For those historians and anthropologists who study shamanism, Altai represents the ‘motherland’ of this institution. For their inspirations scholars who want to explore ‘classical’ cases of shamanism usually turn to this area, located in south-western Siberia, at the intersection of Russian, Mongolian and Chinese borders. At the same time, many of these scholars, who are concerned with a quest for ‘ideal’ and ‘traditionalist’ shamanism, ignore almost one-hundred years of contacts between native Altaians and the Russian Orthodox mission that considerably affected indigenous culture and ideology. For instance, some Russian anthropologists have stressed that despite Christian activities, natives still clung to their traditional beliefs at the turn of the twentieth century. N.A. Alekseev emphasised the superficial character of native Christianization and stressed the persistence of indigenous religion. In his recent work, Potapov, another prominent Altaian scholar, similarly concluded: