The Khakas or Khakass are a Turkic indigenous people of Siberia, who live in the republic of Khakassia, Russia. They speak the Khakas language.
The Khakhassian people are direct descendants of various ancient cultures that have inhabited southern Siberia, including the Andronovo culture, Samoyedic peoples, the Tagar culture, and the Yenisei Kyrgyz culture, although some populations traditionally called Khakhassian are not related to Khakhassians or any other ethnic group present in the area.
Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination, or to aid human beings in some other way.
Beliefs and practices categorized as shamanic have attracted the interest of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including anthropologists, archeologists, historians, religious studies scholars, philosophers, and psychologists. Hundreds of books and academic papers on the subject have been produced, with a peer-reviewed academic journal being devoted to the study of shamanism.
Siberian Tatars (Siberian Tatar: Татарлар, romanized: Tatarlar) are the indigenous Turkic-speaking population of the forests and steppes of southern Western Siberia, originating in areas stretching from somewhat east of the Ural Mountains to the Yenisey River in Russia. The Siberian Tatars call themselves Yerle Qalıq ("older inhabitants"), to distinguish themselves from more recent Volga Tatar immigrants to the region.
The word "Tatar" or "Tadar" is also a self-designation by some closely related Siberian ethnic groups, namely the Altaians, Chulyms, Khakas, and Shors.
Khakas, also known as Xakas, is a Turkic language spoken by the Khakas, who mainly live in the southwestern Siberian Republic of Khakassia, in Russia. The Khakas number 61,000, of whom 29,000 speak the Khakas language. Most Khakas speakers are bilingual in Russian.