In a post-colonial,^[1] post-Soviet world, attempts by Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets Natives to define themselves as distinct ethnic communities with distinct cultures and political and economic organizations hinges on their survival amidst massive resource and industrial development over which they have very little say.
This essay deals with the social impact that resource development and environmental degradation have had on the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets peoples of northwestern Siberia. I argue that the degradation of their territories because of industrial development, particularly oil and gas exploration and extraction, has led to the social and cultural degradation of the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets peoples. Following this “siege” by government and big industries, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets are endeavoring to protect whatever unspoiled territory they have left. Their struggle to protect their environment and survive as distinct ethnic groups has led to their politicization characterized by a rise in political and ethnic (they would argue, national) consciousness. The central focus of this paper is to examine the manifestation of this politicization. This political and ethnic consciousness is rooted in memory and imaginings of their past, in what historian Eric Hobsbawm calls “the invention of tradition.”^[2] According to Hobsbawm, there are three overlapping types of “invented traditions.” There are:

a) those establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the membership of groups, real or artificial communities,
b) b) those establishing or legitimizing institutions, status or relations of authority and
c) c) those whose main purpose was socialization, the inculcation of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behaviour.^[3]

The Soviet regime promoted the cultural expressions of indigenous northern peoples’ traditional societies through the pokazukha^[4] or show. Ironically, Khanty, Mansi, and Iamalo-Nenets also appeal to tradition in order to voice their demands for political and economic self-government. Subsequently, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets have attempted to recapture, reinvent and remember their past to legitimate their land claims, their demands for self-government, and their survival as indigenous peoples with a rich and complex history.
Many within and without the Soviet Union regarded Yeltsin as a liberal democrat who advocated a decentralization of power to the regions, something that Gorbachev had encouraged just a year before he lost his power.^[5] But after Gorbachev lost power, it was not only other Union republics that took the cue of sovereignty. In the spirit of perestroika and Yeltsin’s apparent advocacy of decentralization and the development of a Russian national consciousness (as opposed to Soviet centralization policies), cities and regions within Russia itself asserted their own civic and regional concerns over control of their economies and resources. This phenomenon was and has been most notable in the better-known cases of Tatarstan and the Caucasus, in Siberia, too, regional leaders and elites have attempted to control their regions and territories in defiance of the central government.^[6]
The interaction of state-building, nationalism and economic development is uppermost in the political agenda of the Russian regime. For Russia, because of the inefficiency and outdated technologies used in the manufacturing industry that produced virtually unmarketable goods, economic development meant an intensification on the extraction and development of natural resources, most of which lay in the Siberian heartland. The advancement of Russian national and economic interests, then, was at the expense of native interests and concerns. For the most part, in the Russian agenda of economic development and state building, with the goal of becoming an integral part of the capitalist world economy, there is no place for aboriginal interests or aboriginal rights. And yet, it is within this transitional phase between communism and capitalism that indigenous elites are attempting to voice their concerns regarding their survival as peoples, as communities with serious and legitimate political, economic and social concerns.

Problems of Social and Cultural Degradation

To the detriment of the indigenous people of Northwest Siberia, the development of oil and gas reserves on their traditional hunting, fishing and reindeer-herding territory transformed and re-identified it as empty space to be populated and developed, as a place to build massive cement cities and to drill hundreds of thousands of possible oil and gas sites, and as a major source of hard-currency revenue. Soviet indoctrination and the policies of internationalism transformed the Khanty, Mansi, Iamalo-Nenets and other Siberian Natives into the industrialized Homo Sovieticus,^[7] with Native elites attempting to restore, reinvent and imagine their indigenous identity. As the Mansi writer Iuvan Shestalov forcefully asserts

Civilisation...What is that? Who is indeed civilised? And who is the genuine savage and barbarian? Questions. Questions. Barbarian attitude towards nature, the nature of Man, customs, traditions, non-written laws of human civilisation. Revolution. Revolutionary renovation. The breaking of the old, outworn. Construction of a new society, of a new man. Slogans. Slogans. Slogans....^[8]

