- Find out more about the Nenets people: http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/tribes/nenets/index.shtml Read the section: Future very carefully and think about the economical interests this region has for Russia.
The CENTRE OF RUSSIAN STUDIES has the following information published on the webpage in their section ETHNIC GROUPS:
There are two distinct groups of Nenets; the Tundra Nenets (living far to the north) and the Forest Nenets, also known as the Khandeyar (southern reaches). A third group, the Komi Nenets, has emerged as a result of intermarriages between Nenets and the Izhmi tribe of the Komi people.
Religion:Animism
Språk:Nenets (two dialects) and Russian Språkfamilie:Ural-yukagirian:
Samodian group Utdanningsnivå: Spredning Russland:the European North, North West Siberia.
Diaspora:-Historikk:The Nenets are a Samoyedic people (related to Enets, Selkups and Nganasans), and it is believed that they split away from the Finno-Ugrian groups around 3000 B.C. and migrated east, where they mixed with Turkish-Altaic peoples around 200 B.C.The Samoyedic people who remained in Europe, came under Russian control around 1200 A.D., but those who had settled further east did not have much contact with the Russians until the 14th c. By the early 17th c., all of the Samoyedic peoples were under Russian control. The traditional economy of the Nenets and other Samoyedic peoples was mainly based on reindeer herding and breeding, fishing, and sea mammal hunting. Their society was carefully organised into well-defined clans, each with their own grazing, hunting and fishing lands, as well as nomadic routes. During the 16th and 17th c., the central government under the tsars ruled these peoples indirectly from Moscow. They established forts, from which they collected the despised fur tax, but left the actual administration to local rulers. Anyone who converted to Christianity was offered citizenship. The indigenous peoples suffered from their commercial and political contacts with the Russians. The Russians brought tools, firearms and various trade goods, including alcohol, which has plagued these people ever since. They also brought with them diseases that these peoples had never been exposed to before. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviet government issued the "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia", including a wide range of rights of self-determination, that largely remained on paper, as policies of "modernisation" were put through. In 1924, a Committee of Assistance of Peoples of the North was established. They first proposed creating large reservations where the indigenous populations could continue their traditional life-styles. But instead, the Soviet government decided to integrate these peoples into the larger social, political and economic body of the country. Around 1930, several "national districts" were established, administrative units named after one or two of these small peoples. Three such huge regions that exist today, are the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (administratively to some extent part of Arkhangelsk oblast), Dolgan-Nenets (Krasnoyarsk kray) and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomus Okrug (Tyumen oblast). Collectivisation met with strong resistance among Nenets leaders, but to no avail. The government also establihed "cultural bases", with schools, hospitals, day-care centres and so on - mainly in an effort to minimize the nomadic lifestyle of the Nenets and other groups. More than fifty schools were built for Nenets children, and from 1938, Russian was the language of instruction. Nenets religion was also attacked. In the early 1950s, there were several Nenets rebellions in the Arkhangelsk area against this cultural imperialism. The uprisings were suppressed, and rebel leaders were either executed or sent to remote prison camps, where most of them perished. The biggets changes in Nenets life were caused by Soviet industrialisation and the increasing immigration of ethnic Russians into Siberia. During the World War II, the Soviets relocated much of their industry east of the Ural mountains to keep it away from the Germans. Because of this and as a result of huge state development plans, large numbers of ethnic Russian workers suddenly poured into Siberia. The Nenets and other indigenous groups found their land decreasing rapidly, and more and more of them gave up reindeer-herding for jobs at construction sites, oil and natural gas wells, and mass-production factories. The main industrial project that changed the lives of the Nenets, was the exploitation of the huge natural gas field in the Yamalo-Nenets national region, which since the early 1960s has caused severe damage to the tundra and taiga environment. The Nenets had never developed any real sense of political nationalism, so there have not been demands for Nenets independence in the new situation that was created by Glasnost and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. There have, however, been strong calls for a preservation of the original indigenous culture, and there have been protests against industrialisation. Nenets leaders have joined the recently formed Association of Peoples of the North. The problems of the Russian economy and the heavy reliance on natural resources will probably lead to an acceleration of the industrialisation in Siberia, which in turn will make it harder for the Nenets and other indigenous peoples to maintain their culture.
