This 10-day exchange will bring leaders working on indigenous issues and a traditional way of life from Alaska’s Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope to the Sakha Republic to meet with Evenk tribal and NGO leaders and officials in several Sakha villages. The Evenk community in Sakha, a traditional reindeer-herding culture, is working to protect its culture and way of life in the face of increasing resource extraction activities and industrial development. Through the exchange, indigenous leaders will convene to share experiences and to learn from each other. Participants will discuss their communities’ approach to protecting sacred traditional lands, participation in decision-making processes regarding natural resource use, and community leaders’ experience negotiating with resource extraction companies and monitoring industrial projects.

This will be the third in a series of exchanges between the Sakha Evenk community and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. The first exchange, in 2008, brought Evenk leaders from the Sakha Republic to Barrow for information-sharing and a cultural exchange that resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding, under which the communities agreed to mutual support for efforts to protect indigenous peoples’ rights and preserve traditional lands in the face of industrial development.

The relationship initiated here was strengthened in March 2010, when Evenk leaders from Sakha and Russian geological experts visited Barrow for cultural presentations and to share the effects of hydrocarbon extraction on the indigenous reindeer economy. This third exchange will provide further opportunity for both communities to deepen knowledge of the each other’s culture and community challenges, and to identify ways to support each other’s efforts.

Indigenous communities on both sides of the Arctic, including Alaska’s North Slope and Russia’s Sakhalin Island, have for decades watched their pristine homelands and traditional fishing and hunting grounds be sacrificed to oilfield development.

Traditional Arctic communities are often the first to experience the effects of global climate change, and stories abound from both sides of the Pacific about environmental conditions changing in response to warming trends, such as the melting of Siberian permafrost or the recent appearance of new insect species in Alaska. Such rapid change necessitates strong community organization and cooperation among indigenous groups to protect their lands and traditional ways of life from the impacts of global warming and resource extraction projects.

“Our goal is to continue to help foster the longstanding relationships between native Russian and Alaska tribal communities that can eventually be developed into an influential information-sharing and advocacy network,” said Shawna Larson, Alaska Program Co-Director for Pacific Environment. “We see this as an opportunity for both groups to gain a better understanding of the impacts of oil and gas projects on indigenous life in the Arctic and how to collectively best approach this.”

Members of the delegation will be available for interviews upon returning from the exchange, during the week of March 21, 2011. For more information contact Colleen Keane at ckeane@pacificenvironment.org or (907) 277-1029.

For more information visit www.pacificenvironment.org/russia and www.pacificenvironment.org/alaska for more information.

Source – GZT.RU, RAIPON INFO Centre.

The Moscow Times informed that “RusHydro” will not decide on whether to build a dam in Evenkia this year, the company said Friday, after the project was lambasted at public hearings in Krasnoyarsk.

The Energy Ministry has finished work on the 2020 general plan of power generation, which predicts a growth in annual power consumption of up to 3.1 percent through 2030, Prime-Tass reported Thursday. A ministry representative said last week that the Evenkia dam was not included in the plan, which is expected to be submitted to the Cabinet for approval this summer.

Removal of the $21 billion Evenkia dam from the government’s official plan would once again put a hold on the controversial project, which met with fierce resistance from local residents and environmentalists.

Regional lawmakers and scientists discussed the dam Wednesday in the Krasnoyarsk legislative assembly, which said RusHydro had not sufficiently researched the consequences of constructing the dam and asked the government to look into alternative energy sources, according to the draft resolution. RusHydro did not attend the hearing.

The Moscow Times

Project of Evenki Hydropower Station in Krasnoyarskiy Krai

The construction would flood about 1 million hectares of the unique deciduous forests and pastures traditionally used by the Evenki reindeer herders and hunters. It would also flood a chamber that contains the radioactive brine left as a result of at least one of the underground nuclear explosions fired in the Lower Tunguska’s floodplain in 1970s.

