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The Nenets People, Wardens of Siberia's North

Updated: 6 days ago

Lets learn about the Nenets people, sometimes described as the wardens of Siberia’s north. 🦌 


According to a 2021 census, there were 49,646 Nenets in Russia, mainly living along the coastline of the Arctic Ocean. They are generally divided by where they live; either tundra and forest, and each with their own language. About 95% of Nenets speakers speak Tundra Nenets, with Forest Nenets having a much smaller population at around 1,500 individuals. UNESCO recognizes the Nenet languages as endangered languages. There is also a third group of Nenets called the Yaran people who emerged through intermarriage between the Izhma Komi people. Within these groupings, there are at least 10,000 Nenets practicing their traditional nomadic ways. There are some sources saying up to 30,000 either full time or part-time. The word Nenets is likely to come from the root word ‘nenay’, meaning ‘true, real, genuine’.


Reindeer are a fundamental part of life. The Nenets people control about one third of the reindeer in Russia and have always moved seasonally with their reindeer while travelling ancient migration routes. They form Nenet reindeer caravans consisting of about 20 extended family members, several hundred reindeer, dozens of dogs, and many sleds with food, tent poles, and iron stoves. These caravans may travel 10 kilometers a day, even during winter when temperatures drop to -50C or below. The Nenets traditionally have clans with their own territory and hunting and fishing rights. About 100 clans survive today. In 1994, a group of around 1,000 Nenets were discovered with having almost no contact with the outside world. They would drive their herds of reindeer about 1,600 kilometers every year on the Yamal Peninsula. Their tools and sheds were “almost identical to those found in 8,000-year-old archaeological sites” and “almost everything they owned, with the exception of ceramic tea cups, is made by hand.”


The Nenets people today are facing serious issues. The Yamal peninsula where they roam is the world’s largest gas exploitation zone. The landscape and pastures have changed to gas fields with a railway, airport, and shipping lanes. Climate change is bringing melting permafrost and changed weather systems. There are 2 video resources below that speak to these issues. One short clip is of a Nenets woman speaking her language and sharing daily life. You can hear the many connections to nature in her words, and sadly see how a global disconnection from nature is changing a way of life. There is a song resource in the Nenets language and dedicated to the deer.


I had never heard of the Nenets before the other week when I came across an article about Indigenous communities in Russia’s far north losing their men to the war in Ukraine. This is what is happening to the Nenets, along with other Indigenous peoples in Russia. Below is a quote from “19-year-old Dmitry Yaptik, a representative of the Nenets people, who was taken prisoner.”


🎤 The Nenets population…is dying out, he says, emphasising that all his companions perished. "For example, in my own nation, the Itelmen nation, we have only a population of around 2,200 people so even several people dying in this war is a huge loss for us, especially in the northern villages. Every Indigenous family has been impacted by the war, in one way or another."



🎤 A quote from the article says, ‘We think there might be several thousand Indigenous people who have been killed since 2022, when the official size of the Nenets population was just under 50,000 people.”


** Information above was found by searching the internet and sources like Wikipedia.


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