CONTENTS

Sociopolitical Context of Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Types of Impacts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Economic Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Environmental Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Pollution of Physical Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Infrastructure Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Wildlife Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Sociopolitical Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Population Redistribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Physical and Mental Health. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Politicization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Cultural Impacts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Family Hunting Territories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Restructuring Traditional Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Destruction of Components of Native Religion. . . . . . . . . . .25

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

West Siberia, and Khanty-Mansiiskii Autonomous Okrug in particular, is the site of one of the world's most extensive petroleum developments. The process began in the late 1960s with the first discoveries of oil. At that time, Surgut had less than 10,000 people (it did not receive city soviet status until 1968). In the 1970s and 1980s, geological work dominated he western part of the region, between Surgut and Khanty-Mansiysk, while the first production began in earnest in the eastern half of the region (Surgut to Nizhnevartovsk). By the late 1980s all but a few areas (Kazym River, Yugan) had been seized for production by the Ministry of Energy and the government oil monopoly, and the region virtually supported a collapsing Soviet economy by providing a cheap domestic petroleum supply and petrodollars generated from export. This period was marked by the forcible relocation of Khanty families from their traditional family hunting territories (on Agan River) or by the destruction of the natural resources of occupied family territories (on lower Pim and Trom-Agan river systems) which eventually forced the families to voluntarily relocate. Although we have no direct data, we infer that relocations, forcible or voluntary, probably happened on the Vakh and Vas-Yugan Rivers as well because both were regions of very early oil development and Khanty there are now substantially resettled in villages.

The process of production during the Soviet period was characterized by a minimal regard for environmental protection, preservation of cultural properties, and effective consultation with indigenous peoples. At the same time, certain provisions, such as adjustments to state subsidies, were made by the (then) State Committee for the North (GOSKOMSEVER) and a number of related government institutions like ZVERPROMHOS (the state fur trade factory monopoly) that served to alleviate some of the economic and social stress of this assault on traditional Khanty life. Moreover, the Soviet policy toward minorities assured that some Khanty voices would be represented at various levels of decision-making, albeit not very effectively, and the local village soviets still relied heavily on acculturated Khanty to serve as ombudsmen for their less acculturated kin

By gerrymandering the boundaries of newly created regions (Nizhnevartovsk, 1973) and village soviets (Nizhnesortimski 1990), the politics of the region was manipulated to facilitate the production of oil and to minimize the capacity of Khanty to resist or alter the course of development. There is a long history of collusion between the oil and gas interests, the Surgut regional government and the KhantyMansiysk okrug government, the next highest level of government. In the mid1970s as the oil boom was beginning, the TromAganskii Village Soviet, or local government, was divided into the Russkinskiye and UltiAganskii Village Soviets, the justification being the influx of temporary oil workers who swelled the population. Many Khanty were removed from the UltiAgan area, a cultural hearth area thick with the most sacred sites for all Khanty people, and relocated onto much poorer land. The UltiAganskii Soviet is now in the hands of the oil people and the sacred land profaned and polluted by oil fields and refineries.

However it may be regarded elsewhere, the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is fair to say, has been disastrous for Western Siberia. By 1989 oil was booming, from Khanty-Mansiysk to Nizhnevartovsk; Surgut had over 300,000 people, all tied to oil. As of July 1995 Surgut had the highest crime rate in Tyumen Oblast, and only 48% arrest rate, and West Siberian oil companies were in debt 21 trillion rubles to the central government..

But the consequences of this boom have been even more devastating, socially, culturally, economically and ecologically for the Khanty and their land. First, the whole movement toward privatization led to the dissolution of the state oil monopoly, into separate production, refining, and distribution arms. Production was turned over to regional oil companies, at least seven of which now operate in Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, each given a specific license area, and each driven by a sense of quick profits. These oil companies are now directed by men who, while serving in a similar capacity in the former Soviet oil monopoly, also served in the regional soviet or administration; today they are wealthy and powerful enough to control the regional, okrug and oblast Dumas and administrations. Profittaking coupled with the internal debt crisis has meant that deteriorating pipelines and aging equipment were not replaced; loss of profits from reduced productivity of individual well clusters (some leave more than 50% of the oil in the ground) and spillage (over 3,000 pipeline breaks a year) drive the expansion of new territories for production. Vertical integration of these companies and their amalgation into large corporations like LUKOil and YUKOS have not improved their economic or technological efficiency.

Economic Impact

On 5 February 1992, despite resistance from delegates representing oil interests, the Council of People = s Deputies of KMAO issued A Polozhenie o statuse rodovykh ugodii v Khanty-Mansiiskom avtonomnom okruge @ [Regulation concerning the status of kinship communities in KMAO], which was followed by A O mekhanisme vnedreniya Polozheniya o statuse rodovykh ugodii v Khanty-Mansiiskom avtonomnom okruge @ [Concerning the Mechanism for Applying the Regulation concerning the status of kinship communities in KMAO], a Decree issued by the Head of the Administration of KMAO on 27 February 1992. The passage of these laws set in motion a legal process of formally defining the boundaries of family hunting territories (rodovye ugodya) and issuing governmental acts certifying that the use rights on these territories belonged to the families living on them.

This process began quickly enough because, according to Art. 21 of the aforementioned A Regulations @ , the oil companies seeking access to the subsurface resources on Khanty extended family territories were required to obtained signed releases from the Khanty families before exploration or production work could begin:

Acquiring of parcel of land on the territory of kinship lands [for industrial purposes] can be carried out ...only with the consent of the owner of the kinship land, and also native residents whose interests are involved in this taking. In order to get the consent of native people for this acquisition, a referendum of these native people is carried out, and the results of this is the basis for the administration to make its decision.Decisions about taking a piece of land on the the territory of kinship lands are made by the okrug administration, in conjunction with the regional administration, after getting written consent for this taking from the landwoner, positive results from the referendum of the native people and state environmental approval. (Status, 319)

Art. 22 of the same legislation required a clear economic agreement, approved by the appropriate administrative authority, between the owner of the land and the company developing the land, specifying (1) the terms and conditions of development, and providing (2) full compensation for all losses in connection with development, (3) an agreed-upon share of the profits from the development of this land, as well as (4) a lease payment for the use of the land (Status, 319). Two months later, President Yeltsin issued the Ukaz A Concerning Urgent Measures for Protecting Places of Living and Economic Activity of the Native Minority Peoples of the North, @ referred to above, also requiring territorial definition and consent before any taking of land.

Nevertheless, we have on record instances of licenses for exploration, territories being defined for tender, and territories being offered for tender, without the informed consent or even prior knowledge of the resident Khanty. The most recent of these actions was in February of 1997. In addition, economic agreements are often made in an irregular manner with the intent to coerce to the Khanty. Early exploration agreements made with individual familes promised a snowmobile, rifles for hunting, ammunition, a very small annuity payment for each adult in the family, in exchange for yielding the right to explore for gas and oil. These items were often delivered in the first year but not in the second, their postponement providing inducement for extending the exploration agreement another year.

In late 1993, an economic agreement was drafted between AMaiskneft@ working in Ugut and 15 families in Kinyamino village. It was signed FIRST by Borodin, the Ugut village administrator, which is illegal, and 45 copies were distributed to families, who were convinced it was a fait accompli. Nevertheless, no one signed this first copy. A local activist returned the copies to Borodin, and demanded a revised process according to normative procedures where people signed first; then, there were signatures. In exchange for exploration and drilling rights, they were promised as compensation: (1) new winter and summer houses, (2) buran, motor, and two tons of gas/year, (3) 100,000 rubles/person/quarter, (4) new clothes, (5) paid university education, (6) radio-telephone and electricity, (7) access to low-price company grocery store. The Kinyaminkskii Khanty got burans, then begged for rubles, clothes. They drank all their money, and never went to their traplines in the forest that winter year (1994-95).: One was killed by car while driving his buran.

The Khanty of the lower Trom-Agan made an agreement with Yuganskneftegaz in 1991, which they renewed in 1994. According to community leaders, YNG keeps the agreement more or less, though compensation is not indexed to inflation.

1. Consultation on placement of clusters

2. Compensation = 10 minimum salaries/person/1.6 million rubles for 9 persons/qtr in his family

3. Neftaniki to follow hunting and fishing laws

4. Working clothes for each member of the family

5. Food products supplied to YNG in exchange for buran and motor

6. Pay for higher education, summer vacations and medical care

7. Finance construction in Jubilenie and Ulti-Agan kindergarten and clinic

8. Head of family can ask to stop agreement if not fulfilled

9. Agreement renewable each year

10. Disputes can be brought to suit

11. There is no APt. 11,@ oddly enough.

12. Make capital improvements to foundation and facade of house

13. Organize berry, fish buying acc. To market prices

YNG does organize fish buying and berrying. A YNG representative comes with car in summer and buys fish for 1000 - 1500 rubles.kg. This is not a realistic price when bread is $2700 rubles/loaf. Also it is not an organized system. There is a corporation now organized to buy fish from authorities.

14. New clusters must be agreed to in the planning stage

Despite the public knowledge that oil companies are expanding their territories and making huge sums of money, and that financial support for the Khanty is a minuscule expense, the oil companies are not fulfilling all the conditions made in earlier economic agreements. In June 1996, we witnessed a meeting in Lyantor where Khanty families had been assembled by the exploration arm of Surgutneftegaz to sign a new economic agreement as compensation for planned exploration. Khanty heads of households unanimously refused to sign a new agreement for just this reason.

Environmental Impacts

POLLUTION OF PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT.

(Climatological and Pollution Data taken from World Bank Draft EA on Second Oil Rehab Project, page numbers cited in parentheses) The geography and the climate of the Middle Ob= basin exacerbate the conditions for pollution created by poor technology and lack of a consistent and severe regulatory regime. Most of the area is wetlands, either riverine floodplains or sphagnum raised bogs; the rest is middle taiga coniferous forest. Most of the Ob= Basin is in an area of active thermokarst development. Rapid freezing leads to a winter period of uninterrupted frost from 145-155 days per year, with an average low of -20 to -35 C and maximum lows near - 55 C.; this is followed by rapid thawing, and hot summers with average high temperatures around +20 C.and maximum highs around +37 C. Surface subsidence due to alternating freezing-melting of waters trapped above the permafrost can be as much as 2 to 4 meters. By standard industry measurements, the climate is also highly corrosive to iron. (50)

Soil Pollution. Throughout the region the two major sources of surface soil pollution are oil settling pits (for spent drilling fluids and production wastes) and broken pipelines. Extrapolating from known data, it is estimated that there are about 3,000 such settling pits throughout the Middle Ob= basin. In addition, depending on the subregion, anywhere between 30%-80% of the piplines have been constructed in sensitive environments, often in multiple pipeline corridors (50). As a result of combining poorly constructed, antiquated technology with the destructive rigor of the West Siberian climate, there are several thousand pipeline breaks a year in West Siberia. Accurate data on oil polluted lands are not available from the companies or from the government (52), but very large areas, often more than 100 sq. kilometers in size, have been totally ruined.

Water Pollution. Because this petroleum development takes place in a wetlands environment, water is easily and widely polluted. The lack of widespread monitoring provides data only from reporting stations near the sources of pollution.

Surface water pollution. The data on surface water pollution in the World Bank=s Draft EA need no elaboration:

The average petroleum hydrocarbon content of water in the Ob, lower Vasyugan and Tom Rivers was 0.38 mg/l in 1992, more than seven times the maximum permissible level for the protection of fisheries. Near Nefteyugansk, the average concentration in 1992 was 0.79 mg/l, or 16 times the maximum permissible concentration. Much higher peak levels of hydrocarbons have been reported...Yugan River, up to 7.5 mg./l. The annual concentration of phenol in rivers in the region is 0.012 mg/l to 0.020 mg/l, or 12 to 20 times the maximum permissible concentration. The maximum level of phenol near Surgut in 1992 was 0.07 mg/l or 70 times the maximum permissible concentration.

Water quality is ranked on a national index system in which pure water ranks I and very polluted water ranks VI. In 1992, the Ob= River, the Vakh River and the Great Yugan River ranked V for water quality. (57-58) Also, in 1992, Yuganskneftegas discharged 12,504,000 cubic meters of treated water and an undetermined amount of untreated waste water into the surface waters of its license area.

