The iR editor’s note
The Indigenous Russia continues to explore the topic of decolonization, which has recently been widely discussed by a range of ethnic activists who emigrated from Russia for political reasons (including the threat of criminal prosecution for human rights activism). This issue has interested me, as the editor of Indigenous media, for quite a long time – since my first days as a student at the University of Tromso ten years ago, where we studied the decolonization of research practices.
To be honest, the exact definition of the term in relation to indigenous peoples is still a mystery to me. The term “decolonization” itself quite accurately describes the process of nations acquiring statehood, primarily in Africa and Asia, during the second part of the XX century, fueled by the crushing of the European colonial empires. The process is quite clear – some were colonies and became independent states.
But what about small nations or indigenous peoples who continue to live inside the newly formed African states? Have they been decolonized or remain colonized within the newly independent states? What about the Inuit of Greenland, which is a part of Denmark but not a part of the EU, which Denmark is part of? Yet the Greenlandic authorities, almost entirely of Inuit, control virtually all matters of governance on the island except foreign policy, defense, and currency control. Is Greenland a decolonized political entity, or does it continue to be a colony of Denmark?
What can be said about Sami living in the North of Europe, who have a joke that they are such relaxed guys that they could easily institute their own state, but they have no desire to do it, so let others sweat away in the civil service, as there are other more pleasant occupations – fishing, reindeer herding, singing yoiks.
Have they reached the necessary level of decolonization yet? Or does the Sápmi remain a colony of other states?
There are so many other questions one might ask about decolonization. However, the starting point of the discussion must be recognizing the mere fact of colonization itself, which is still taboo for Russian authorities and official historical science representatives, unfortunately.
In this spring’s session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, a group of UNPFII members: Tove Sundal Gant (Denmark), Suleiman Mamutov (Ukraine) and Valentina Sovkina (Russia), presented a joint expert report, “Guiding Principles on the Implementation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to Autonomy and Self-Governance”, in which they, among other things, described the issue of Inuit self-determination.
Without going into the details of the report, I would like to comment on the reaction to it of the representative of the Russian MFA, Sergey Chumarev (in my personal opinion, it is a typical KGB agent in the guise of a Foreign Minister official – it was him intimidated Yana Tannagasheva at the EMRIP session in 2022):
“I would like to note that the study distributed by the Forum’s Secretariat on the realization of the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination misstated the names of a number of geographical regions, particularly in Russia. With all due respect to the independence of the authors of this study, I would like to note that independence also implies responsibility and adherence to facts. Therefore, the statement that the indigenous peoples of the Chukotka Autonomous Region were under colonial domination is unsubstantiated and does not correspond to either the law or the facts. Unlike their brethren from other Arctic regions, it is with the support of the state (Russian authorities) they (indigenous peoples of Chukotka) realized their right to autonomy. And the region is called the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. I would still like to see appropriate changes in the official document of the Forum in the future.”
If one carefully reads the report prepared by Forum members, it becomes clear that the official’s displeasure was causedby the following paragraph: “59. The Inuit in Canada, alongside their kin in Alaska (United States of America), Chukotka (Russian Federation) and Greenland, have long sought self-determination in response to increasing restrictions and rights violations by colonial powers and non-Inuit governments. During the 1950s and 1960s, considerable socioeconomic transformations took place as the Inuit settled in sedentary communities. The Inuit grappled with a loss of autonomy, assimilationist state policies and limitations on using their ancestral lands for traditional hunting and fishing activities.”
One could argue with Mr. Chumarev about the actual name of Chukotka. I am sure local Indigenous communities have more than one name for the region in their native languages, and none of them includes the verbal construction “Autonomous Okrug”.
However, the key complaint of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s representative was, of course, about the part where the Russian Federation was called a colonial power and Chukotka its colony.
Not willing to argue with Mr. Chumarev, we tried to find some indigenous representative from the region who could clarify details on that issue. That was an uneasy task because, just several weeks ago, the Russian government announced Indigenous Russia as an extremist and even terrorist organization together with dozens of other Indigenous organizations from Russia that fight for Indigenous peoples’ rights. That’s the state we have.
However, a representative of the Inuit people from Chukotka, who currently lives outside of Russia and can, therefore,speak openly, has responded to our call.
Let me introduce Ludmila Kinok, a representative of the Yupik people, to you. She was born in 1977 in the village of Sireniki, Chukotka. She studied at the Sireniki secondary school and graduated in 1994. The economic situation after the collapse of the USSR in Chukotka was dire. Alcoholism was rampant among the indigenous population. Ludmila made an unconventional choice to avoid falling into the same trap and became a Protestant missionary and pastor in Chukotka. She was engaged in religious work in the Providensky district of Chukotka from 1994 to 2004. Then, she moved to Nome, Alaska, and began volunteering at a Christian radio station that broadcasts in Russian. However, in 2012, she returned to Chukotka to be with her family (as many remember, this was the year Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin as president). She survived surveillance by the Russian security services for two years, and her entourage and relatives were summoned for interrogation in order to get information about Lyudmila’s activities as a Christian volunteer. In 2014 sheleft again to Alaska, where she requested asylum. In 2017, she was granted asylum. She currently resides in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she works at the post office.