While a certain degree of syncretism^[9] is evident, strikingly, most of the indigenous Natives in Northwest Siberia, especially the Mansi and Khanty, live as Russians do, and are immersed in the Russian language and the Soviet culture in which they grew up, were educated and live.^[10]
Major industrial development led to a significant increase of the non-indigenous population in the Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous Okrug from 98,000 in 1959 to over 500,000 in 1979, and to 998, 600 by 1989.^[11] By contrast the Khanty and Mansi population increased only by 12 percent to 28,497 in the same period. In 1959, the Khanty-Mansiisk region was 17 percent Khanty and Mansi, by 1979 their share of the population in their own region fell to less than 4 percent.^[12] Today the estimated proportion of the Khanty and Mansi population on their own traditional lands is one percent.^[13] In the Iamalo-Nenetskii Autonomous Okrug, indigenous peoples make up 6 percent of the population. Indeed, the rate of urbanization, the proliferation of large cities on the Northwest Siberian tundra and taiga has overwhelmed the Native population.

Table 1. Population of Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets in Tiumen' Oblast’, 1926-1989.^[14]
<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/espiritu1.jpg>

*Denotes that this is the combined figures for Nenets in all of the RSFSR.

In the period between 1979 and 1989, Khanty-Mansiisk and Iamalo-Nenetskii Autonomous Okrugs had the highest increase in population growth in all of the Soviet Union, as a result of both natural population increase and migration.^[15] Vladimir Sangi, the first President of the Association of the Small Peoples of the North, stated in somewhat romantic tones,

The other civilization burst into this fragile civilization with all its energy and, like a tank, rumbled over the body of the northern culture that was incomprehensible and alien to it. And as long as we keep going on about how many schools and hospitals have been built in the North during the past 70 years, which peoples have become literate, how many people have become doctors, teachers, writers, etc., without taking into account what has actually happened to entire peoples, we won't find a way out of our historical impasse.^[16]

Evident in Sangi's statement is the urgency of the situation for aboriginal peoples in Siberia, the need to save or recapture lost languages, cultures and traditions of the Native peoples of Siberia, including the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets.
Newcomers who came to Northwest Siberia, it appeared, were there for "fast money" eager to exploit the land and its resources. Their main focus was to earn money^[17] and, therefore, had very little concern for the natural environment that was Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets territory. Migration into Northwest Siberia by Europeans led to typical problems of a highly transient population hoping to make the highest wage possible.^[18] Moreover, speaking of Siberia as a whole

An additional factor contributing to labor movements within the region are boom and bust economic cycles, to which Siberia is vulnerable because of the unidimensional, raw material orientation of its economy. Mineral deposits and timber stands are exploited and abandoned as production shifts to new locations.^[19]

Native elites and elders argue that while some Natives hold non-traditional occupations in the fields of medicine, education and in more recent years, politics, for many the Soviet lifestyle was antithetical to their social and economic organization. While the European population came to the Tiumen' Oblast’ in the tens of thousands, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets left the growing urban cores of the region. Echoes of this phenomenon date back to the beginning of Russian colonization of Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets lands. In the seventeenth century, in an attempt to preserve their traditional way of life and customs, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets migrated away from centres of Russian industry and trade, continuing and maintaining their life of hunting, fishing and reindeer-herding. Many continue to migrate from the urban industrial centres that accommodate the oil and gas industry in the Khanty-Mansiisk and Iamalo-Nenetskiy Autonomous regions. The freedom to migrate from the urban cores becomes more difficult as the infrastructures of oil and gas as well as of cities render this choice less and less viable. Based on the 1989 census, the level of urban populations for Khanty-Mansiisk and Iamalo-Nenets is 90.9 percent and 77.9 percent respectively.^[20] The Russian overall average is 73.6%,^[21] while the Tiumen' Oblast' overall average is 72.8%.^[22] Among the northern indigenous populations, 11.1% of Khanty lived in urban centres in 1979 and 16.8% in 1989; 24.7% Mansi lived in cities in 1979 and 32.5% in 1989; and 7.5 % Iamalo-Nenets lived in urban cores in 1979 and 10.6 % in 1989.^[23]

Table 2. Percentage of Urban Populations in Russia from 1926-1994^[24]
<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/espiritu2.jpg>

