Indigenous Reindeer Herders Research Articles

Traditional Livelihood, Unstable Environment: Adaptation of Traditional Fishing and Reindeer Herding to Environmental Change in the Russian Arctic

The effects of climate change are much more pronounced in the Arctic region than in other places around the world. This paper highlights the practices of adaptation to climate change by Indigenous reindeer herders, e.g., Saami and Komi-Izhemtsy, and Pomor fishermen, in the Russian Arctic. Our major research question is: How does the interplay of social and environmental factors determine traditional reindeer herding and fishing in the Russian North in the context of climate change, including seasonal changes? A qualitative methodology was used in both reindeer herding and fishing communities using the same interview guide. As an analytical lens, we chose resilience theory combined with the actor–network theory. Resilience theory allows us to situate the adaptive capacity of reindeer herders and fisherman within a constantly changing context. The actor–network theory offers a non-human-centered framework which allows the reconstruction of the networks that emerge in the context of adaptation and link humans, material objects, and the living environment. We found that the traditional economic activity of reindeer herders and fishermen is significantly affected by socio-economic and environmental factors. Both reindeer herders and fishermen manage to adapt to the changing environment using local knowledge and different kinds of technical tools. However, socio-economic conditions and accelerating climate change put the resilience of Indigenous communities at risk.

“Barrage Fire”: Pyrotechnics in the Traditional Economy of Western Siberia and the Transformation of the Environment

This article carries out a comprehensive study of the use of open fire in the traditional economy of Western Siberia between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For this purpose, the author studies the use of fire in the Russian peasant economy and by the native population of the region. The region’s environment was affected by the use of open fire while the effect of the pyrogenically altered agro-industrial structure of the region. In the article, special attention is paid to the traditional and administrative regulation of the use of fire in economic activities. The ecological-historical method considers landscape and climate zoning in the study of local economic structures. The author uses historical and ethnographic methods, handling data from field ethnography and agricultural history. Documents from the Forest Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property have the greatest potential for the subject explored. Open fire was widely used by Russian peasant farms. Fields and their boundaries were singed in order to destroy stubble and weeds. Last season’s grass was burnt in the spring on pastures and meadows. In the north of the region, Russians and indigenous peoples “renewed” the forest areas where they grew berries with the help of fire. The indigenous peoples of the taiga and tundra (Khanty, Mansi, Nenets) set the taiga on fire in order to attract fur-bearing animals and renew areas grown over with reindeer moss. In order to get rid of blood-sucking insects, both Russian cattle breeders and indigenous reindeer herders could not do without smudges. Russian peasants set forests on fire in order to create spacious insect-free pastures. All the aforementioned economic methods, as well as forest industries, often led to disastrous forest fires. They were especially destructive for the agro-industrial structure of northern floodwater cultivation, plunging the economy into a prolonged depression (impoverishment of hunting, fishing, and cedar production). Forest fires in the southern taiga and forest-steppe zones not only led to forest destruction but to soil degradation, marsh drainage, and the shallowing of rivers. The Russian and indigenous communities tried to regulate fire setting and singeing. However, the restrictions quite often existed on paper only. In the mid-nineteenth century, the administration started paying attention to the problem. As a result, singeing of meadows and fields was limited to a certain spring period. At the beginning of the twentieth century, because of mass migration, anthropogenic forest fires occurred more often and, consequently, resulted in a regional catastrophe. The pyrogenic changes in the environment had an adverse effect on the region’s agro-industrial structure. The administration tightened control of the use of open fire in order to achieve economic aims.

Health-related effects of food and nutrition security: An evidence of the northern communities in Russia

In the Arctic, anthropogenic pressure on the environment and progressing climate change bring together concerns over the effects of food consumption patterns on the health of the population. The goal of this study is to contribute to the development of a unified approach to revealing those effects and measuring healthy nutrition applicable across various types of circumpolar territories, populations, and consumption behavior. By applying the Delphi approach, the author builds a set of parameters along four pillars of food and nutrition security (FNS) and applied it to eight territories of the Russian Arctic. The linkages between FNS status and health are recognized by employing multiple regression analysis on the incidence rates of nutritional and metabolic disorders and diseases of the digestive system. The analysis involves: (1) urban agglomerations with prevalence of marketed food; (2) high-polluted industrial sites; (3) habitats of indigenous reindeer herders (meatbased diet); (4) coastal indigenous communities (fish-based diet). The study finds that, in Type 1 and 2 territories, health disorders are caused by poor quality of water, lack of proteins, vitamins, and minerals, and increasing share of marketed food in the diets. In Type 3 and 4 territories, higher reliance on traditional food results in lower incidence rates.

