by James Raffan
We were met by Elena U, RAIPON’s chief of staff, who introduced Fiera, a visiting teacher of Evenk language and literature from Yakutia. Next to her, at the end of the table, was Aleksei Vakhrushev, a documentary film director from Chukotka, also visiting Moscow. And along the way were Irina Kurilova, RAIPON’s press secretary, and Dmitriy, a doctoral student in cultural studies from Lomonosov Moscow State University, who was in the office on other business and had asked if he might sit in. Sitting formally at one end of the small table, Elena passed along greetings and regrets from the RAIPON leadership, who were mostly away at an out-of-town conference. The atmosphere in the stuffy little conference room with its grimy windows and antique phones was a bit pinched until someone’s cellphone came to life with a rousing chorus of “I Like to Move It” from the animated classic Madagascar, as sung by Sacha Baron Cohen. Everyone laughed.
“So, you are on your way around the world at the Arctic Circle,” said Elena, with a tinge of embarrassment through a blossoming smile. “This sounds like a very interesting project. We would be happy to hear what you need and to do whatever we can to help make it happen.”
With that I unspooled a ten-minute synopsis of the project, finishing with the story of a meeting in Iqaluit, Nunavut, at which an Inuit woman threw up her hands and asked why for so many people in the South, the face of climate change and the North was the face of a polar bear, instead of a human being, a northerner. Throughout my story, which was accompanied by maps and photographs projected onto the cracks and patches on a cream-coloured wall, there were pauses while my words were translated into Russian, after which there would be a chorus of nods around the room.
“We are very interested in what is happening with aboriginal people around the circumpolar world,” Fiera said. “You mentioned an Inuit who said climate change should have a human face instead of the face of a bear. Here, we don’t think about bears and people as either/or. I think climate change should have the face of a bear and the face of a person, because if the bear dies we will also lose the people. The people will die without the animals.”
She continued, “There is a saying among my people, ‘If there is no bears, there is no Evenks.’ In that sense, Evenks are half bear and the bear is half Evenk. Some people make fun of us because of this. We have this feeling that nature talks to us with its own language. There is an invisible thread connecting us. And still, when we explain this to other people, some of them believe we are not quite in our minds. But if the entire civilized world knew what we know, there would not have been the catastrophes, like climate change, we have seen.”
By then, the formalities were gone, and with them any sense of barriers between correspondents around the table. For two and a half hours we talked, still through translation, but as if the give-and-take on topics of common concern were all that was required to make a connection and drive the conversation forward.
“How are the people in Canada’s North adapting to climate change?” Fiera asked.
Not really knowing where to begin, I told them the story of walking along the shore of the Coronation Gulf with my friend Frank Ipakohak in Kugluktuk, Nunavut. “First,” I told them, “he showed me a photograph of the island at the mouth of the Coppermine River where he had been born in a tent in the 1940s. Then he took me to a place where we could look out over the water. ‘See,’ he said, ‘the island where I was born is gone, washed away. Climate change is something we have always lived with. We know how to adapt to changing conditions, and even though the change is happening faster now, we see evidence of change from season to season, from year to year. We see evidence of cultural change every day.’”
This story brought knowing glances around the table. Elena spoke first. “The same is true for the peoples of northern Russia as well. History has not been kind to us. We too notice the effects of climate change on reindeer pastures and on the plants and animals in what we call our ‘feeding landscapes,’ but there are other matters that are of greater concern.”
Rising from her chair, Elena pointed to a map of Russia on the wall showing the territories of the various ethnicities and linguistic groups from west to east. As she spoke, I was struck by the idea of “feeding landscapes” and how similar this was to the ideas that were discussed at the Terra Madre conference in Jokkmokk. In addition to language preservation and the perpetuation of other cultural forms and motifs, security of land on which to nurture and nourish traditional foods is essential to survival for indigenous peoples.
“Not including the Sakha, who are the dominant culture of Yakutia, we are thirty different peoples across Russia, totalling just over two hundred thousand among two million other Russians living across the Arctic. In Stalinist times, when it was forbidden to speak our Native languages or to practise our Native ways, other than to do the bidding of the state on collective reindeer farms and fishing operations, many of our people just disappeared. Now for many of our groups there are only hundreds, in some cases dozens, of people left who identify as part of these cultural groups. We are in crisis,” Elena said.
“The situation for the Oroks, the Orochi, the Negidals, the Enets, and the Russian Aleuts is dire. Their low numbers and high rates of assimilation into neighbouring populations may well result in these traditions slowly dying out altogether over the next couple of decades, or ceasing to exist as independent ethnicities in our mix. Groups like the Dolgans, the Eskimo, the Sami, the Yukaghirs, and the Chuvans, of whom there are several thousand remaining, are stronger but their ethnic future does not inspire optimism. The strongest peoples in our membership, the Evenks—like Fiera—the Chukchi, the Nenets, and the Khanty and Mansi have worked hard to maintain language, cultural practices, and ethnocultural institutions, with the most stable ethnic self-consciousness. But even these peoples have yet to find an optimal model for the future.”