The rapid rate of urbanization of Native territory is not mirrored by the urbanization of the Native population. While the Native urban population is much smaller than the non-Native urban population, it is evident that land and territorial use is predominantly by the non-native population. The result is that the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets live in poverty, not being able to conduct traditional economic and social activities while their traditional territory is subjected to both Russian and Western intrusions. At present, “[I]n the economic balance of the region, the production generated by the indigenous northerners, ...has become almost unnoticeable against the huge industrial capacity. The situation in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region is quite typical for all the North.”^[25]
The social and environmental situation in Northwest Siberia is reflected in letters to local party and government officials. For example, by the late 1970s a Khanty fisher, S.P. Medikin from the small village of Posnokort in Mikoianovsk region, wrote the Tiumen' Oblast’ government and Communist Party outlining his concerns regarding language and culture loss, environmental problems and fear over what oil and gas development would do to the Khanty-Mansiisk region. He observed that his children were losing their ability to communicate in Khanty and that as his grandchildren lived in urban centres such as Leningrad they were even further removed from Khanty language and culture. Medikin also noted that their hunting and fishing grounds had diminished, and their hunting rights had become severely restricted.^[26] Although, Medikin chose to speak from his personal experience, he often generalized and spoke for the Khanty and Mansi community as a whole. Even in the late 1970s the problem of modernization had penetrated the small remote villages of Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous Okrug so deeply that the loss of language and the traditional economies were commonplace. Medikin, born in 1927, proudly states that he speaks Khanty but outlines clearly the negligible use of both Khanty and Mansi in schools and at home, with the youth opting to be educated in Russian so that they may go to Universities and technical schools. These practices have led to severe depopulation of already sparsely populated villages of the far North, and further economic decline because of lack of industries and workers. The pattern of language loss, Medikin argues, began shortly after the Second World War. The solutions he proposes echo some of those proposed by indigenous leaders of Siberia today: the education of Khanty and Mansi children in their respective languages, but also education in their respective traditional lifestyles, work and future plans. This reeducation would be attained by building more boarding schools that would teach in the Native languages and by printing stories about the Khanty and Mansi Native peoples in newspapers and producing television shows about their lives and their various accomplishments as fishers, foresters and oil workers.^[27] The appeal by a Khanty to the executive committee and the Party of Khanty-Mansiisk region is in itself remarkable especially considering that Medikin made it in 1979 when not even academics were openly discussing the situation in the North and Siberia. The letter points to the dismay of one Khant and how he has been relegated to the role of the other in Russia, as Medikin argues “Native Khanty toil equally with everyone, but of this no one hears.”^[28] We glean from the letter that while education in the Native language and promotion of traditions are important, what is most important for Medikin, and other Khanty and Mansi is the recognition of their significant participation in Soviet society.
Another letter written a decade later echoed and augmented Medikin’s grievances in much stronger terms. Taking the opportunity provided by the more tolerant atmosphere permitted under the Gorbachev regime, the Native inhabitants of Varyegan, located in the extremely oil-rich Nizhnevartovsk Raion sent a letter of protest along with 125 signatures to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Unlike Medikin’s reserved letter, the petition sent in 1989 boldly argued that Native lands had undergone “barbaric destruction” at the hands of industrialists exploiting the natural resources of the region, namely oil and gas.^[29] It spoke not only of language loss and rights to traditional economic practices, but also about the enforced removal of Natives from their own territory and their displacement by oil and gas workers. Moreover, in cases where the Native Khanty and Iamalo-Nenets were not forced out, the intensity of exploration and drilling for oil and gas just fifty kilometres from Native settlements compelled them to abandon their land and the burial grounds of their ancestors. The grievances of the Native settlers relate directly to the enormity of the infrastructure of the oil and gas industry in Northwest Siberia. Indeed, the region in which these Native Khanty and Iamalo-Nenets live is at the heart of the largest oil producing field in Northwest Siberia, even though the oil production in Nizhnevartovsk was in decline by 1989.^[30]