Perceptions of environmental justice and the conflict surrounding large carnivore management in Norway — Implications for conflict management

Human-wildlife conflict is increasingly being recognised as containing strong elements of social conflict. The extent to which stakeholders regard a management system as being just and fair is a key social dimension of conflict. This paper investigates the perceptions of justice regarding the carnivore conflict in Norway among sheep farmers, environmentalists and indigenous reindeer herders using Q methodology. Three significant perspectives on environmental justice were identified, which we labelled the Carnivore Advocates (containing most environmentalists), the Carnivore Sceptics (containing most of the sheep farmers and reindeer herders) and the Bureaucratic Carnivore Sceptics (containing the remaining sheep farmers and a reindeer herder). The widest disagreement was over what constitutes environmental harm and environmental goods and how the costs and benefits should be distributed, indicating that fundamental differences in values and perceptions underlie the intractability of this conflict. However, the results of this study suggest that the widespread conceptualisation of justice as strictly a matter of equitable distribution of costs and benefits is incomplete. Recognition justice, in the form of acknowledging group identity, lifestyle, knowledge and viewpoints, and seeking mutual respect for differences constituted a good in itself for all stakeholders. It cannot therefore just be viewed as a means to establish equitable distribution of goods and harms. Issues related to participatory justice were also identified, but were not attributed great importance. These results confirm the common assumption that the carnivore conflict in Norway is highly polarised. Because the two poles differ fundamentally in their value perceptions regarding carnivores and how that relates to their sense of identity, we characterise the human-wildlife conflict in Norway as a “wicked problem” where decisions regarding the management of carnivores is going to entail political prioritisation of one viewpoint over the other.

Sustainable Indigenous Reindeer Herding as a Human Right

The specifically changing climate conditions in the arctic and subarctic tremendously affect the vegetation and the conditions of the snow. This, therefore, influences the possibilities for rangifer tarandus to feed. For many indigenous peoples across the global North, the herding of reindeer, however, is an extremely important source of income. When the increasing temperatures lead to snow melting a bit and then freezing over again, the reindeer loose access to their feed. This has led to the starvation of thousands of reindeer in Russia in 2013/2014. This paper will try to shed light on the background of the historic as well as the legal aspects of indigenous Sámi reindeer herders in the multi-state Sápmi area. While reindeer herding represents a significant livelihood for the indigenous population, the change in climate increasingly threatens the sustainability of this cornerstone of Sámi identity. This text aims to highlight existing rules of international human rights introduced to protect indigenous reindeer herders and the state’s duty to refrain from actions endangering indigenous livelihoods and to take positive action aimed at their protection.

"В полку все благополучно...": история миссионерской приходской церкви

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of mobile churches. It examines the history of the mobile missionary church tent, which was established to promote Christianity among the Mansi people – indigenous reindeer herders in the Northern Urals. During World War I this mobile little missionary church was conveyed to the infantry regiment formed in the Urals and sent to the front line in France. From the missionaries’ reports and the documents of the Russian Orthodox Church Missionary Society published in Yekaterinburg Diocese’s newsletter, it was found that the original project of the mobile missionary church tent was suggested by Arkadii Garyaev. He was a missionary priest in the northernmost parish of Yekaterinburg Diocese. Arkadii Garyaev tragically died during the Civil War and was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. The missionary church tent fully equipped with ecclesiastical throne and iconostasis weighed only 70 kg and when folded could be transported on a sledge pulled by reindeers, allowing missionaries to reach the most remote settlements of the nomadic Mansi. These qualities of the little church tent were appreciated both by the regiment’s priest, soldiers and numerous guests in frontline France during World War I.

Chukotkan reindeer husbandry in the post-socialist transition

Reindeer herding in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, as in many other regions across the Russian North, has been experiencing a progressive collapse since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The collapse is typically blamed on Russia's privatization programme, which broke up collectivized reindeer farms into supposedly privatized enterprises. While this process did indeed bring significant changes to the practice of reindeer herding in Chukotka, this paper argues that a more fundamental issue is the political and economic change at the local level that most likely makes the collapse irreversible. Áccording to the rhetoric of the new “democratic” framework, the majority rules, and their priorities take precedence. As a result, the indigenous peoples and their priorities - chief among which is reindeer herding - have been squeezed into the political margins. This has been exacerbated by the development of a relationship of internal colonialism between dominant urban Russians and village-dwelling indigenous reindeer herders, which has led to greater inequalities between the two groups as the Russians monopolize both resources and power in the region.