According to Helena Omma, the leader of the Saminuorra the youth perspective is often missing in these kinds of processes, so there is a need for the youth to explain their own lives with their own words and  how this process affects them and how they believe that they have a future in reindeer husbandry in Härjedalen.

Visit the blog here (in Swedish)

Read the press release from the Saami Council about the case here on the Reindeer Portal.

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.

Research by Sami experts shows that sterilized males can grow larger and so are better at digging for food — as Arctic temperatures vary more, thawing snow often refreezes to form thick ice over lichen pastures.

Neutered males are more able to break through ice with their hooves or antlers, and seem more willing than other males to move aside and share food with calves that can die of starvation in bad freeze-thaw winters like 2000-01.

“To make herds more resilient in the future, we need to re-learn the traditional knowledge of castration,” said professor Svein Mathiesen, coordinator of the University of the Arctic’s Institute of Circumpolar Reindeer Husbandry.

More castration “could be useful to adapt to climate change,” he told Reuters in the Arctic city of Tromsoe. “These animals are very good diggers for the small calves in the most critical period of the winter.” Pasture this year is good.

Castration has traditionally been used by reindeer herders, partly to make wild animals more docile. Herders on the Yamal peninsula in Russia still neuter about half of all males — usually by biting into the testicles with their teeth.

Far fewer animals are castrated outside Russia. About 100,000 Sami own about 2.5 million reindeer in homelands in the Nordic countries and Russia.

HALF-CASTRATION

The traditional Sami biting technique aims for “half-castration” — under which the animals become sterile but still produce some of the male hormone testosterone that promotes muscle growth.

Sami in Norway, where laws limit castration to surgery with anesthetics, are now experimenting with a vaccine to recreate the effects of half-castration.

No interest in sex also helps neutered males in winter.

“Males castrated in the traditional way would have an increased chance of survival over other males since they maintain body weight and condition during the rutting season,” according to a research document by Eli Risten Nergaard of Sami University College.

The Arctic region is warming at double the global rate in a trend blamed by the U.N.’s panel of climate scientists on greenhouse gases from mankind’s burning of fossil fuels.

Yamal herders castrate many of their reindeer, partly because they need strong, docile animals to pull heavy sleds. In Norway, Sami have come to rely on snow-scooters and get most money for calf meat, meaning most males are slaughtered young.

The Sami castration study indicates the complexities of adapting to the impacts of climate change. Many other scientists are focusing on issues such as how to cope with river floods or rising sea levels, or ways to develop drought-resistant crops.

Castrated reindeer also keep their antlers for much of the winter while normal males shed their antlers each autumn after the mating season. That implies that Rudolph, pulling Father Christmas’s sled, has been castrated.

Source: REUTERS

Vitaly was born in 1967 and lives in the village of Nizhnekolymskiy in the Kolyma district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). He was awarded the medal in recognition of his efforts to save his reindeer from the attacks of a bear – he managed to save his reindeer and not kill the bear, which of course is a sacred animal. Watch the video below – Vitaly and his reindeer are at 2.31

Source - RTV 1 & Sakha News

WSPA urge people to write a protest letter to the Nordic Council of Ministers, highlighting material such as,

Despite legislation to the contrary, the footage obtained by WSPA shows how the reindeer are forced through a process that prohibits their natural behaviour in several ways. The reindeer, used to roaming free in the wilderness with no prior contact with human beings, panic visibly and attempt to flee as they are herded in massive groups of well over a hundred reindeer, by groups of men, some on snowmobiles.

The animals’ distress continues to increase as they are forced into corrals, have their ears mutilated and left to bleed, and in more than one instance visible on film, get mishandled as they desperately resist being loaded onto trucks for transport to slaughterhouses.

See their protest site and video here.

If there is a lesson in this for reindeer herders, it might be to be careful of visitors to reindeer round ups bearing cameras…

The award-winning documentary about reindeer herders in the Polar Urals beat 80 films from 27 other countries.

“Nyarma” by Edgar Bartenev focuses on the Nenets people, their customs, family relations, lifestyle, as well as the unique tradition of reindeer herding.

The main character in the documentary is a young Nenets guy who, following the tragic death of his father, becomes the owner of a large herd of 3000 reindeer.

Gosha has to take responsibility not only for his family but for the entire neighborhood – the Polar Ural, according to tradition.

Capturing the spellbound beauty of the landscape, the documentary gives a deep insight into the nature of the indigenous people of the North, moving herds of reindeer.

The St Petersburg-based filmmaker, whose famous teacher was maverick director Alexey German, was quoted as saying that his first trip to the North was when he worked as a doctor in an intensive care unit. He was blown away by the Nenets’ permanent state of enthusiasm and their attitude towards each other, their deer and dogs.

“Relations between the people are amazing. I’ve never seen a husband screaming at his wife or offending his children. The Nenets never beat animals,” Bartenev was quoted as saying.

Source: RT.com

Watch a trailer here: http://www.eastsilver.net/en/east-silver/completed-films/-nyarma-3484/?yearactivity=noac&country=&genere=&director=&producer=&coproducer=&length=&malpha=&fulltext=nyarma&submitButton=Filter

Nenets 'chum' from Yamal, Pic: Francis Latreille

A ‘chum’, the traditional though still in use every day dwelling of the reindeer herding Nenets on the Yamal Peninsula,  will be making a guest appearance at one Russia’s busiest airport: Moscow’s Sheremetyevo.

This marks the kick off of a series of events in the nations capital celebrating the life and culture of the worlds greatestest region of reindeer husbandry, the Yamal Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The exhibit will present items of everyday life, patterns of national art, art-works of local painters, video displays and the work of renowned arctic photographer Brian Alexander.

Other events include a literature soiree “Yamal and literature” on the 26th of November in the museum of Lev Tolstoy. Poets and novelists from Yamal and living in Moscow, whose theme of creative work is the North, will gather here. This will be followed by an International festival of documentary films entitled “The Arctic” on the 27th of November. It was organized by the government of Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug with the financial support of “Gazprom-bank”. 60 films from 6 countries from around the world will participate in it.

An exhibition and presentation of humanitarian and scientific-industrial potential of Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug will take place on the 2nd-3rd of December in the Public Chamber of Russian Federation.

Reindeer froze to death after falling through ice. Pic: NRK

As many as 50 reindeer froze to death after falling through thin ice near Kautokeino, Norway yesterday according to a report in NRK Sami Radio. This is a dangerous time of year for reindeer and their herders, as although lakes and rivers are frozen, the ice is thin and liable to break.

Herders attempted to rescue the animals back to land by using a boat and walking on the ice – extremely risky work, but according to Mikkel NN Eira, as quoted in the article:

We had to and try get the animals onto land… We had to use a boat as we pushed on the ice in front of us.  When we came to areas where the ice was thin and we noticed that the ice began to break up, we had to hurry to jump in the boat. There were many times that my foot went through the ice.

Eira called it a ‘tragedy’, with some reindeer remaining locked in the water. Eira even tried bringing a reindeer inside the house to warm it up but it too succumbed to the cold. He said to NRK Sami Radio,

It was mostly females who went through and they would surely have calved.  This is a loss of at least NOK 100,000 in income.  The animals are our livelihood.

Source – GZT.RU, RAIPON INFO Centre.