Ground Water Pollution. There are large resource of fresh underground water in the Ob= Basin. The petroleum industry uses these to supply water needed for drinking and for industrial purposes, however cross-contamination from wells and contamination from surface spills has polluted many of these underground reservoirs, ruining them as sources of potable water (57).

Atmospheric Pollution. Air pollution in the region is serious. The problem of the nature and volume of discharges is compounded by the local atmospheric conditions; surface inversions occur about 50% of the time in winter months, concentrating precipitated discharges into snowfall which then enters the hydrological system. Because of this, even a place apparently remote from sources of pollution will reveal pollutants in standing bog water. Pollutants enter the atmosphere from discrete sources, mopst dangerous of which are gas flares, from fugitive sources (vapor leaks), and from evaporation of exposed oil and processing by products.

Chemical Discharges. Deposition of sulphur and nitrogen compounds, benzene and metals discharged into the atmosphere approaches or exceeds Russian standards. Nearly 300 kg/sq.km. of sulphur and 280 kg/sq.km of nitrogen are deposited on the taiga, which approaches or exceeds the critical loading for these chemical in this ecosystem. In cities like Surgut, the maximum deposition is two or three times the minimum critical level. Most of this is emitted into the atmosphere from discrete sources. Reported figures show that in 1992, for example, Yugansknefetegas emitted 183,000 metric tons of hydrocarbons, 16,000 metric tons of carbon monoxide and 2,000 tons of particulate matter, 1,000 tons of nitrous oxide and 726 tons of sulphurous anhydride (Table 5). In addition to pollution from discrete sources, evaporative losses, which may equal as much as 12 % of the volume of oil brought to the surface, also contribute to atmospheric pollution. These figures must be multiplied considerably for the Middle Ob= basin when one takes into account that YNG is only one of seven major regional oil companies working in the basin and probably not the most severe polluter.

Acid Rain and Snow. These phenomenon occur throughout the region, even in areas like the upper Lamin River which are remote from sources of pollution. In some areas, such as the lower Yugan, snow pH is consistently less than 5. (52).

Local Temperature Increases. The effect of local temperature increases, known to be from 2-3 degrees Centigrade in the heat shadow of facules, has not been scientifically studied.

Exploratory Well in Taiga

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

Transportation Systems. Roadways, railways, pipelines, seismic lines, power transmission lines, rights-of-way, have dramatically altered the environment. Access roads thirty meters wide are bulldozed out of the taiga. In winter, logs are thrown down across waterways and crudely filled with dirt, soil and sand, to make raised roadbeds, bitonka, through the marshy land. In summer, the thawing rivers only partially break up these roadbeds, creating dams that slow the current, impeding boat travel and silting up fishing areas and spawning areas. Most of the raised roadways in this marshland are built without culverts and cause a good deal of localized flooding which is destroying the forest. The quarrying of sand for raised roadbeds and construction also has an impact on sacred places (see below).

Production Systems. When exploratory wells do not prove out, oilworkers abandon the site. This dead wood from trees cut to clear the drill site, often saturated in places with petroleum or diesel fuel, is easily ignited in the dry, hot summers and cause numerous, large fires burn in western Siberia. There are over 3,000 pipeline breaks a year in Western Siberia; often these are "cleaned up" by burning off the spilled oil, the fire frequently spreading to the forest.

One person reported seeing an entire drilling rig collapse and sink into the marshland only to be abandoned there, ruining what was reportedly an excellent hunting place. Clusters and settling pits in floodplains are only protected against spring floods by small sand dikes which are regularly washed away carrying pollutants with them.

WILDLIFE RESOURCES

Microorganisms. In 1992, zooplankton species in the Middle Ob=, which provide the lowest rung of the food ladder, were judged to be mildly to severely polluted.

Fish. Until recently Trom Aganskii Khanty used to eat the liver of great pikes that flourished in the rivers??calling it "white liver with salt"??but they have not done so for three or four years because they found the livers blackened by pollution. Several times people have found fish dead in the summer. In spring, the Agan River, one of our informants said, is @just one big oil slick.@ Carass (carp) caught there often show gills curved inwards, mutated by oil. Makhavaya River was destroyed by bulldozed trees and sand for road construction. Water was blocked, and there was no air for fish. The river is seless now. According to men who formerly worked in the fishing sovkhoz on Agan took 190-200 tons/yr in the late 70's at the beginning of oil exploration; by the 1980's that had dropped to100 tons/yr. In 1995 they took only 20-30 tons. Further up the river near Pokachi a family who used to take a half-ton of fish a year from the river, now takes only kilograms.

