This paper presents a family legend about the great Selkup shaman Tama-ira. The legend was recounted by his great granddaughter Arina Alekseevna Tamelkina (neé Kalina) (1932–2022) in July 2013 in the town of Krasnoselkup, the centre of the Krasnoselkup district, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area. Her daughter Valentina Vladimirovna Tamelkina helped me to transcribe and translate the audio recorded text. I got acquainted with Arina Alekseevna in 2002 in Krasnoselkup. She worked with us as a language consultant for three weeks, during which time we audio and video recorded her performance of several texts and made an audio recording of a Selkup word list of 2000 lexemes with contexts. Working with her was a real pleasure. She told us about her life, but did not mention her great ancestor then. Apparently, the memory of the persecution of shamans on the Taz River and feelings that talking about such things might still be dangerous were deeply rooted in her. Only after more than 10 years of acquaintance was I fortunate enough to hear her Tama-ira story. Quite often the heroes of Selkup folklore appear to be shamans, but in most cases the hero’s shamanic gifting remains at the periphery of the story. Shamanic texts proper, in which the personality and/or functions of the shaman occupy the central position in the story, are not numerous. Among them there are very realistic descriptions of the everyday life of shamans, legends telling about certain shamans’ great deeds and wars, descriptions of shamanic rites as recounted by eyewitnesses, and, finally, ‘inside’ texts – shamanic incantations summoning spirits, telling about travels to other worlds, etc. In this case we have a shamanic legend as a part of the story-teller’s family history.