The hydropower construction can bring to the population of Evenkia: destruction of the key traditional nature use territories; flood of the settlements including Tura, the capital of Evenkia; impossibility of  navigation of the Lower Tunguska, which means a destruction of the transport system; huge influx of strange population that is well-known for its destructive influence on the indigenous peoples’ life.

Глава правительства Красноярского края Эдхам Акбулатов дал указание  своим подчиненным продумать варианты реализации северного мяса, рыбы и дикоросов в России и за пределами страны.

By HENRY SANDERSON (AP) – GENHE CITY, China — Herding reindeer and hunting bears and boars in the forests on Siberia’s fringe was Gu Gejun’s life. Now his rifle has been confiscated, and the only reindeer he herds are in an urban tourist park.

China has moved most of the small Ewenki ethnic group from the steppe to the city, giving its members better access to medical services, education and jobs but, inevitably, changing their traditions.

They are among more than 700,000 nomadic herders — mostly Tibetans, Mongols and Kazaks in western China — the government has resettled since 2000.

About 60 Ewenki families live here in a Finnish-designed gated community of spacious sloped-roof wooden homes in orderly rows. They have televisions and washing machines. Across the street a teepee-like tent houses an exhibit on how the Ewenki used to live. Nearby, a dozen reindeer graze in a cleared patch of forest, watched over by Gu, a 37-year-old man with the chiseled looks of a movie star.

“Our lifestyle has been affected, because we Ewenki are born hunters,” he said. “From older generations to younger generations we used to live on hunting. It’s in our blood.”

Gu had to turn over his semiautomatic rifle when he was resettled six years ago. He still remembers the model number engraved on it — 62684 — though he cannot remember the one on his government ID card. “When we go into the mountains and talk about guns we just cry,” he said.

The government says resettlement raises living standards and protects the grasslands from overgrazing and desertification. Many living near international borders have been moved for security, as Beijing worries about sabotage, smuggling and illegal border crossing.

The Ewenki (pronounced ehr-when-key) roamed for centuries around southern Siberia in Russia. About 300 years ago, in search of better hunting grounds, some crossed the Greater Hinggan Mountains into China. Today, about 64,000 remain, half in China.

Reindeer were at the center of Ewenki life, providing milk and transport, and they were revered, said An Tabu, 66, as she looked from her house to a newly paved road where kids practiced skateboarding.

Under the resettlement program, An Tabu and 242 others from the Aoluguya branch of the Ewenki moved 200 miles (300 kilometers) to Genhe, a small city of lumber mills and white-tiled buildings, in 2003. The Aoluguya are the last of three groups of Ewenki to be settled.

They brought 700 reindeer, but the herd could not find enough to eat and some died, residents said. Around 30 Ewenki returned to the birch-and-pine-forested mountains, taking the reindeer.

“It’s not good here,” An Tabu said. “We can’t hunt anymore, like I did when I was younger.”

Moving to Genhe has given them a chance to thrive in the mainstream of China’s booming economy. The price has been the loss of tradition and language, as younger Ewenki learn Chinese to compete.

“After being resettled, their living conditions were improved, but their way of life changed,” said Yu Zhixue, an artist who first visited the Ewenki in the 1950s, living in their mountain camps and drinking reindeer milk instead of water. “The fact that they gave their guns to the government was a symbol for the end of an era. Many of the younger generation of the Ewenki now would rather play with computers than go into the mountains and hunt.”

Suo Ronghua lived in the mountains until she was seven and sent to school in Mangui. She married a man from China’s Han majority whom she met in 1999 at the city’s college.

Now 33 and a mother of two, Suo said city life suits her. Her 10-year-old daughter gets taken to school where classes are in Mandarin. She does regret the girl cannot speak Ewenki.

“We are not many people, so many people have married Han Chinese,” said Suo, lifting her young baby up and down in the bright airy living room. “It is unfortunate because Ewenki people should protect their traditions.”

