various hypotheses supported by anthropological, archaeological, linguistic, and ethnographic arguments have persist up to the present getting close together. It testifies to the fact that many scholars acknowledge the complexity of the ethnogenesis of the Uilta whose structure reveals three cultural compounds: the substrate one (sea animal hunters), the Tungus one (deer breeders), and the Amur one (fishermen and taiga hunters). Further integrated studies of the Uilta history and culture can help to solve outstanding issues of the formation of that ethnic community in the island of Sakhalin.