Game Animals. One hunter on the Bolshoi Yugan told us he can no longer trap an area on his traditional land from which he had taken between seventy and eighty sables a year, because geologists poaching in that area have trapped it out. He complained to the local administration, but he suspects that they are in fact selling traps to the oilmen. On the middle Trom-Agan river, Khanty report that large furbearers (fox, wolverine) and predators (bear, wolf) have virtually fled the area in the last five to eight years as a result of oil development.

Reindeer Herding. One woman in the heavily?impacted Trom?Agan area reported that her son?in?law lost his entire small herd of 100 reindeer. The deer drank polluted water and could not excrete. Another man reported that someone in his family had a herd of 300 animals reduced to only 40 in two years. On Agan River reindeer were regularly shot from helicopters by oilworkers who stole the animals from the Khanty.

Migratory Birds. In the Pokachi region, which is a large area of devastation on Agan River, migratory geese now no longer stop there, depriving Khanty of a main seasonal food source.
.

Sociopolitical Impacts

POPULATION REDISTRIBUTION

Coerced Relocation. In this paper, Relocation refers to leaving the hunting territory for permanent settlement in a village. This happened either voluntarily or by force. More than 40 families, 20 rod, were relocated to Agan Village. This happened in 1976 after the new Nizhnevartovsk r-n was created in the same year. No compensation; only constructed a few houses (not enough for everyone). Fish sovkhoz gave some money to construct cheap log houses. All these families had reindeer; when they moved they were forced to kill them to eat. Their houses were often destroyed in front of their eyes by the bulldozers that were cutting the roads. Now there are only three yurtas left on Agan. Most familes were forcibly relocated to Agan village. For others, life simply became impossible. Trees were cut, roads were built, uris and rivers ruined by oil, by road construction. No compensation to families, so they left.

Voluntary Relocation. Valery Stepanovich Surovchev=s land (with that of Konstantin Sopochin) on Trom-Agan and Egut-Agan is so developed with clusters, dirt roads, paved roads, communications, etc., that he can=t use it. His family, and Sopochin=s, voluntarily relocated to Jubilenie (Stariy Trom-Agan). Pokachev, Maxim Yefimovich Pokachev of Agan village, left the land as a young man, came to Agan for work (fishing sovkhoz), entertainment, etc. Then he was followed there by his second brother, and eventually his youngest. Then his two old parents died. No one was left on the land, and the land simply occupied then by oil company.
Although we have no direct data, we infer that relocations, forcible or voluntary, probably happened on the Vakh and Vas-Yugan Rivers as well because both were regions of very early oil development and Khanty there are now substantially resettled in villages.

Voluntary Self-Removal. ASelf-removal@ here refers to the decision to seek another hunting territory higher up the river or to share another family=s territory, rather than resettle in a village, when one=s hunting territory is taken. Seven kilometers from Pokachi, four families-- two Tylchin, one Aipin and one Lyakov-- are forced to survive on one family=s land (rodovoya ugodiya) of 57,000 hectares. Aipin moved here after Pokachi was built. Pokachi was built on their land, but they were told to move so the new city could be built for the vakhtoviki. They had no proof that it was their land. Even today they still have no privatization act for the land.
They refused to sign economic agreement with Megionneftegas. Compensation offered: buran, motor, small house (Awe don=t need it@), 10 minimum salaries/person/year. Winter 1995 a representative from MNG, Severopokachevskoye, Cluster 130, came, saying he was instructed by Yosipov, head of GOSKOMSEVER in Nizhnevartovsk, to tell them that if they did not sign they would be forced off the land. In the summer of 1995, a geological party from MNG came and told them that if they did not sign, development would happen anyway, and they would get no benefits.

