Indigenous Peoples of Russia/Siberia

Indigenous peoples in Russia

These are 40 different indigenous peoples living in Siberia,
ll with populations under 50,000 and many with just a few dozen remaining.

russia

Photographer Spends 6 Months Traveling Alone to Photograph Siberia’s Indigenous People

Photos Of Indigenous People Brought To Life by Per Ivar Somby

This sublist includes indigenous peoples of Russia which are titular nations, i.e., peoples who gave rise to the names of national entities: independent states or autonomous areas.

24 HOURS WITH REMOTE SIBERIAN TRIBE in Buryatia, Russia

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THE LARGEST ETHNIC GROUPS IN RUSSIA

Indigenous peoples of Dagestan

This small republic has a relatively large number of ethnic groups and languages. According to a 2000 decree of the government of Russian Federation,[1] Dagestan was supposed to compile its own list of small-numbered indigenous peoples, to be included in the overall list of minor indigenous peoples of Russia. The peoples below do not fall under the criteria of the decree.

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Siberia’s Indigenous People

Classifying the diverse population by language, it includes speakers of the following language families (number of speakers reflect the 2002 Russian census):

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Simplified, the indigenous peoples of Siberia listed above can be put into four groups,

  1. Uralic
  2. Altaic
  3. Yeniseian branch of the Dené–Yeniseian languages
  4. Paleosiberian (“other”)

Altaic has not been proven to be a language family, a phylogenetic unit. It may be a Sprachbund. Paleosiberian is simply a geographic term of convenience. Here, these two terms are listed just to serve as portal-like starting points – without suggesting genetic considerations.

Indigenous peoples of Siberia

In Kamchatka, the Itelmens‘ uprisings against Russian rule in 1706, 1731, and 1741, were crushed. During the first uprising the Itelmen were armed with only stone weapons, but in later uprisings they used gunpowder weapons. The Russian Cossacks faced tougher resistance from the Koryaks, who revolted with bows and guns from 1745 to 1756, and were even forced to give up in their attempts to wipe out the Chukchi in 1729, 1730–31, and 1744–47. After the Russian defeat in 1729 at Chukchi hands, the Russian commander Major Dmitry Pavlutsky was responsible for the Russian war against the Chukchi and the mass slaughters and enslavement of Chukchi women and children in 1730–31, but his cruelty only made the Chukchis fight more fiercely. A war against the Chukchis and Koryaks was ordered by Empress Elizabeth in 1742 to totally expel them from their native lands and erase their culture through war. The command was that the natives be “totally extirpated” with Pavlutskiy leading again in this war from 1744 to 1747 in which he led to the Cossacks “with the help of Almighty God and to the good fortune of Her Imperial Highness”, to slaughter the Chukchi men and enslave their women and children as booty. However this phase of the war came to an inconclusive end, when the Chukchi forced them to give up by killing Pavlutskiy and decapitating him.

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The Russians also launched wars and conducted mass slaughters against the Koryaks in 1744 and 1753–54. After the Russians tried to force the natives to convert to Christianity, different native peoples such as the Koryaks, Chukchis, Itelmens, and Yukaghirs all united to drive the Russians out of their land in the 1740s, culminating in the assault on Nizhnekamchatsk fort in 1746.[5] Today, Kamchatka is European in demographics and culture, with only 2.5% of its population being indigenous; after its annexation by Russia in 1697, around 100,000 of 150,000 Itelmen and Koryaks died due to infectious diseases such as smallpox, mass suicides and the mass slaughters perpetrated by the Cossacks throughout the first decades of Russian rule.[6] The genocide by the Russian Cossacks devastated the native peoples of Kamchatka and exterminated much of their population.[7][8] In addition to committing genocide, the Cossacks also devastated the wildlife by slaughtering massive numbers of animals for fur.[9] Ninety percent of the Kamchadals and half of the Vogules were killed from the 18th to 19th centuries and the rapid genocide of the indigenous population led to entire ethnic groups being entirely wiped out, with around 12 exterminated groups which could be named by Nikolai Iadrintsev as of 1882. Much of the slaughter was brought on by the Siberian fur trade.

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In the 17th century, indigenous peoples of the Amur region were attacked and colonized by Russians who came to be known as “red-beards”. The Russian Cossacks were named luocha (羅剎) or rakshasa by Amur natives, after demons found in Buddhist mythology. The natives of the Amur region feared the invaders as they ruthlessly colonized the Amur tribes, who were tributaries of the Qing dynasty during the Sino–Russian border conflicts. Qing forces and Korean musketeers who were allied with the Qing defeated the Cossacks in 1658, which kept the Russians out of the inner reaches of the Amur region for decades.

THE REAL RUSSIAN FAR EAST | KAMCHATKA – Volcanoes and indigenous cultures

The regionalist oblastniki were, in the 19th century, among the Russians in Siberia who acknowledged that the natives were subjected to violence of almost genocidal proportions by the Russian colonization. They claimed that they would rectify the situation with their proposed regionalist policies.The colonizers used massacres, alcoholism and disease to bring the natives under their control, some small nomadic groups essentially disappeared, and much of the evidence of their obliteration has itself been destroyed, with only a few artifacts documenting their presence remaining in Russian museums and collections.

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The Russian colonization of Siberia and conquest of its indigenous peoples has been compared to European colonization in the United States and its natives, with similar negative impacts on the natives and the appropriation of their land. However, the Siberian experience was very different, as settlement has not resulted in dramatic native depopulation.