“But we are not without hope,” said a male voice at the end of the table.
I turned to see that the documentary filmmaker, Aleksei, had moved forward to speak. “I have just spent the winter with a Chukchi man called Vukvukai—a name that means ‘the little rock’—and his family on the northern slope of the Russian Far East on the Bering Strait. His life, still, is inseparable from the reindeer. Vukvukai and his community have been able to continue their way of life mostly by virtue of their isolation. Climate change will bring development closer to them every day, every season, but so far their nomadic Chukchi culture is virtually intact. It is an inspiring thing to see.”
“This sounds more like the exception than the rule for Russian northerners,” I replied.
“Yes, I suppose so. In time, life will be a struggle for them too.”
Elena joined in once again and, after affirming the courage and insight of Aleksei and how pleased RAIPON was to be supporting his work in whatever way it could, she slid a package of materials across the table. “RAIPON is a permanent participant in the Arctic Council,” she explained, “and this has been very good for us in telling our story to the international community. This has also allowed us to create materials that build understandings beyond the borders of Russia. We are determined to do what we must do to ensure that the new century is not the last in the history of the small indigenous peoples of Russia. Our priorities are set out in this review, which was published in English with the help of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and the Canadian International Development Agency within the Institution-Building for Northern Russian Indigenous Peoples Project.”
“With help from Canada?”
“Yes,” replied Elena, obviously having prepared this long ahead of time for the visiting Canadian.
A sampling of these priorities detailed the very steep hill that RAIPON members had to climb:
• Unconditional rejection of the policy of total state paternalism …
• Rejection of government care does not mean alienation of the state from decisions about indigenous problems …
• Preservation and maintenance of the still existing nomadic popul
ations of the North …
• Allocation of territories for traditional land use …
• The traditional economy of the northern peoples shall be given a status of a special sector of the national economy …
• Urgent actions are required in social and demographic policy: to increase the birth rate in indigenous peoples, to sustain health care, and to decrease the consumption of alcohol, which is the main factor in the demographic crisis.
• The political aspect in development of the northern peoples becomes very important—establishment of local self-governance, indigenous representation in legislative and executive authorities at all levels….
At my request, Elena made arrangements to provide a letter of introduction and support from the RAIPON leadership that could be used to make connections with a list of key people across the Russian North. “We are not huge in number, but now that I have learned a little more about your project, I think we can help,” she offered. “Of all the people on this list, be sure to contact Vyacheslav Shadrin in Yakutsk. He is a senior chief of five districts in Yakutia, a scholar and teacher. He will understand your project and I’m sure be of great assistance.”
Following Elena’s lead, we all stood. Fiera motioned for me to come with her to the next room, which appeared to be the main reception area for RAIPON. She lifted a mask made of leather and wood from the wall and handed it to me, her dark eyes sparkling in her round smiling face. “For you,” she said in English.
“I can’t take that,” I said, astonished that there was now a space on the wall where this artifact had been.
“You will need it,” she said. “It is made by a craftsman in my community in Yakutia.”
On a piece of tanned reindeer hide were three coins, drilled and tied like medals below the wooden chin of the mask. I slid my hand under each one and turned it over to see the obverse, appreciating the care and workmanship that had gone into making the piece.
“Those are for luck,” she said, as she reached up and gave me a big hug.
8: YAMAL REINDEER
At first glance, the activity on the ice of the Ob River just north of the Arctic Circle from Salekhard, the administrative centre of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, on April 1 looked like a travelling fair and fun park. There was a garish red and yellow pneumatic clamshell cover on a raised plywood stage where singers and dancers in matching natty powder-blue parkas were entertaining an appreciative standing crowd. Food and merchandise vendors hawked their wares at tables lined up in the winter sun. Paralleling the shore but very much still on the ice were six or seven chums, Nenets travelling houses, made of teepee-style poles and covered with double-sewn reindeer hides.
Mixed in with the performers wearing modern outfits were Nenets women clad in full-length yagushka coats made of exquisitely embroidered and appliquéd white reindeer fur. Young Nenets men were wearing fur-hooded pin-striped malitsa tops, cinched at the waist, either with long woven sashes, if they happened to be in line for the ongoing wrestling match taking place on an uncovered stage, or with the classic wide black leather reindeer herder’s belt with brass and chain ornamentation. And then there were the rosy-cheeked children, running and tumbling in their full-length hooded fur garments with mittens built right into the end of the sleeves. Nearby, a profusion of handmade sleds with leather traces were hitched to bridled reindeer eager to get on with the annual races.
There were both four- and five-animal hitches raring to go. Each animal was tacked with a broad, split-leather collar riding low on the neck, with a leather and horn bridle and a single trace heading back between the legs to a sled. Each team had a minder, young boys mostly, thwarting what could be a nightmare of tangling. A pair of inspectors put a stripe of orange spray paint on the neck of each lead animal, showing that the group was ready to race.