Their reindeer were collectivized in the early years of communist rule, and their shamanic belief system was outlawed during the radical Cultural Revolution. They have seen their traditional hunting grounds shrink, first as they were moved away from the border during China-Soviet Union tensions and then by logging and poaching by Chinese, who hunted their reindeer for its antlers and penis for Chinese medicine.

By the time resettlement began for the first Ewenki in the 1990s, many were dispirited. Alcoholism rates were high, and assimilation already under way. The government began giving Ewenki welfare payments in the 1980s, and they still get a 400 yuan ($60) subsidy each month. In Genhe, around half have found jobs running small tourism businesses, residents said, and others left to look for work on construction sites.

Dular Osor Chaoke, an Ewenki at the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, favors integrating with the mainstream and adapting traditions to modern life. The linguist is developing a Roman alphabet for the language and a software program for its use on computers and mobile phones.

“We have to use modernized and high-tech methods to preserve our ethnic languages and ethnic cultures,” Dular said, taking out his mobile phone and sending an Ewenki text message to a friend in Inner Mongolia as a demonstration. “This is the only way.”

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

21 сентября в Туву по маршруту Суринда-Байкит вертолетом и Байкит-Красноярск-Кызыл на транспортном самолете АН-32 завезена первая партия живого груза – 35 оленей. В аэропорту Кызыла их ожидала бригада оленеводов ГУП «Одуген» Тоджинского района республики. Итого по транспортировке животных будет выполнено три авиарейса. Все правила ветеринарного надзора соблюдены.

Премьер Тувы Шолбан Кара-оол лично поблагодарил в аэропорту всех людей, которые задействованы в перевозке оленей, так как подготовка к перелетам с живым грузом на борту велась долго и тщательно. В пути животных сопровождают эвенкийские оленеводы и специалисты Минсельхоза Тувы. Кара-оол побеседовал и с тоджинскими чабанами, которые весело подметили, что тувинский олень значительно крупнее северных сородичей. А вот 56-летний опытный оленевод Дадар-оол Донгак не стал особо критиковать засаянских оленей. «Я очень рад, что наши власти уделяют серьезное внимание проблеме сохранения и увеличения численности редких видов сельскохозяйственных животных республики, – сказал Дадар-оол Донгак, – ведь оленеводство – это традиционный уклад и образ жизни коренного населения северо-восточных районов Тувы, прежде всего тувинцев-тоджинцев». Оленевод, отметил, что добрососедские отношения между Тувой и Красноярским краем необходимо развивать еще больше, и выразил уверенность, что 100 эвенкийских оленей реально поправят дело в хозяйствах Тоджинского района.

Источник

Иенгра – село в Нерюнгринском районе, единственное в Южной Якутии место компактного проживания коренного народа севера – эвенков. Эвенки занимаются традиционными видами хозяйства – оленеводством, звероводством и охотой. Население Иенгры сегодня составляет 1260 человек, из них эвенков – около 870 человек.

Впервые вопрос о создании Иенгринского эвенкийского национального наслега сельчане подняли на стихийном сельском сходе 12 октября 2007 года. Собравшись в тот день в этнокультурном центре “Эян”, жители села высказали мнение о необходимости земельного и территориального переустройства своего села. Активность сельчан в то время была отчасти связана со строительством магистрального нефтепровода “Восточная Сибирь – Тихий океан”, частично проходившего по местам оленьих пастбищ и отелов.

В апреле 2008 года депутаты Нерюнгринского районного совета создали трехстороннюю комиссию, задачей которой стало изучение предложений жителей Иенгры. В сентябре 2008 года сессия народных депутатов совета сельского поселения приняла решение образовать “территорию традиционного природопользования местного значения “Иенгра” в границах территории Иенгринского наслега”. Причиной для принятия такого решения стали, по словам депутатов, “обращения лиц из числа коренных малочисленных народов и глав кочевых родовых общин”.

