Abstract
Before contact with the Russians, for the indigenous people of Kamchatka such as Itelmen and Maritime Koryak, hunting was one of main subsistence activities as fishing was. At that time, people hunted and used land mammals such as wild reindeer, Siberian bighorn, brown bear and also sea mammals such as seals, Steller's sea lion, beluga for both food and materials for daily necessities. However, their self-consumptive economic society was put under the influence of fur trade by colonization of the Russian Empire. After that, many trade goods from the outside were brought to the indigenous society of Kamchatka as in the case of North America. From such trades utensils, firearms and steel traps affected their subsistence activities so much as to change their hunting methods. As the second influence, another economic system, that is commercial fishing of salmons came to Kamchatka in the beginning of 20th century. People traded their salmon with the Japanese. Then as the third influence, the Soviet system advanced to Kamchatka and changed the indigenous society and economy fundamentally around the beginning of the 1930's (WATANABE 1999, 2000, 2001). The breakdown of Soviet regime and shifting of economic system to the market economy on the beginning of 1990's gave a serious shock to the local society and economy, and consequently most indigenous people virtually lost their work. Under the present economic situation, traditional subsistence of indigenous people are becoming to be much more important. In this paper the author would like to consider the significance of indigenous hunting in the modem local economy from the viewpoint of historical change of hunting economy.
