Evens are a Tungusic ethnic group, and are among indigenous minority ethnic groups in the RF. Evens mostly live in the North-East and Far East of Russia. According to the 2020-2021 Census, there are 19,975 Evens (the 2010 All-Russia Census had this number at 22,383 people). Evens live in five administrative bodies in the Far East Federal Okrug.
The proportion of Evens in the total size of the population in the areas where they live hardly ever makes a majority, they live side by side with other dominating ethnic groups. Two thirds of Evens are dispersed in ethnically mixed environments, and in many cases their ratio among locals is fairly low. This is especially true about cities, but cities are where most Even intelligentsia and various non-governmental organisations are concentrated.
The Even world model had a vertical orientation: there was the middle world of people, the lower world of the dead and the upper world of the god and angels. They also had ideas about the horizontal organisation of the worlds connected by an invisible river. Only shamans and tradents who often were one and the same person were often privy to more or less the full extent of knowledge about these worlds.