Oroqen is the forest people whose primary means of subsistence and production are fishing, hunting, and gathering. Hunting culture is a typical feature. Ever since the 1950s,having gone through a series of national policies,Oroqen’s solely hunting-based economy has been steadily shifted into one that relies mainly on agriculture and has multiple producing ways.The original cultural atmosphere and living space were altered when the Oroqen transitions from hunting to settlement, causing the locals to feel lost in the new setting.
The traditional birch bark craft and paper-cutting art of the Oroqen women are brought into their lives after settlement. They combine these national characteristic crafts with modernization,including using modern technology and methods,creating patterns according to people’s preferences and combining them with tourism as a means of survival.
This is not only the modernized rebuilding of traditional livelihoods,but also represents the successful efforts of Oroqen women actively using national discourse power to get involved in building contemporary cultural diversity while preserving their own culture.This demonstrates that the Oroqen is, at the very least, not a passive object in the modernization construction or national discourse but rather an active subject in the creation of multicultural expressions. The practical connection between Oroqen women's livelihoods and the inheritance of their ethnic culture demonstrates not only the local experience of ethnic survival and development but also the distinctive process of ethnic minority culture development and inheritance. Promoting cultural inheritance from the standpoint of ethnic women’s active engagement in constructing their own culture,the experience of Oroqen women deserves thinking.