Luda Kinok. The evil committed against indigenous populations on all continents is unthinkable, but people in other countries remembered it as a crime
My name is Luda Kinok. I am a Yupik born in Sireniki village on the southwest coast of the Chukotka Peninsula in 1977. Chukotka Yupiget (plural) are culturally and linguistically related to the 180,000 Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska and to the Inuit in Canada and Greenland in the arctic and subarctic regions. The Russian census identified Yupiget as Eskimos. The latest one put us at the near-extinction number of 1,654 people. Today, Yupiget live mainly in three villages along the Bering Sea. The rest have assimilated into other Chukotka villages and beyond.
I came to Alaska, US in 2014 and requested asylum. I am now a US citizen. As I contemplate my decisions and the consequences of my estrangement from my ancestral homeland and the people, I am forced to confront my quiet nature to tell the truth. My story is incomplete without the story of my people, the Yupiget. A difficult assignment for a Cold War child.
The school was the main source of my knowledge regarding my people and the region. Under such a system, the Arctic people are not acknowledged as the original legitimate occupants. The self-sustaining culture that developed the ancient civilization is not recognized as such. The Soviet system had written off indigenous history and knowledge as mythology and folklore, giving the impression that the Native people joined humanity only after coming into contact with European settlers. All Soviet educational levels implemented this encounter as osvoenie (development) and zaselenie (settlement). It denotes Europeans’ peaceful movement towards the east, creating the perception of their lawful acquisition of land as if they were settling in their own territory.
A Kremlin-centric perspective on history has been taught in my own and all Soviet and Russian schools, which is an illustration of the country’s extensive colonial past. This narrative not only provides a narrow picture of the world, but it also completely ignores Indigenous wisdom. Asserting that Indigenous peoples were regressive and subordinate to European peoples, the colonial worldview portrayed them in a detrimental image. Russian and Soviet-educated students, as a result, know very little, if anything, about critical race theory, Indigenous knowledge, imperialism, colonialism, and other related topics.
Even for my people, life in the Arctic was never easy. Harsh environment, tribal wars and raids, and hunting tragedies had long been a part of the Yupiget’s life. While most of the world views the Arctic as uninhabited chuck of ice suited for wildlife, the Yupiget called it home for thousands of years.
As the USSR collapsed, many classified documents surfaced. Included in them are the Cossacks’ war logs, which describe the conquest of Chukotka and reveal the actual version of events. The discovery of fur, pelts, and fish tooth (walrus tusk) during the Tsars’ era held the same economic importance as the discovery of oil and gas today. It served as a crucial supply for the military throughout the European battles.
Polar explorers discovered fur-rich Alaska. St. Petersburg regarded Kamchatka and Chukotka as an ideal jumping-off point for expanding to a new continent. In 1727, Empress Ekaterina I went on a full-scale war with Natives intending to depopulate them all, sending troops and military supplies to outposts in Chukotka. The Russians attacked Chukotka Natives both inland and sea. Cossacks slaughtered people, burned dwellings, and destroyed their skin boats minimizing escape chances. Even though the indigenous people of Chukotka are the only ethnic group who refused to submit to Tsarist Russia, the 200-year-old conflict had lasting effects. The original Yupik territory all along the Chukotka coast shrunk three times as a direct result of military operations. The ancient Yupik nation, imperiled without any external intervention, has barely survived after seeing a fifty percent reduction in population.
Most countries view colonization as a practice or process of settling among and establishing dominion over Indigenous People. And describe colonialism as the policy of establishing complete or partial governmental control of another territory, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. A concept of colonization did not exist in the Russian vocabulary. It entered Russian lexicon in the 1800s as a French adaptation of a Latin word relating to European conquest of other continents. However, Russian educational system did not apply the concept of colonization to the expansion of the Tsarist Russia’s and the Soviet Union’s boundaries.
On top of territorial, economic and governmental take over, this level of psychological, cultural and linguistic Slavic/Russian/Soviet penetration made my denial bulletproof. The evil committed against indigenous populations on all continents is unthinkable, but people in other countries remembered it as a crime. My brain and tongue can’t twist that way. On a subconscious level, I want to see it as civilization introduction, socialization and industrialization progress where no harms were done to the Indigenous People of Russia.