The course would take the teams upriver to a pole driven into the ice about a kilometre away, and then home. When the inspectors were done, the first two teams took off. In addition to the single leather rein to steer and encourage the lead animal, the drivers guided their teams with a slender stick called a khorei and called to their reindeer—“On Dasher, on Dancer …,” or something to that effect, in Nenets. Watching the tongues lolling and animals gasping for air as they crossed the finish line made me glad not to be a reindeer that day. But even they, the four-legged athletes, appeared to enjoy the enthusiastic cries of the very noisy and appreciative crowd at the Aksarka festival.
Herder Days, which are celebrated in various places throughout northern Russia, were in fact timed to coincide with the season when these families began the drive back to tundra pasturage hundreds of kilometres north. Started in Soviet times, and very likely building on a long-established tradition of getting together in the spring, these festivals were an opportunity for herders to gather, to share tales of the previous year’s peregrinations, to have an annual meeting with representatives of the Departments of Agriculture and Education and other government officials, to sell meat, and to have a bit of family fun. I had to remind myself that this was not some kind of throwback to days of yore but a cultural happening in real time.
Through Venera Niyazova, my host and translator from the Yamal Department of Culture, I was welcomed into one of the chums at the race site for a meal by Viktor Laptender and his wife, Olga. Although the temperature outside was well below minus fifteen Celsius, the chum was hot and humid. Within its eight-metre diameter were at least eight little children with their mothers and older sisters and about a dozen other non-Nenets visitors from out of town, all feasting on the most amazing array of reindeer (frozen raw, smoked, boiled, or dried) and fish (frozen raw or boiled), dishes that came from the tidy little kitchen area around the tin stove in the middle.
When the festival was over, everything in this dwelling, from the hand-hewn floorboards to the tin stove and the thirty-five hand-trimmed spruce poles and the mix of canvas and reindeer hides that defined the living space, would be packed up on waiting freight sleds. The family would cross the river, reconnect with their reindeer, and continue on their yearly round. Somehow this was immensely reassuring, given Semjon’s struggles in the fenced confines of his obshchina on the Kola Peninsula and the dying traditions of the Sami throughout western Russia and Scandinavia.
Our host was talking about the new railway that Gazprom had built up to the Bovanenkovskoye gas field, which was more or less in the centre of their summer grazing ground. Up to now, they had been able to work around the drill rigs and pipelines associated with this development, but the railway tracks across the landscape were new. Word was that the rumbling of the trains moving on the tracks was scaring fish away from places where normally there were plenty. Oil workers and construction personnel had been good customers for meat and handcrafts. The railway was a mixed blessing, as were the changes that were somehow timed with it.
The rivers on Viktor’s yearly round were breaking up earlier and freezing later. For now, though, the pasture was as lush as he had seen it, which could have meant that the longer season was having an effect, or maybe it was just the way things were. Change was a fact of Nenets life, Viktor said. “It’s a fact of all our lives,” he added, with a sweep of his hand that included everyone at his table. In the end, he wasn’t sure how things would work out, but he explained that they had adapted before and would likely be able to do so again.
What amazed me about this unlikely meal and its nomadic host was the fact that through more than seven decades of Communism, these herders in their family groups and brigades had prevailed. In postwar years, when the government decreed that all reindeer herding would be done through the administrative structure of collective farms, somehow the Nenets had managed to persevere.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, taking with it the notion of collective ownership, suddenly these herders were in a private market, with a very modest stipend from the government, charged with responsibility for production and marketing of meat, antler, hide, and other products of their
labours that had be sold in a cash economy to make ends meet. And all the while, on the Yamal Peninsula, initial oil and gas discoveries in the 1970s were doubled and redoubled. As their reindeer were stepping over pipelines, the Nenets, opportunistically, found ways to market to the oilmen as they continued on their thousand-kilometre annual north-south migrations.
Each of Viktor’s stories heightened my sense of wonder. Like children throughout the circumpolar world, Nenets children had been spirited off to residential schools since Stalinist times and forced to speak and learn in Russian. And yet, as soon as they returned for summer holidays, they returned to speaking one of eleven dialects of Forest Nenets or Tundra Nenets, depending on where their families ranged. Viktor added that without the Russian language, it would be impossible to market their meat. It was quite clear, as I sampled delicious chunks of frozen fish and pickled and smoked meats of every description, bundled up with slabs of homemade bread with lashings of butter or whole cream, that there was much more to be learned among these northerners than the finer points of reindeer racing.
With the exact same kindness and connections that had taken me into Viktor’s inner circle at the Aksarka festival, Venera was able to connect me with Viktor’s brother, Nikolai, and his family, who had been wintering downriver near a place called Gornoknyazevsk. The visit to Nikolai’s chum began with another drive on iced roads. We stopped at an outdoor ethnographic museum, where a television crew materialized to interview the visiting Canadian. On arrival, I was encouraged to dress in full malitsa and gus (Nenets fur outfit). The B-roll they shot looked like I was trying to talk to the “living exhibit” reindeer. When in Siberia …