Nenets

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The Nenets
Relatives 41,000
place Russia
language Nenzisch , Russian
religion Russian Orthodox Church , Shamanism

The Nenets (self- referring to the Nenets ненэй ненэче nenəj nenəče , Russian ненцы nenzy ; historically: Samoyed ) are an indigenous people with around 41,000 members in northeastern European Russia and northwestern Siberia . According to the Russian classification, they are counted among the "small peoples of the north" and still represent the cultural area of ​​Siberia most clearly today . Most Nenets live in the Autonomous District of the Nenets in the autonomous district of Yamal-Nenets and the former Autonomous District Taimyr . Their language is the niche . A group of about 1500 people from the Waldnenzen lives mainly in the north-east of the autonomous district of the Chanten and Mansi .

Surname

The current name Nenzen ( Russian ненцы nenzy ) corresponds to the self-designation meaning "people" ( ненэй ненэче nenəj nenəče ), as the people use them in the Nenets language .

The term Samoyed corresponds to an older name in the Russian language , which arose as a folk etymological modification of the self-referential Saamod , Saamid (the Samoyed suffix "-d" denotes the plural). In the Russian ethnographic literature of the 19th century they were also called " Самоядь " or " Самодь " ( samojadʹ or samodʹ ).

The morphemes samo and jed in Russian mean “self-eater”, which seems disparaging. That is why the name Samoyed was used less and less in the 20th century, and the people themselves produced the name Nenets .

When reading old Russian documents, one should keep in mind that the name Samoyed was used for different peoples of northern Siberia who speak different Uralic languages : Nenets, Nganasanen , Enzen , Selkupen (speakers of the Samoyed languages ). Today the term " Samoyed peoples " refers to the entire group of these different peoples. So Nenets are part of the Samoyed peoples.

Way of life

Nenets on a reindeer sleigh in the Siberian tundra
The Siberian tundra is where the Nenets live
Traditional clothing made from reindeer leather and fur

The Nenets are traditionally nomadic reindeer herders , fishermen and hunters. Of all the indigenous peoples of Western Siberia , the Nenets have been the most successful in preserving their traditional way of life, language and culture. Around 75% still speak their mother tongue, with strong regional differences. Today, however, they have mostly settled down.

The full nomads , on the other hand, include the 1000 to 2000 forest neces on the hard-to-reach West Siberian Yamal Peninsula . They mostly live in family groups and so move around with their reindeer herds: In winter through the southern taiga and in the warm summer months through the tundra to the coast of the Arctic Ocean.

The greatest threat to its continued existence comes from the development and extraction of the rich oil and gas reserves on the Yamal Peninsula and in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug . The Wankor oil field 130 km west of Igarka is also to be developed through a pipeline to Dikson . For Europe , the home of the Nenets is the most important source of natural gas. Since natural gas production in the extremely sensitive polar regions is also associated with the extensive destruction of pastures and the severing of hiking routes, the future of the Nenets and their traditional reindeer farming is in question. The Nenets' resistance is concentrated on the Yasavey ("He who knows the way") organization. This association receives support above all from the Russian umbrella organization of the small peoples of Siberia (RAIPON) and from a number of western organizations, especially from Scandinavia and Germany.

Culture

A woman sings semi-improvised epic songs and lamentations without instrumental accompaniment while working in the houses. The lamentations ( ydrabts ) deal with conflicts between members of a clan and fateful experiences. The "gigantic epics " ( syudbabts ) contain the descent of the Nenets from mythical giants and from cannibals who attack, rape and kill women while their husbands are hunting. Sometimes the monsters leave women alive and they give birth to superhuman beings.

Storytelling is an essential part of social coexistence and creates an atmosphere of closeness between the singer / narrator and the participating audience. The detailed songs are part of the oral tradition and preserve not only their own history but also the relationship to neighboring clans and ethnic groups. Even if the song counts do not form a large, closed epic cycle like something in the Kyrgyz Manas epic, they are referred to as epic form because they contain topics that go beyond everyday life.

The so-called "classical shamanism" was the ethnic religion of the Nenets. The ethnologist Klaus E. Müller speaks of "complex shamanism" and means those forms that have developed a complex ritual culture through contact with other religions and neighboring agricultural societies. The Nenets know three categories of shamans:

  1. Strong shamans who are in contact with the unearthly world
  2. Earth shamans associated with the subterranean world
  3. Shamans who are in contact with the dead and act as soul companions

Christianization only took place superficially among many remote peoples of Siberia, so that syncretistic mixed religions are common today. This is particularly true of the Nenets, and it is amazing how pragmatic they were with the missionaries and their new teaching.

literature

  • Andrei V. Golovnev and Gail Osherenko: Siberian Survival. The Nenets and Their Story. Cornell University Press, Ithaka / London 1999, ISBN 0-8014-3631-1
  • Tina Uebel: A visit to a frozen world. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 13, 2017. online
  • Sebastiao Salgado : With the Nenets, in: ders .: My country, our earth. Munich 2019. pp. 165ff.

Web links

Commons : Nenets  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article on the Nenets on the homepage of the Society for Threatened Peoples ( Memento of the original from August 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gfbv.de
  2. ↑ Definition of Samoyed ( Memento from June 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  3. ↑ a b Nenzen ( Memento from January 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ a b Article “Alone on wider tundra” from Coyote 4/02, AGIM magazine
  5. ↑ Eva Toulouze: The Forest Nenets as a Double Language Minority. In: Pille Runnel (Ed.): Pro Ethnologia 15, Multiethnic Communities in the Past and Present. Estonian National Museum, 2003, pp. 95–08 (PDF file; 163 kB)
  6. ↑ Winfried K. Dallmann, Vladislav V. Peskov: Monitoring of oil development in traditional indigenous lands of the Nenets Auto-nomous Okrug. Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and Association of Nenets People Yasavey (PDF file; 484 kB)
  7. ↑ Musiques de la toundra et de la taiga. URSS. Bouriates, Yacoutes, Toungouses, Nenets et Nganasan. Françoise Gründ, Pierre Bois: booklet accompanying the CD, Maison des Cultures du Monde (MCM) 1990, titles 14-16.
  8. ^ Jarkko Niemi: The Genres of the Nenets Songs. In: Asian Music, Vol. 30, No. 1. Autumn 1998 - Winter 1999, pp. 77–132, here p. 82.
  9. ↑ Klaus E. Müller: Shamanism. Healers, spirits, rituals. 4th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2010 (original edition 1997), ISBN 978-3-406-41872-3 . Pp. 30-33, 41.
  10. ↑ The small peoples of the far north and far east of Russia. Society for Threatened Peoples - South Tyrol, Bozen 1998.
  11. ^ Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe , edited on behalf of the Eastern European Institute Regensburg by Martin Schulze Wessel and Dietmar Neutatz, Volume 58 (2010) H. 3, pp. 439-440. accessed on September 11, 2015.