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On 29 July 2022, on a shore of Lake Baikal, Evenki people from all over Russia gathered for the first time. The Evenki are Indigenous people of reindeer herders, and at the Tungus congress they had the opportunity to visit their original homeland, the cradle of their culture. More recently, the Evenki have occupied a vast territory from the Yenisei River to Kamchatka, from Yakutia to China.
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Above: A children’s reindeer race during the herders’ festival. Right: Valery Evseev was born in the taiga into a family of reindeer herders. With the fall of the USSR in 1991 they lost all their animals. In 2020, the government of the Republic of Sakha reopened the Syuldyukar state farm. Far right: Alla Kourbaltinova has spent her entire life camping near the village of Iengra, in the Neryungri region, in the taiga of southern Yakutia. Despite the death of her husband three years ago, she continues to raise her herd of 215 reindeer, with her son Aleksei and three employees. Below: Prokopiï, an Evenki hunter renowned throughout Yakutia, celebrates his 60th birthday in Yakutsk
Nature is everything for the Evenki people. They are traditional hunters who have been roaming the eastern forests of Siberia for centuries. The Evenki settled in the taigas of Yakutia, among larch, blueberry and reindeer moss. They lived in the presence of deer, elk, brown bear, fox, capercaillie, sable, taimen, pike, whitefish, perch and trout. It is therefore no coincidence that names of many natural sites here have Evenki roots.
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Clockwise from top left: the Evenki have a history of bartering fur from reindeer and hunted animals; the patterns of traditional Evenki costumes are inspired by nature; a construction worker and activist from Yakutsk visits Oymyakon, the coldest village in the world; Aliona Antipina, 11, of Russian origin, was born in Iengra
For their nobility and courage, these nomads were called “the aristocrats of Siberia”. It was the Evenks of Yakutia who guided Russian prospectors to the riches of the subsoil, playing the role of mushers for geologists whom they taught to survive in a harsh climate. Like many Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the territory, they enabled the industrial development of the Soviet Union.
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The photo at the bottom left: A hereditary reindeer herder, working as musher of geological expeditions. The photo at the bottom right: Sadynsky taiga, reindeer herding brigade, 1967. The photo at the top right: Three men working as reindeer mushers and guides in 1964 in Yakutia’s Lensky district
Today, Russia is the third largest producer of gold, while one out of three diamonds mined in the world comes from Yakutia. Somehow, the Evenki cohabit with the industrialists who exploit their lands, sacrificed on the altar of economic growth. They regret it all the more because they hoped for a better tomorrow for their children.
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The diamond industry organised drilling and extraction in the forest near the rural town of Syuldyukar, attached to the town of Mirny – the richest region of Yakutia – without warning its residents or local authorities. Here, the mayor came to meet the site manager to invite him to speak to the locals and offer to pay them compensation
The taiga is massively demolished, the beds of rivers are ransacked and the water tables are polluted.
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Above: Children are taught the Evenki language in a kindergarten in Iengra, the only village in Yakutia where the inhabitants have retained its use. Right: on the Iengra fur farm, the Evenki breed sables and foxes. A sable skin can sell for 3,000 rubles (£25), and a white fox skin for 8,000 rubles. Far right: Galina Lazareva lives alone in Iengra. In the late 1960s, she worked with mining company geologists. For several years she was a guide for gold prospectors in southern Yakutia. Below: Galina’s great-granddaughter sings at the Baptist church House of Prayer. Representatives of this evangelical Christian movement arrived in Iengra in 1992
The preservation of nature is the priority for the Evenki. Without the reindeer and the environment that nurtures them, they will no longer be able to exist as a people. They are native and attached to their land, and an integral part of the ecosystem.
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Top left: Radik eats pork rillettes on the back of a snowmobile after a day of fishing with his father in the frozen taiga. Top right: Victor Starkov, a retired coal boiler driver, fishes in Oymaykon, the coldest permanently inhabited rural Yakut settlement on the planet. That day, it was -55C. Above: Georgy Sofronov practises lasso throwing. He is a multiple Russian champion in northern combined events, including lasso throwing and sled jumping, two traditional Evenki sports. Right: traditionally in the taiga, the wife of a reindeer herder is responsible for bringing firewood and water, sometimes from a frozen river
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Nikita Zimov, the director of the Northeast Science Station in Yakutia which is used as a year-round base for international research in arctic ecology, observes the thawing of permafrost layer in Duvanny Yar, located along the Kolyma River above the Arctic circle in Yakutia
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