Beatrice Allen
The Nenets are an indeginous nomadic tribe native to Siberia. Find out more about them and their way of life, battling against the harsh climate of Siberia and the modern world.
Imagine it is just you and your family, inside a handmade tent, called a chum. All huddled together eating reindeer meat and listening to the fierce winds outside. All around the tent is just flat land, covered in snow. Your family could be the only people around for miles, in the middle of Siberia and it’s harsh climate. This is exactly what life is like for the Nenets, nomads that spend most of their life herding reindeer across the tundra. Nenets, also sometimes called Samoyeds, are an ethnic group native to the Russian Far North. They speak either the Tundra or the Forest Nenets languages - which are both unrelated to Russian. Their traditional economy is rooted in fishing, reindeer herding and hunting.
Boarding School:
Children learn about their heritage alongside normal studies like Maths and English when they are sent to boarding schools. Here the children are taught both Russian and Nenets' grammar and writing, getting a balance between their nomadic life on the tundra and normal life. This gives students the choice and ability to choose what they want to do when they are older. Continue herding reindeer across Siberia or get a job and settle down? They are sent away since studying at home would be difficult, this is because they and their family travel a lot which means it would be likely that the children would fall behind on their studies. Some children become accustomed to life at the boarding school, while others are sometimes so homesick that they run away back to the tundra. Unfortunately, due to the unpredictability and harshness of the weather, they won’t always make it.
Reindeer - an important part of life:
The Nenets depend heavily on their reindeer herds, using them for; food, clothing, tools, transportation and more as they migrate more than a thousand kilometres across the tundra every year. Reindeer meat is the most important part of the Nenets' diet. They also eat fish and in the summer months gather mountain cranberries. The reindeer is eaten raw, frozen or boiled, together with the blood of a freshly slaughtered reindeer, which is rich in vitamins. Every Nenet family has a sacred reindeer, which must not be harnessed or slaughtered until it is no longer able to walk.
Under Threat:
Alas, the Nenets population is dwindling with under 45,000 in Russia, this thousand years old or more ethnic group is on the path to extinction. Their nomadic lifestyle is threatened as their migration routes have been disrupted by mining infrastructure, pollution and the effects of climate change.
Nenets never cease to amaze us with their traditional, somewhat unchanged, way of life. Surviving blizzards and modern life that threatens to wipe them out. Almost untouched by the outside world - the Russian government should realise they are worth saving. Surely the country's heritage and people are more important than anything else, especially oil?
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