From 1918 to 1921, there was a violent revolutionary upheaval in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. Russian Cossacks under Captain Grigori Semionov established themselves as warlords by crushing the indigenous peoples who resisted them.[16] The Czechoslovak Legion initially took control of Vladivostok and controlled all of the territory along the Trans-Siberian Railway by September 1918.[17][18] The Legion later declared its neutrality and was evacuated via Vladivostok.

Today, the Slavic Russians outnumber all of the native peoples in Siberia and its cities except in Tuva and Sakha (where the Tuvans and Yakuts serve as the majority ethnic groups respectively), with the Slavic Russians making up the majority in Buryatia and the Altai Republic, outnumbering the Buryat and Altaian natives. The Buryats make up only 30% of their own Republic, and Altai is only one-third, and the Chukchi, Evenks, Khanty, Mansi, and Nenets are outnumbered by non-natives by 90% of the population. The Czars and Soviets enacted policies to force natives to change their way of life, while rewarding ethnic Russians with the natives’ reindeer herds and wild game they had confiscated. The reindeer herds have been mismanaged to the point of extinction.

Nenets child
 
 
 

Painting of Chukchi couple

Chukchi community defends territorial rights against coal mining company

An indigenous obshchina (kinship-based community and cooperative) of indigenous Chukchi on Chukotka peninsula in the Russian Far East has successfully appealed a 2013 administrative decision  depriving it of its territory and overturned a court ruling ordering the obshchina to pay a fine of approximately 15,000 US Dollars to a mining company which had devastated their territory. However, no compensation for the damage inflicted on the obshchina has been ordered. The company has until 22 June to appeal the ruling.

The Sixth Arbitration Court of Appeals in the city of Khabarovsk overturned a decree dated 12 November 2013, which had revoked the community’s territorial rights to the Amaam lagoon area, after the community had protested the devastation of their territory by a subsidiary of the North Pacific Coal Mining (Severo-Tikhookeanskaya Ugolnaya Kompaniya / STUK).
Location of Amaam Lagoon

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In 2007, the company had obtained an exploration permit for the Beringovyi hard coal deposit, holding an estimated 4.2 billion tons. Initially, the permit was given under the condition, that the company stays out of the territories of the indigenous obshchina , however the company chose to ignore this condition. The exploration works led to serious environmental damage by drillings, fuel spills, movement of heavy machinery in the summer period across the Amaam river. (In the summer months, the environment is particularly vulnerable due to the thawed ground). In 2011, STUK hired the Chukokta Trading Company (ChTK) as a subcontractor. With the arrival of this company, the violations aggravated. In summer of 2011, right in the middle of the the salmon spawning season , ChTK hauled cargo from the Ushakov bay across the pristine tundra, the floodplains of the Amaam lagoon and the Amaam river all the way to the base using heavy transport equipment, inflicting irreparable damage to the river.

List of indigenous peoples of the North

Koryak national dance

Koryak People of the Deer

Experiencing Nenet Life On The Frozen Tundra 

  • Nenets (Russian plural: Nentsy, old Russian name: Samoyeds) (ненцы): Yamal, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Yugra, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Komi Republic, Murmansk Oblast – 45,000
  • Nganasans (Tavgi) (нганасаны): Krasnoyarsk Krai, Omsk Oblast, Kurgan Oblast, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Irkutsk Oblast, Sakha, Primorsky Krai – 700
  • Nivkhs (нивхи): Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Krai – 4,466
  • Oroks (ороки): Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Krai, Buryatia, Primorsky Krai – 400
  • Orochs (орочи): Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, Sakhalin, Primorsky Krai – 686
  • Sami (old Russian name: Lopar, i.e., Lapp) (саамы, саами): Murmansk Oblast – 1,771
  • Selkups (селькупы): Yamal, Tomsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai – 3,649
  • Shors (шорцы): Kemerovo Oblask, Khakassia, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Altai Krai, Altai Republic – 12,888
  • Soyots (сойоты): Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast – 3,608
  • Taz (тазы): Primorsky Krai – 274
  • Telengits (теленгиты): Altai Republic, Altai Krai – 3,712
  • Teleuts (телеуты): Kemerovo Oblast, Altai Republic, Altai Krai – 2,643
  • Tofalars or Tofa (тофалары или тофы): Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Tomsk Oblast, Tuva Republic, Khakassia, Sakha – 762
  • Tubalars (тубалары): Altai Republic, Irkutsk Oblast, Altai Krai – 1,965
  • Tozhu (тувинцы-тоджинцы), a subgroup of the Tuvans: Tuva – 4,442
  • Udege (удэгейцы): Primorsky Krai, Khabarovsk Krai – 1,453
  • Ulchs (ульчи): Khabarovsk Krai, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Primorsky Krai, Kamchatka – 3,000
  • Veps (вепсы): Republic of Karelia, Murmansk Oblast, Kemerovo Oblast – 5,936
  • Yukaghirs (юкагиры): Sakha, Chukotka, Magadan Oblast – 1,597

WEST SIBERIAN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

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Glenn Welker is an author, researcher, and Website editor in the field of indigenous American studies. This noted and incredibly talented professor and webmaster offers his endless list of bookmarked links. You can click on anything here from American/Canadian and Latin American Indian languages, history and cultures to an abundance of information about computing information, the internet, and web development. Indigenous Peoples Literature Websites promote indigenous artwork, literature, and culture. Glenn Welker has also enjoyed a thirty year love of Music, particularly ethnomusicology, the music of many cultures.

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