В марте 2009 года районные депутаты согласились с предложением жителей Иенгры и официально приняли решение о создании национального наслега. В территорию национального наслега сегодня включены 1,5 миллиона гектаров земель, используемые местными жителями для традиционных видов промыслов – охоты и оленеводства.

Не вошли в национальный наслег поселки Нерюнгринского района Золотинка и Нагорный, территории Эльгинского угольного месторождения и будущей Канкунской ГЭС, земли под железной дорогой и магистральным нефтепроводом “Восточная Сибирь – Тихий океан”.

Примечательно, что решение о создании Иенгринского эвенкийского национального наслега было приято за три дня до начала в Нерюнгри Всероссийского и Республиканского съездов эвенков.

Источник

Reindeer numbers in the Komi Republic (primarily Vorkuta, Inta and Usinskhave) stabilised, according the regions  Ministry of Agriculture and Food. According to the agency, on 1 January 2009 there were 64,825 deer, which is  4326 head more than a year ago.  Production of meat in live weight has also increased. Slaughter numbers would have been higher but for warm weather in November and December, which prevented reindeer brought to the slaughter. 

The best production  performer for reindeer production and preservation was the cooperative  KTC «Reindeer Herders». The highest output of calves was achieved by OOO «North»  amounting to 71,1 percent. Source: Komiinform

On 12-14 March in the village of Iengra Neryungrinskogo the third All-Russian Congress of the Evenki Russia will be held. In Russia, there are around 48000 Evenki, most of whom live in the Evenki Autonomous Area, Yakutia, Irkutsk, Chita, Tomsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk Region and St. Petersburg. There is also a major Evenki diaspora in People’s Republic of China and Mongolia. Evenki are one of the great reindeer herding peoples and the Congress willput reindeer husbandry at its centre. Source: Sakha News

Всего на территории России сегодня проживает 48 тысяч эвенков. Основные места их расселения – Эвенкийский автономный округ, Якутия, Иркутская, Читинская, Томская области, Красноярский и Хабаровский край и Санкт-Петербург. За рубежом крупные эвенкийские диаспоры существуют в Китайской Народной Республике и Монголии.

Нынешний съезд будет третьим по счету. Первый съезд проходил здесь же, в Иенгре, в марте 1991 года. Второй съезд эвенков России состоялся в августе 2002 года в поселке Тура – столице эвенкийского национального округа в Красноярском крае. На нем был создан Союз эвенков России, который занимается сохранением национальной самобытности малочисленной народности, созданием условий для развития эвенкийского языка.

Первым событием трех дней в Иенгре отчетно-выборный съезд эвенков Якутии, намеченный на 12 марта. Участие в нем примут 20 делегатов из десяти улусов республики. На следующий день, 13 марта, пройдет собственно сам третий съезд эвенков России. Ожидается, что его делегатами станут представители 49 эвенкийских объединений страны, а также эвенки из Китая и Монголии.

14 марта в Иенгре состоится День оленевода с традиционной программой: гонки на оленьих упряжках, соревнования по национальным видам спорта, выступления фольклорных коллективов, выставки национальной одежды, изделий местных промыслов, презентация национальной кухни и народные гуляния.

На всероссийский съезд эвенков в Нерюнгринский район обещают прибыть члены профильных комитетов Государственной Думы и Совета Федерации, а также ряд журналистов федеральных средств массовой информации.

Источник

A delegation of four Russian indigenous leaders from the Sakha Republic showed up in Barrow and Nuiqsut last week to meet tribal leaders, organizations and local residents to learn about Inupiat methods of protecting their culture.

The trip, which took place March 22-April 3, was sponsored by the Russia and Alaska programs of Pacific Environment, an environmental organization based in San Francisco with an office in Alaska.

The Russian visitors intended to learn how community organizing in Alaska is used as a tool to gain leverage when dealing with resource extraction companies and government bodies.

In 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved an East Siberian Pacific Pipeline to cut right through the southern part of the republic, also called Yakutia, on its way to deliver oil to Japan, China and the United States.

