The ancestor of the Oroqen originally lived in the vast area south of the Outer Khingan Mountains and north of Heilongjiang.

The Japanese distributed opium among them and subjected some members of the community to human experiments, and combined with incidents of epidemic diseases this caused their population to decline until only 1,000 remained.

[5][6][7][8][9] The Japanese banned Oroqen from communicating with other ethnicities, and forced them to hunt animals for them in exchange for rations and clothing which were sometimes insufficient for survival, which lead to deaths from starvation and exposure.

[11] Even those Oroqen who avoided direct control by the Japanese found themselves facing conflict from anti-Japanese forces of the Chinese Communists, which also contributed to their population decline during this period.

[10] Following the expulsion of the Japanese from Manchuria, the Oroqen came under suspicion from the Chinese Communists as counterrevolutionaries and were subjected to persecution, particularly during the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976.

Some Oroqen were driven to suicide due to intense interrogation by Chinese Communist authorities, as well as having to endure public humiliations and beatings.

The traditional dwelling is called a sierranju (Chinese: 斜仁柱; pinyin: xiérénzhù) and is covered in the summer with birch bark and in the winter with deer furs.

In the summer of 1952 cadres of the Chinese Communist Party coerced the leaders of the Oroqen to give up their "superstitions" and abandon any religious practices.

The last living shaman of the Oroqen, Chuonnasuan (Chinese: 孟金福; pinyin: Mèng Jīn Fú), died at the age of 73 on 9 October 2000.

Evidence for and enhancement of auditory (spirit songs) and visual mental imagery during altered states of consciousness can be found in Chuonnasuan's account of his practice of shamanism.

This term for the lowerworld or land of the dead is identical to that used by the Nanai people of Siberia in accounts of shamans collected almost a century ago.