The Evenk are an indigenous people of Siberia. They occupy a large territory from the left bank of the Yenisei River in the west to the Sea of Okhotsk in the east. The southern boundary of the Evenk distribution range reaches the left bank of the Amur and the Angara rivers. They also live in northeastern China (20 thousand) and in Mongolia. The number of the Evenk in the Russian Federation is about 30 thousand.

The native name is the Evenk, which became the official native name in 1931, and the old name was the Tungus. Some individual Evenk groups were known as the Orochen, Birar, Manegr, Solon. The Evenk language belongs to the Tungus-Manchurian group of the Altai language family. Many of the Evenk living in Yakutia and Buryatia also speak the Yakut and Buryat languages. Anthropologically, they are characteristic of the Baikal, Katank and central Asiatic types.

The Evenk were formed through a mixture of the local population of Eastern Siberia with the Tungus tribes which came from the Baikal region. There are grounds to regard the Trans-Baikal people of Uvan as direct ancestors of the Evenk. The Chinese chronicles indicate their territory fairly accurately: the mountain taiga northeast of Barguzin and Selenga, roughly between the upper reaches of the rivers Olekma and Upper Angara. The Uvan were pastoralist, who came from a more southerly region. When they found themselves in the Trans-Baikal and the Cis-Amur regions, the bonds and cultural interactions with the local population gave rise to the ethnic evolution of the modern Evenk. In the course of their distribution through the expanses of Siberia, the Tungus assimilated other local tribes. The features of ethnic formation of the Tungus resulted in the development of three anthropological types characteristic of them and also three different economic and cultural groups: reindeer herders, livestock breeders and fishermen.

In terms of economy, the Evenk notably differ from other hunting peoples of the Siberia and Far East. They are primarily hunters and reindeer herders. Some groups of the Evenk did not use the reindeer, hunting on foot, but it was exactly the use of the reindeer for riding which distinguishes the Evenk from other peoples. The hunt played an important role in the majority of the Evenk territorial groups. Some exceptions were the sedentary Evenk, living on the banks of rivers and lake shore, for whom the most important occupation during summer was fishing, and also the Orochon Evenk, who combined hunting and fishing.

The Evenk are engaged in a peculiar type of reindeer herding. Their reindeer are baggage and riding animals, used in the taiga. The Evenk practiced an unrestricted grazing of reindeer, and the milking of reindeer cows is also a sepcific Evenk feature. Seasonal migration with the reindeer herds is central in Evenk life. The length of migrations reached hundreds of kilometers per year. Some families covered distances of thousands of kilometers.

The Evenk are shamanist, incorporating animism and totemism into their beliefs. They have various magic rites associated with hunting and guarding reindeer herds. The shamans administer those rites as well as seeing off the soul of the deceased, the purging of the hunters, dedication of the reindeer, etc. There existed elements of the bear cult - the rites associated with the dressing of the carcass of the killed bear, consumption of its meat, burial of the bear head and the bones. The Evenk folklore is highly diversified. The following genres are distinguished: improvisation songs, myths, animal stories, riddles, domestic and historical tales. The favorite genre of the Evenk was the folk tale and heroic epos. The main musical instrument was metal (kennginkevun) or wooden (pennengipkevun) harp. They also used bilgau - the dried bird throat and a hunting bow. The only Evenk dance is the kheir round-dance, which was performed to a song improvisation. The fine arts are represented by ornamentation of metal, bone and wood carving, embroidery in beads and silk, fur and fabric applique, birch bark stamping. .

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