After Russia sold Alaska to USA and the borders between the two countries were set, the Indigenous people and their ancestral territories were not taken into consideration. The establishment of governmental borders resulted in the cultural vacuum and isolation of the Yupik people from their families on each side, leaving the preservation of their language, tribal unity, and traditions nearly hard to sustain.
Sadly, it wasn’t the power of guns of the Tsarist army that broke our spirits. Instead, the Russians returned to Chukotka in the early 1900s, armed with Soviet ideology, wiping away the image of a brave Chukchi warrior and replacing it with a nationally known anecdotal image of a Tundra man. Stalin had a stunning moment of clarity as leader of the USSR: Chukotka is just two miles from capitalist America! Overnight, in total secrecy, a massive government presence turned Yupik land into one of the most strategic nuclear sites in the USSR. Avan was turned into a base for Airborne regiment under the leadership of the famous War hero Rokossovsky (1947-52). The penal battalion, which he led, was essentially an armed gang of organized criminals who had terrorized and abused the locals.
Cold War tensions divided the world into capitalist America versus the communist Soviet Union. Iron Curtain set the walls along the Yupik land without the chance of ever seeing or talking to the relatives for next four decades. Since then, our tundra turned into a powerful fortified area with dugouts, bunkers, barracks, bomb shelters, and other structures. Anti-aircraft batteries appeared on the tops of the hills, and field artillery positions appeared along the coastal strip. Hidden tanks were all around tundra. Such heavy concentration of the military bases asked for qualified personnel. 1910 census in just one of the Yupik villages of Avan put them at barely 80 Yupik and by 1980s former Avan territory Provideniya and Ureliki numbered at 8,000 newcomers.
A few years after Soviet authorities first set foot on the Chukotka Peninsula, a series of forceful relocations began. The locals have experienced and witnessed the closing of Yupik settlements and hundreds of other Indigenous villages in Russia’s North, but the authorities quickly camouflaged it under unification policies. With a limited number of exceptions, the government strictly prohibited any accounts detailing the relocations and their social effects of the Yupik.
In 1926, the Soviet authorities took fifty Yupik people from Provideniya Bay and used them as hostages in their first international territorial conflict over the desolate Wrangell Island. The island is approximately 1000 miles away in the northern Chukchi Sea. The intention was to solidify Russia’s territorial claims to the island through the establishment of a permanent local colony.
By end of the 1930s, Soviet leaders began to push Natives to leave small villages and camps and move to bigger towns. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the authorities aggressively moved Indigenous people from villages and nomadic camps to bigger settlements, especially inland reindeer herders while forcefully taking over their herds. Some dozen Yupik and Chukchi villages in Chukotka were closed and its residents moved to a few “hubs” that would become modern communities. In 1937–1953, the number of Native coastal communities on the Chukchi Peninsula dropped from 90 to 31, a threefold reduction.
In instance, in 1941, the government closed a Yupik village for the first time, forcing all its residents to move, when the Soviet Army placed a gun battery in the Avan village to protect the local Russian port in Provideniya Bay from potential Japanese attack. The authorities relocated every Avan Yupik to the bayside settlement of Ureliki.
In the early 1950s, the Soviet authorities initiated the relocation of the two main Yupik villages, Ungaziq and Naukan, after the closure of many smaller communities. Some 800 Yupik (70% of population at that time) were forcibly moved by the late 1950s. In terms of devastation, it was comparable to the biblical exodus for a nation of that size except Yupik became “displaced people”, completely uprooted, from their own land. As the region is under stringent military control, all succeeding generations are strictly prohibited from entering their ancestral homes, including the original generation that was relocated.
The Yupiget in the Soviet border area were tightly monitored and progressively limited during the Cold War, when all contacts with Alaskan Natives across the Bering Strait were terminated.
It was hard for my grandfather’s generation to understand both the scope and purpose of the move. Breaking up Eskimo land into little groups throughout Asia was one of the main effects of the relocations, both physically and psychologically. The Yupik culture centered on the mutual aid, regular visits, established familial relationships, and language-sharing among neighbors. We no longer live in the imagined past of the Yupik homeland as an interconnected network of tribal communities and village council territories. The new Yupik nation was now split into a few separate parts that had nothing to do with each other. The only way for people from the few remaining communities to talk to each other was to pass through Russian administrative centers and airport hubs. The shock of the forced relocations and the closure of old villages made it harder for the Yupiget to fight against other government policies imposed on us in the 1960s, like sending Native children to boarding schools run by the state, removing Native languages from schools, appointing outsiders to lead at all levels of government, and other similar measures.
My mother born was born in the 1950s, in this era of fervent “dedication to the Native children’s welfare.” Taken away from home, completely detached from the Yupik culture, parents and the tribal care, all she ever mentioned about her days in boarding schools is that teachers forbidden them to speak Yupik.