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH. We have not located health statistics on the Eastern Khanty, but it seems likely that careful monitoring would reveal an increase of illness associated with the polluted environment among all Khanty, and a higher incidence of mental illness, including anomie and depression, as well as alcohol- and stress-related violence among the forcibly relocated and economically-dependent Khanty undergoing deculturation in the villages. It should also be to determine if there has been an increase in the rate of crime, suicide and domestic violence among the Khanty which is traceable to development-induced deculturative pressures. We have a good deal of anecdotal evidence to suggest that this is in fact the case.

POLITICIZATION. Though the contemporary local leadership and community structures have a sound basis in Khanty tradition and historical experience, their emergence was motivated by two factors: first, by the widespread, visible disruption of Khanty life, and the land on which it depended, by petroleum development, and second, by the shifting currents of the broader political and economic situation, which in the first years after perestroika offered the Khanty an opportunity to alter the trajectory of their future by participating in representative, decision-making structures, but which, since 1993, has subsequently withdrawn those opportunities.

Accommodating oil development in Western Siberia has had a profound sociopolitical impact on the Khanty. It has formalized traditional practices, such as land tenure and land use, by incorporating them under the legislative and executive authority of various levels of government through 'privatization' and leasing policies. It has politicized indigenous people, by fostering the emergence of different models of indigenous leadership and spokespersons, such as liaisons, patronage distributors and advocates, all of whom are added to an earlier layer of local government officials. And it has obscured traditional lines of authority based on kinship system. This had led to enormous confusion, so that even under the best conditions, some segments of the indigenous population justly claim that their interests have not been adequately represented and that arrangements between oil companies and indigenous people are often too local and too temporary. The sense of the loss of control has led to an increasing politicization of Khanty people:

The elections of 1990 were a watershed in the political development of the Eastern Khanty, whose lives had been significantly and permanently impacted by petroleum development. The Khanty of Nizhnevartovsk Region had been decimated through forced relocations and environmental destruction. In Surgut Region, the Trom-Aganskii and Pimskii Khanty north of the Ob= were in the midst of a losing battle to contain development to the lower reaches of those rivers, while the Yuganskii Khanty were under pressure from oil companies to open up their territories. It was from these groups in Surgut region that the most vocal Khanty political leadership emerged. The principal concern of the leadership was to strengthen the weak coherence of local group identity as a response to the oil industry=s strategy of negotiating leases with individual Khanty families. If the effects of development could not be localized to an individual family, then decisions about development should not fall on individual families. This was the local motivation for the legislation on family-kinship communities (semeino-rodovye obschiny) created by the Khanty delegates elected in 1990 to the Khanty-Mansiiskii Autonomous Okrug Council of People=s Deputies. Unfortunately, deteriorating economic conditions, especially the collapse of state system for buying furs and selling necessary supplies at subsidized prices, put enormous pressure on Khanty families to sign punitive, often fraudulent agreements with oil companies, thus undermining the emergent voluntary associations. Shortly thereafter, political structures in which Khanty were able to play an effective role, were voided in a series of presidential decrees, to be replaced with a strong executive form of administration which obstructed Khanty socioeconomic and political development in favor of the oil companies= expansionist agenda. We know that in the past few years that rights to develop Khanty lands are being tendered for auction to oil companies without the Khanty=s prior knowledge, let alone consent.

Contemporary political circumstances are such that the real sources of power are economic and at the regional level, and Moscow is either unwilling or unable to manage them for the protection of the historical rights of the Khanty. Excluded from effective local participation in decisionmaking at both the regional and okrug level, and frustrated by the failure to intervene by the central government, the historic source of appeal in such situations, local Khanty groups pinned their hopes on the development of the semeino-rodovoye obschiny as the instrumentality through which they could preserve control over their lands and traditional way of life. At present, the main thrust of these communities is economic development. Community leaders know, and many interviews over the course of our fieldwork confirm, that it is economic pressure which is compelling Khanty families to give up their family lands for oil development.

Cultural Impacts

FAMILY HUNTING TERRITORIES Today Eastern Khanty hunting territories vary in size, depending on the numbers of people and nuclear family units of the extended family, but they are usually between 400 and 600 square kilometers in area. The hunting territory of an extended family supports two to six closely related nuclear families, with a total population varying between six to forty individuals. Typically, they are transected or closely adjacent to major rivers or their tributaries. Usually the extended family settlement is built on this river for ease of transportation. North of the Ob=, a strong reindeer herding component overlays the subsistence hunting and fishing base.

