"This is our bear cabin," shouts a short, lively woman through a megaphone in her hand, a smile making deep furrows on her forehead.
She wears a blue cap on her head, and her short tunic, embroidered with pink geometric shapes, is tied tightly at her waist.
She points to a wooden structure made of round logs, raised high above the ground on stilts.
"We caught bears when they were still cubs and raised them as members of our family.
"They shared food with us and lived in our village. When the time came, we would release one back into the wild and kill the other to eat."
Having treated the bear well during its lifetime, its people believe that the spirit of that sacred animal, which they worship as a deity, will bring happiness to their community.
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Kimiko Naraki is 70 years old, but looks younger.
She is an Ainu, a member of the indigenous people who today live mainly on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island.
Their land once stretched from northern Honshu (mainland of Japan) north to the Sakali and Kuril Islands (now a disputed part of Russia).
The Ain have always been an object of interest to anthropologists because of their cultural, linguistic and physical identity, but most tourists have not heard of them.
This is because, although they were the earliest settlers of Hokkaido, they were oppressed and marginalized for centuries under Japanese rule.
The Ain have had a difficult history.
Their origins are unclear, but some scholars believe they are descendants of an indigenous population that once spread across northern Asia.
The Ainu called Hokkaido "Ainu moshiri" ("Land of the Ainu"), and their original occupation was hunting, gathering and fishing, just like many other indigenous peoples around the world.
They mostly lived along the warmer southern coast of Hokkaido and traded with the Japanese.
But after the Meiji Restoration (about 150 years ago), people from the Japanese mainland began to migrate to Hokkaido as Japan increasingly colonized the northernmost island and discriminatory practices, such as the Hokkaido Ex-Native Protection Act of 1899, placed the Aine from their traditional territory to the mountainous wasteland in the center of the island.
"It's a very ugly story," says Professor Kunihiko Yoshida, a law professor at Hokkaido University.
Forced into farming, they could no longer fish for salmon in their own rivers and hunt deer on their own land, says Yoshida.
They were required to adopt Japanese names, speak the Japanese language, and were slowly stripped of their culture and traditions, such as the love ceremony with the bear.
Because of the stigma in the wider society, many Ainu hid their origins.
And the long-term consequences are still visible today.
The majority of the Ainu population is still poor and politically disenfranchised, and most of its cultural heritage has been lost.
Among other callous practices, Japanese explorers looted Ainu graves from the late 19th century until the XNUMXs, amassing a vast collection of Ainu remains for study and never returning the bones.
Recently, things seem to have taken a turn for the better for Aine.
In April 2019, they were legally recognized as the indigenous people of Japan by the Japanese government, after many years of deliberation, resulting in a more positive appreciation of Ainu culture and renewed pride in their language and heritage.
"It is important to protect the honor and dignity of the Ain and pass it on to the next generation in order to realize a vibrant society with diverse values," government spokesman Yoshihide Suzuga said, according to the Straits Times.
Naraki continues to guide us around the Ain kotan (village).
Still smiling, she points to a wooden sideboard-like structure.
"This is the men's room," she says, laughing.
Next to it is a smaller Indian-like tent.
"And this is the women's room," he adds.
Naraki leads tours of this kotan to teach visitors about her own culture.
It is part of the Sapporo Pirka Kotan (Center for the Promotion of Ainu Culture), Japan's first municipal institution with indigenous people, where visitors can learn about Ainu handicrafts, watch traditional dance and imagine their traditional life when the area was a vast wilderness and people lived on earth and in union with it.
Located approximately 40 minutes by car from downtown Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, the center opened in 2003 to teach other Japanese and foreign visitors about Ainu culture and spread their message to the world.
"Ninety-seven percent of the Ain are in hiding.
"But the people who come here for the events are proud of their own culture," says Jeffrey Gaiman, an educational anthropologist at Hokkaido University who has worked with the Ainu for the past 15 years.
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The pride is especially evident in the center's small, well-maintained museum, where Ainu artifacts, such as traditional costumes and tools, are carefully displayed.
Upstairs are rooms where visitors can join workshops on Ainu embroidery or learn how to make the traditional Ainu instrument mukuri (bamboo mouth harp).
By organizing events, community members can teach the wider world about their history and position.
"When I try to talk to people about Ain rights and empowerment, no one cares.