The Yupik people and their dialects were unable to withstand such extreme pressures of ideological, cultural, and linguistic supremacy. The Russian census in 1991 officially declared the oldest Yupik language spoken by the Sighineghmiit ethnic group, my grandfathers’ language, extinct after the passing of the last speaker in 1991.
To combat religion as part of the Communist propaganda, Yupik festivals were forbidden. Yupik worldview allowed them to be respectful stewards and partners with the Arctic Nature for thousands of years. With the complete takeover of the Yupik governing system, my people could not practice and continue family-based hunting and gathering way of life any longer. It wasn’t until the Soviet government’s new set of Five-Year Plans, introduced in 1932, that contemporary coastal whaling took shape. Between 1948-1973, Soviet whalers killed over 180,000 whales, most of which were protected species. They violated quotas and size limitations and capturing whales outside of permitted hunting regions. The USSR’s commercial whaling, according to the Pacific Standard magazine, was “the greatest senseless environmental crime of the twentieth century.” The purpose was not just purely economic, but also ideological. In contrast to capitalist nations, they felt their duty was to hunt whales in the name of Socialism. That is why they saw it as a noble cause. It was a tough and perplexing operation with no apparent demand.
USSR played a significant role in the decline whale populations, harvesting 43% of the world’s whales catch in a single season. The Yupiget, who had been bowhead whalers for thousands of years, by the 1960s were no longer whalers. Instead, a Soviet warship delivered us gray whales, which ancient hunters did not consider as food.
The decrease of the worldwide whale population drove the world to organize a whaling commission, which imposed limitations on a thriving industry to conserve the surviving whales. People, whose life was entirely dependent on whales and other marine creatures, were not a factor. The same goes for the climate change debates. Indigenous People of the Arctic receive less attention than Arctic wildlife. There are 1,654 Yupik people living in the post-Soviet Arctic who are caught in the middle of an invisible war over the Global resources.
Russia’s northern border is the world’s longest, stretching 15,000 miles near the Arctic Circle, now exposed by melting ice. The new realization forced Russia to look at its security from all angles. In recent years, the Ministry of Defense has reopened over 50 former Soviet military bases that closed after the collapse of the Cold War.
Shrinking ice reveals more than just a new vulnerability. Russia is investing in its resources to make up for the lack of economic options caused by the war sanctions. Melting ice caps are exposing rare earth minerals and metals, as well as previously undiscovered world’s 38 percent of oil and 19 percent of gas deposits. In addition, the expansion of the North Sea Route (NSR) will give Russia a strong position in the Arctic. This article aims to raise awareness of a race, not as a competition but as a people. Russia is actively “eracing” its indigenous people as it leads the Arctic race.
After enduring the calamities brought by both my men and nature, the Yupik and Chukchi people are facing the latest threat to their existence – war in Ukraine. Each generation of Yupik faced their own share of adversities. It is our turn to live. There are 422 people in New Chaplino, Chukotka, 209 of them are men. About 20 villagers “volunteered” to fight in a war in Ukraine. This number gives some idea of the overall proportions of the mobilization that took place in the country—10% of the entire male population of New Chaplino were drafted in the first wave. Native men in Chukotka are still receiving notices as a continuous mobilization. Assuming that these calculations are estimates, the draft in New Chaplino reflects how Indigenous peoples of Russia being disproportionality mobilized. It is a huge tragedy for ethnic minorities, especially for Yupik, who are only 1,654 people.
Forced drafting campaign in Chukotka. Autumn 2022. Photo from open sources
Criminal sanctions for gathering red book mushrooms and plants went into effect in Russia on October 12, 2023. Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the appropriate Criminal Code revisions in April 2023. The wormwood plant (our medicine) and Rhodiola rosea (our food) are now under protection of the law. Violators risk a sentence of up to nine years in prison and a fine of up to three million rubles under the Code of Administrative Offenses.
I am saying this to make a point that Russia spent money and effort for research to determine that certain plants and mushrooms are on the verge of extinction. And this act is done during the War. Why are the same methods and calculations not applied to determine that there are 145 million people in Russia and only 1,654 Yupik people left? Why we not protected by the law?! As the World is routing for Ukraine, my people are perishing without any intervention from any side in complete silence. My people are living in the country that protects plants and mushrooms on the Yupik land, but no effort is made to preserve the people whose ancient civilization is breathing its last breath.
I wish to celebrate my ancestors’ wisdom and resilience in the face of ongoing genocide against Russia’s Indigenous Peoples. It is nothing short of a miracle that the Yupiget of Arctic Russia remain distinct as an ethnic group, no matter how small we are.
Prepared for Indigenous Russia. August 10, 2024.