Whether or not reindeer are kept, however, Khanty families follow a seasonal round between their main (usually summer) place near the river, and a hinterland winter location, stopping during the fall and spring at an intermediate camp. Transhumance is based on a knowledge of the seasonal availability local food and fur resources. The enclosed map is a resource exploitation map drawn with the help of one large Khanty extended family, Kaimysovy, numbering about thirty people living on the upper reaches of the Malyi Yugan River. Theirs is a very large territory of approximately 1,550 square kilometers, whose western boundary (on the left side of the map) is also the boundary of Yuganskii Zapovednik.

The map illustrates the principal types of flora and fauna harvested on the hunting territory. Most important of these are furbearing animals, especially sable, fox and mink, income from the sale of which is used to buy basic food products, replace ammunition, and, when affordable, parts for snowmobiles and outboard motors. In terms of food supply, the major winter resources are moose (12 killed on winter territory in winter 1995-96) and fish, which are heavily fished in three connected lakes. The map does not show many resources, which are less-easily demarcated, because they are either too rare or too common. All the major waterways, for instance, are fished, especially where the smaller tributaries join the upper Malyi Yugan. Nets or traps are used. Squirrels, for instance, are hunted everywhere for their skins, and there are more than 300 places where mordushky (weirs) are set seasonally for catching fish and muskrats. Similarly, ducks, geese, swans, loons, and coots are hunted wherever they are found. Seasonal places for hunting migrating waterfowl cannot be indicated on the map. Among regular but rare resources, both lynx and bear were successfully hunted on this territory during the winter of 1995-96.

The map indicates some, but not all of the construction Kaimysovy have added to the physical environment. The family=s permanent winter and summer residences are indicated, as are the transitional camps used during the spring and fall movements between the permanent houses. Not indicated on the map are abandoned homesites, family burial sites, religious shrines and archaeological monuments; several of each occur on this territory.
Note that an oil license territory (ALedyanoye@), defined but not yet tendered, cuts through their territory. The family was horrified to discover that it would ruin their main source of winter food, both fish and moose, and harvestable furs. Kaimysovy knew absolutely nothing about this license area having been defined, and did not consent to it, though the okrug law (see above) requires consent.

The Kaimysovy example is not unique. The problem of use-rights and territory boundaries is further complicated by the unclear status of government acts on the land, issued in 1992 by Khanty-Mansiiskii Autonomous Okrug to families registering their (rodovoye ugodii) traditional territories. These acts were unilaterally voided in 1994 by the okrug administration as Aillegal@, though many Khanty believe that the acts are still in force and entitle them to some protection. Further, Khanty living in villages were not spared anxiety concerning the legal status of their lands. On March 6, 1995, the head of Surgut Regional Administration issued a decree based on an okrug decree (AO statuse rodovyx ugodii v Khanty-Mansiiskom avtonomnom okruge@, Document No. 21) asserting, in contradiction to general state law on native land, that Khanty people who have houses in villages should not have a family hunting territory. Those Khanty who had been forcibly relocated or who had voluntarily removed to villages at an earlier time were thus summarily declared to have no right to use lands on which they still hunted and fished in order to feed their families. The decree caused such a wave of protest that the administration delayed its implementation. The fate of the decree is unclear: on the one hand, it has not been cancelled; on the other, it has not been enforced. In short, oil development has intensified Khanty concern with clarifying and protecting the boundaries of their territories and their rights to continued access to the resources on them.

RESTRUCTURING OF TRADITIONAL ECONOMY The confusion in the Khanty economic situation has several sources, each of which contributes to a further dependence of the Khanty upon the economic programs of the oil companies. First, in the mid-1970s the Khanty, financed by oil companies, began a shift to expensive mechanical technologies, such as outboard motors and snowmobiles, on which they now depend, and which they cannot continue to maintain with direct or indirect support from oil money. Second, the state economic structures on which they depended during the Soviet period have virtually collapsed; included here would be the subsidized market for furs which no longer can support the Khanty needs for cash, and which thus drives them further into the arms of the oil companies. Third, in some places, pressure on the natural resources from pollution and from families sharing land with displaced relatives make it difficult to survive even at a subsistence level. Near Pokachi, LESPROMHOS cut trees everywhere here 15 years ago. Earlier every family had 30-40 reindeer. Hunters from Pokachi killed so many that they couldn=t sustain the herd. They themselves killed the rest to eat. Last reindeer on Agan are kept by Spiridon Nik. Tylchin. Ten years ago each family could get 2-3 moose; now there are 2-3 for all four families. Pokachi poachers use buran and helicopter used to kill moose. Thus, it is no longer possible in most areas to speak of a traditional economy, when the former, partially state-subsidized economy, is now replaced with an economy less subsidized by the state but augmented by economic agreements with the oil companies.