After reading this information do you think it would be better for these nomads to adapt to our style of life and this way not complicate their lives? Do you think that with Globalization the Nenets will eventually disappear?
- Find out about other indigenous nomads in other parts of the world and how they survive in this global world. Find information in the internet and make your own little investigation of one of these groups.
- GREENPEACE: Find out about Greenpeace and what this organization does to fight Global Warming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace and http://greenpeaceblong.wordpress.com/ and http://weblog.greenpeace.org/
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:FIRST, YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO USE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
SECONDLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE TOPIC BY LOOKING UP INFORMATION IN THE INTERNET, BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.THIS WAY YOU WILL FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU WILL HAVE MUCH MORE TO TALK ABOUT.
FINAL TASK:
HERE IS ONE FINAL TASK THAT YOU MAY DO IN ORDER TO COVER THE FOUR SKILLS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON WHEN LEARNING A LANGUAGE: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.Write a composition and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 13, I will edit it in the blog so that everybody can learn from other people´s opinions.
Choose one of the following topics:
- Write a letter to Greenpeace giving your opinion about Global Warming and how it is affecting nomads like the Nenets people.
- Express your opinion about the Nenets people and why it is so important for us to preserve their lands and their way of life.
After a little research in the Internet, I have found out some information about other indigenous nomads in other parts of the world.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, there is a tribal group of indigenous hunter gatherers who live in the Indian state of Maharashtra, called the Katkari. Their ongoing survival is threatened by years of systemic exploitation, racial prejudice, abject poverty and loss of their traditional lands.
Another case would be a Sri Lankan indigenous tribe, which was evicted from their traditional lands in the name of "wilderness conservation".
In Canada we can find the Iroquois tribe, in Ganiekeh. In this country, thousands of Aboriginal Canadians are living in poverty but little is being done to help this marginalized group.
In addition to that, we also have the nomadic Kazakhs of Russia (Kazakh means nomad). By the end of 19th century their land had been colonised by Slavs, Cossacks, Stalinists, and Soviets. The Kazakh population had always existed in a delicate balance with what the land could provide, so great famines followed the invasion.
At that time there were about three and a half million Kazakhs. As late as 1926 three quarters of all Kazakhs were still living a traditional lifestyle, dependent on livestock and seasonal agriculture, until Stalin ordered the nomads to settle, in a bid to “intensify agricultural production”. This crass stupidity led to the deaths of 90 percent of Kazakh livestock. By 1959 Kazakhs were reduced to a mere 29 percent of the population of Kazakhstan.
Most Kazakhs speak Russian now, but 99% also still speak their own indigenous language fluently, due to vast language recovery programs in recent years.
To top it all, the Soviet government used these Indigenous people as guinea pigs for nuclear tests during the cold war, and their living areas are still dangerously radioactive today.
As 30 seconds to Mars’ song says, this is just a game, maybe just a match, even a multiple match. All beings in the earth, and maybe in the universe, exist and try to fight every second of their lives to survive, it is natural selection, the strongest eat the weakest. During history of humanity most of indigenous tribes in the world have disappeared and the rest of people have evolved into other kind of societies, it supposes more advanced.
ReplyDeleteJust a few of these indigenous tribes resist spread all over the world and of course they are the weakest now. They way of life is linked to nature because they do not use artificial things, so any damaging effects on the environment influence decisively in their lives.
But fortunately, there is another match, a match in which that mysterious part of the human being is trying to set up different rules, rules based on a different scale of values, not just strength, but justice, making possible the weakest survive and can choose the way they want to play this game.
On thing is sure, at the end of this match all of us will disappear as a flame burning in the air.
Life is cruel, life is real, life is a bitch, life is cruel, so cruel… (From Queen’s song ‘Life is cruel’)