• Japanese: ウイルタ (Uiruta), オロッコ人 (Orokko jin)

The Uilta people, also known as the Orok, are an indigenous people of Sakhalin. They traditionally had some degree of contact and trade relations with Ainu groups and others, who often referred to them by terms such as kur and utar (meaning non-Ainu clans or tribes), or rebunkur (clans of beyond the sea), denoting peoples not of their own (Ainu) in-group but also not as foreign as, for example, Europeans.[1]

In the 19th century, if not earlier, the Uilta people began to have some contact and trade with Russians. In the late 1850s, some efforts were made by the Tokugawa shogunate to provide aid, care, and education for the Uilta communities on Sakhalin.[2]


References

  1. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, "The Frontiers of Japanese Identity," in Stein Tønnesson and Hans Antlöv (eds.), Asian Forms of the Nation, Psychology Press (1996), 45.
  2. Ishin Shiryô Kôyô 維新史料綱要, vol 2 (1937), 270, 277.