ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the responses of people in Sakha Sire to the model of yhyakh. The build-up to the exhibition and the model's arrival after an absence of almost 150 years generated considerable interest among urban residents of Yakutsk and further afield in villages across Sakha (Yakutia). The section draws upon fieldwork encounters both in and beyond the museum with visitors who came to see the model for themselves, with educators who used it as the basis of teaching programmes, and with culture workers engaged with the yhyakh revival. Collectively, these encounters generated a range of narratives about yhyakh, about Sakha engagement with others, and about the political role of historic objects in contemporary cultural movements. These narratives are teased out in Part 2.4 to examine what objects do when they are on their home ground.