DAMAGE TO AND DESTRUCTION OF COMPONENTS OF NATIVE RELIGION. Khanty social organization is based on extended families or lineages, with related lineages grouped into clans (Khanty: cir ). While the present settlement pattern has been influenced by migration and forced relocation within the Middle Ob= region, evidence from our own fieldwork and the ethnographic record indicates that different Khanty clans even today claim traditional use rights to different river systems tributary to the Ob=, in part because they believe their lineage was founded by divine ancestors who were also responsible for the creation of the river systems on which the majority of the clan lives. Most Khanty extended families live on traditional family hunting territories, protected by family gods who are considered offspring of the lineage's founding deities. These lineage deities are the seven sons of the high god, each a patron of a major tributary of the Ob=. Roughly speaking, the principal deities are responsible for cosmological-level events, their first generation offspring for the watersheds of the major tributaries, and the second generation offspring for individual family lands along each watershed. Traditional Khanty thus believe that sacred power has been historically invested in both the landscape and the lineage. Petroleum development impacts Khanty religious belief and practice by altering or limiting access to several important components of the physical environment:

The first category includes a variety of types of sacred sites, including but not limited to places of sacrifice, labas or places of commemoration, including archeological sites, and burial sites. A small, but terrible example: a fishing camp for vakhtoviki was built at the base of a hill used for sacrificing. The place is called Torom Kot, the Sky God=s House, and is marked by a tall birch in the middle of the trees at the top of the hill. Many trees here were used for sacrificing fabrics and reindeer to Torom, and one of these trees, with its fabric offering still attached, had been deliberately cut down with an axe.

The second category of environmental impacts on culture includes several kinds of divinely-established features of physical environment, such as high places, embankments and promontories, sandbars, sacred groves of trees, headwaters and confluences of river systems. A striking example here is another hill called Imi Yagoun, Mother of the Rivers, north of Russkinskiye. Despite the public objections of the Khanty, this hill was first leveled and then excavated, so that all that remains today is an open pit almost a kilometer long, half a kilometer wide and perhaps ten meters deep. The reason for this destruction is clear, and threatens other Khanty sacred high places: in the Ob= Basin, the few hills that exist are the principal source of sand used to construct the raised roadbeds, drilling and construction pads required as part of the infrastructure associated with the expansion of petroleum development.

The result of these development processes is that after 5,000 years of occupancy, Eastern Khanty communities have been devastated and the cultural formations which they have sustained, more or less intact during the period of the Russian Empire and the first three decades of the Soviet era, have been substantially altered. Today there are virtually no traditional Khanty extended family settlements on Vakh, Agan, Salym and Vas-Yugan Rivers, although these were all well-populated areas, rich in terms of traditional economy, twenty years ago. Other river systems like Pim and Trom-Agan are heavily impacted and the Khanty marginalized. Only the Khanty families on Lamin and Yugan River systems have been minimally effected, but these, having license areas scheduled for tender, are also threatened by impending development.
The following map reflects, to the best of our knowledge, the current situation, illustrating cumulative impact according to the scale indicated below:

DESTROYED Physical environment makes use/residence impossible.
SEVERE Occasional use possible, but not healthy. Most Khanty living in these areas have been relocated from stoibishe to villages.
LIMITED USE Scattered residual occupancy and use.
MARGINALIZED Family hunting territories still occupied, but development present. Environment polluted but still regularly used. Economically dependent on compensation agreements.
THREATENED Traditional economy still maintained relatively intact. Exploration only as yet, but license areas defined and scheduled for tender.