“When these remote areas are caught up in the globalization of the environment, their problems involve us all, even in New Mexico,” says Andrew Wiget, professor of English at New Mexico State University.

His field work on Native American reservations in the United States and Canada showed how the loss of tribal lands can precipitate the loss of the native culture. “American Indians see themselves as part of a global community of indigenous people. They share common problems of acculturation, indiscriminate development, and expropriation of land and natural resources,” he says.

His field research also convinced him that Siberian indigenous leaders must have a formal voice in how their lands are used. In preparation for that role, Khanty leaders have made three trips to the Southwest to observe management practices on reservations. This March Khanty leaders visited the Mescalero Apache, White Mountain Apache, Tohona O’odham and Navajo reservations.

Wiget says the Native Americans were “extremely hospitable” to the Khanty, and enthusiastically shared their expertise in land-use management and game and fish policies. “They understand the value of leadership as they, too, are concerned about developing their young people as leaders,” he says.

Wiget’s experience with the Khanty dates to 1992 when he began working with his wife and colleague Olga Balalaeva, a linguist and folklorist. Since then the two have been conducting field work in Western Siberia documenting traditional Khanty culture.

Some 22,000 indigenous Khanty live in the forests and wetlands of Western Siberia, their ancestral homeland for the past 5,000 years. Before oil was discovered there in the late 1960s, they lived in family clans along the tributaries of the great Ob’ River. In the north, the ensuing oil boom displaced the natives and transformed their hunting grounds into oil fields. In the south, however, isolation so far has protected the Yugan Khanty, a tribal group of about 850 people living along the Yugan River.

Balalaeva says the Yugan Khanty culture is traditional in every respect. Nearly everything they eat, wear, or build comes from the land. “The Khanty have no place else to go if their land is destroyed,” she says.

This hunter is wearing long boots made from reindeer
hide. Khanty also hunt sable, fox, otter, mink and squirrel
for pelts, some of which are shown piled on a sled.

However, they own neither the land nor the resources beneath it. Like other Khanty tribes, the Yugan Khanty have priority rights to use of the land, the waters and the forests. “The Khanty have a right to refuse development,” Wiget says, “but it brings quick, easy money.”

The money offered by oil development is “fatal to the Khanty way of life, often leading to alcoholism,” says Balalaeva.

Wiget says pollution is the most visible result of oil production in the north. He says pipeline breaks create thousands of oil spills a year, while oil soaked forests burn out of control, and raised roadbeds trap runoff and cause flooding. Oil-polluted water has caused a drop in both fish and reindeer populations.

Wiget and Balalaeva have been helping Yugan Khanty leaders devise a strategy for protecting both their culture and their environment. The model was based partly on Wiget’s and Balalaeva’s field research.

Out of that process came the decision to create a protected area, which would preserve Yugan Khanty homelands from industrial development, while allowing the Khanty to continue their traditional practices. The protected area also would provide a legal basis for local self-government and local control of the land.

In May 1996 Russian authorities accepted the proposal for the preserve. Khanty community leaders and local government officials then drew up a charter for the new national community, naming it “Yoaun Yakh,” The People of the River.

While the protected area is not yet a reality, the two researchers are heartened by the Yugan Khanty’s progress toward self-determination. “Russia’s indigenous people are determined to hang onto their culture even in times of change,” Wiget says.

Linda G. Harris, ’80

PHOTOS BY ANDREW WIGET