"But when people see our dance or music, they immediately become interested in learning more about us," explains Ryoko Tahara, Ainu activist and president of the Ainu Women's Association.
Although this center is a significant step in the direction of sharing Ainu culture on a national and international level, no one lives there.
A kotan is a replica that aims to show what traditional Ainu life looked like.
Only a few isolated pockets of Ainu remain, scattered across Hokkaido, with most of the estimated 20.000 Ainu (there are no official figures) assimilated into cities and towns across the island.
However, travelers who pay attention will recognize signs of their culture everywhere.
Many of Hokkaido's place names have Ainu origins, such as "Sapporo", which derives from the Ainu words sat (dry), poro (big) and pet (river) due to its location around the Toyohira River.
Or "Shiretoko", a peninsula that juts out at the northeastern tip of Hokkaido, which can be translated as "land" (siri) and "prominent point" (etuk).
And Ainu pride is also visible at events such as the annual Marimo Festival at Lake Akan and the Shakushain Festival in Shizunai, and in groups such as the Ainu Art Project, a 40-member group that shares Ainu culture through its own Ainu rock fusion band and crafts and crafts.
Restaurants such as Kerapirka in Sapporo serve traditional Ainu food and serve as gathering places for the local community.
"And you can see Ainu values in any environment where Ainu gather, whether it's in their homes, at local town gatherings or events, but you have to know what they're looking for," says Gaiman, explaining that "generosity and hospitality " key Ainic principles.
"They are a warm-hearted people," he adds.
The Ainu also became more visible on the national stage, when activist Kayano Shigeru was elected to the Japanese parliament in 1994, where he served five terms.
And also through the extraordinary popularity of the manga series Zlatni kamuj, which recently brought Ainu culture into the public spotlight.
“In the last few years, people have become more interested in the Ain; it became a hot topic in Japan.
"I'm proud that people want to know about them, but there's a lot more to do," says Tahara.
The most recent step forward for this community was the Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, a new complex the government is building to showcase Ainu culture.
Comprised of the National Ainu Museum, the National Park for Ethnic Harmony and a memorial center, it was slated to open in April 2020, in time for the Olympics, but was delayed due to Covid-19.
However, many experts believe that the recent recognition of the community is not enough, saying that it is a mere formality by the government, as the new Ainu law did not provide Japan's indigenous people with clear and meaningful rights.
"The Ainu are still unable to catch salmon, and dams are still being built that submerge their sanctuaries.
"There is no right to self-determination, no collective rights and no reparation. It's just a cultural performance," says Yoshida.
"The recognition is very symbolic, but not too significant," he adds with a rueful laugh, noting that Japan is quite behind the world's standard of preserving indigenous peoples.
"It's a shameful situation. That's the reality."
As I accompany Naraki on her kotan tour, it seems obvious, however, that public interest in Ainu culture is high.
Groups of Japanese and other visitors, arriving by busloads from Sapporo, jostle to take pictures in front of the pu, a food storage hut, located directly across from the poro-ci-set, where village chiefs lived to keep an eye on the communal village. pantry.
"The elders resolved all disputes in the village," says Naraki.
If no agreement could be reached, they would debate for three days and three nights and then make a decision.
She explains how Ain lives were inextricably linked to the land.
Kotans would be created along rivers or by the sea where water was abundant and where they were safe from natural disasters.
Food was collected or hunted, and the main proteins were salmon, deer and bear meat.
They would pick wild grasses, vegetables, mushrooms and berries, such as kitopiro (alpine leek) and shikerep (Amur cork tree berries), never picking everything at once and always leaving the roots so that the plants could continue to grow.
The food was simple, with animal oil, seaweed and salt as the only additives, and millet as their main grain.
Clothes are made of animal or fish skin, or woven with tree bark or nettle fibers.
Living in harmony with nature is a way of life that many Ain would like to return to.
"Eventually, I want to reclaim part of the land so that we can freely hunt and fish as well as engage in traditional farming," Tahara tells me.
A growing number of Ain are also beginning to relearn their own language, which is linguistically isolated and declared critically endangered by UNESCO.
What are your hopes for the future, I ask Tahara.
"I want to announce to the world that Japan has indigenous people. People don't know that," she says.
"I want us all to respect each other and live in peace in this country. And, of course, I would like the bones of our ancestors to be returned to us. To return to the graves from which they were taken."
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