Originally, the 2,600-mile pipeline was planned to skirt within a half-mile of the northern shore of Lake Baikal – a UNESCO World Heritage site, thanks to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, many of which cannot be found elsewhere in the world.

Protests against the pipeline’s proximity to the lake and the risks involved finally pushed the route farther north and into a different region.

The Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, is the largest region in Russia, spanning about half the size of the Lower 48.

It is also one of the most remote of Russia’s regions and one of its richest in natural resources, with oil, mining, coal production, diamonds and timber.

Heavy resource extraction has already taken its toll on the vast land, populated primarily by indigenous people – the Yakut – and Russians.

“Before the coal industry, we had 12,000 domesticated reindeer in one herd, now we only have 4,500,” said Ivan Atlasov, an industrial engineer and president since 2005 of the Association of the Evenk people.

“The reindeer changed their patterns to move away from the mines and went further towards the mountains,” he said.

Reliant on the animals for food and clothes, the herders in this remote and extremely cold region were forced to travel with the herd by air, subjected to rising oil costs.

In addition to coal mining and the pipeline, a railroad is under construction, and plans are made for an open-pit coal mine in the southern region of Sakha.

The territory for the future pipeline section is entirely above permafrost and is home to the Evenk, an indigenous people who rely mainly on subsistence hunting of reindeer.

An ancient proverb says that wherever there are reindeer, there is an Evenk.

A more contemporary variation adds that wherever there is an Evenk there are reindeer, according to Yuri Yukhnovets, an Evenk teacher and union leader from Southern Sakha and mayor of his village.

This may be true right now, but the delegation and the people they represent back home are afraid the government is ignoring the facts that may change this situation forever.

“There are virtually no functional rights that exist for the Russian indigenous people,” said Meerim Kylychbekova, of Pacific Environment’s Russia Program.

Transneft, the company behind the East Siberian Pacific pipeline, is a government-owned monopoly.

“This is a massive project that should require lots of months of work,” said Ekaterina Evseeva, co-director of Eyge, a leading indigenous environmental organization in Sakha.

“The pipeline is more than 1,400 kilometers long in the Sakha region, and they only did a few months of environmental assessments,” Evseeva said.

Other claims, similar to those made by groups in Alaska against offshore drilling plans, accuse the Russian equivalent to the U.S.’s Minerals Management Service of approving a plan lacked information and had no alternative.

A coalition of scientists, conservation organizations, indigenous groups and concerned locals has appealed the decision in court, stating the agency knew the project was incomplete.

The coalition stated the agency used information from the 1970s and ignored its comments on negative impacts of constructing and maintaining the pipeline in that region.

It added that public hearings were not held in all the relevant regions and were kept quiet, causing attendance to be low.

“The government wants to build the pipeline as fast as possible while oil prices are high,” Evseeva said.

The pipeline would handle an estimated 40 million cubic meters of oil a year in its first years of operation. The second phase estimates 90 million cubic meters a year, according to Evseeva.

“These claims have not been confirmed by geological studies. There is a debate whether there even is enough oil to justify the project,” she said.

During their visit to Alaska, the delegation made stops in the North Slope, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Chickaloon.

“For us, what was useful were conversations with the ordinary people,” said Yury Vasilyev, a forestry specialist and an environmental studies teacher at Sokol (falcon) public environmental organization for children.

“Most relevant was to understand relationships between the local communities and the government,” he said.

“It’s not for us to say, here it is good, there it is bad – it’s our job to learn to identify common lessons and also see what has been happening here is what awaits us,” Vasilyev said.

Rachel James of the Alaska Program at Pacific Environment joined the group on their tour. She said the delegation was able to speak to elders and young people about the changes they face.

“I believe the participants got a good overview of the benefits and challenges of these changes,” James said.

“We deeply appreciated that the people of Nuiqsut and Barrow who were very warm and generous to our group.’a0Perhaps the most learning went on’a0over the dining room table.”‘a0