The Khanty petitioners from Varyegan maintained that oil and gas workers had no respect for the land and the environment on which Natives rely for their livelihood. The letter cites the declining numbers in the sable population and that of other wild animals. Very similar to Medikin’s appeal of ten years earlier, the Khanty and Iamalo-Nenets of Varyegan declared that the disappearing wildlife, fish and vegetation from the Northwest Siberian plains called into question the ability of Natives to be Natives. They argued: “[W]e will not have land. We will not have hunting grounds, we will not have reindeer pastures, we will not have anywhere to fish... As our elders say: ‘Nenets have stopped being Nenets and Khanty have stopped being Khanty.’”^[31]
The situation described by these settlers reflects the extreme impact of the oil and gas enterprises in Northwest Siberia as a whole. Besides the forced removal of Native settlers from their homes and the discrepancy in earnings between oil and gas workers and the Native population, these problems were exacerbated by the disharmony and interethnic tensions caused by the development of the oil and gas industry. There is also a clear sense that their regional government representative betrayed them by giving no indication in the five-year plan of the exploitation of a new oil reserves in their region.^[32] Indeed this is a prevalent complaint among indigenous peoples interviewed in the Konda and Tazovskii regions who feel that local administrators and government officials are profiting from the extraction and sale of oil and gas in Tiumen’ Oblast. Most of those interviewed questioned why the wealth generated by the oil and gas enterprises has not resulted in a better standard of living for the indigenous villagers and settlers who have seen their traditional lands devastated by the oil and gas industry.^[33]
The modernization and industrialization of the Natives of Northwest Siberia and their traditional territories did not lead to a better life and a better standard of living (either in the Russian or the Native definition) as Marxism-Leninism had promised, even if it made them citizens of the Soviet state. Rather it has led to cultural decline, hardship and a fall in their standard of living. Moreover, this industrial exploitation of Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets land has concurrently led to the exploitation of those who decide to stay and work in the urban centres, or even those who may just live around sources of oil and gas.^[34] This is evident in a petition from the Native settlers of Varyegan in Nizhnevartovsk Raion, which argued that the exploitation of oil and gas resources had led to the “insulting wage differential between oil men and Native settlers.”^[35] In the late 1980s, "[E]thnographers [were] alarmed by the crisis they discern among native Siberians, whose living conditions are acknowledged to be the worst in the USSR."^[36] An interview with an executive of the Salekhard city government revealed that Iamalo-Nenets living within sight of the city live in squalid conditions. Most of these Iamalo-Nenets prefer to live in skin tents or chums (pronounced chooms) and to practice their traditional economies, but for most owning reindeer has not been possible, and hunting and fishing cannot sustain them as rivers and lakes become more polluted, and hunting and gathering grounds are overtaken by oil and gas development. Therefore, many Iamalo-Nenets living near Salekhard appeal for government assistance, despite the wealth of oil and gas on their territories.^[37]
Soviet population specialists Aleksandr Pika and Boris Prokhorov assert that among the population of Siberia less than 43 percent of "the working-age population...is engaged in the traditional occupations of hunting, fishing, and reindeer husbandry, as compared to 70 percent thirty years ago."^[38] The research and field work I conducted in the summers of 1993 and 1994 in Northwest Siberia indicate that the situation for the Khanty, Iamalo-Nenets and especially the Mansi is much worse than for other Siberians.^[39] It was very difficult to find those who still practice fishing, hunting and reindeer herding as part of their social and economic organization or outside of the collectivized context, even in relatively remote areas. The decline of the native traditional economies is staggering, especially when it is evident that these traditional forms of labour are being replaced by non-traditional ones. This is still very much the case, even with the dismantling of the Soviet Union.
Those who choose to keep the traditional forms of labor cannot freely hunt or herd reindeer as they did in the past. Rather, they are assigned residence areas called “national settlements”^[40] and, as in the past, people are usually placed in the confined settings of the sovkhoz. Indeed the impact of such enforced settlement is crippling to the Natives of Siberia. Soviet policies regarding the industrialization of the North and its population tried to force a new identity upon the Natives of Northwest Siberia. Soviet citizenship required them to become the industrialized Soviets that the Marxist-Leninist doctrines prescribed, no matter how unsuccessful the outcome. Towards the end of the 1980s, as oil and gas development declined further, and as the promise of a socialist utopia appeared more elusive than when the experiment began, industrialization could no longer provide sustenance for the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets, nor could it confirm the illusion of progress. And today, still grappling with the Soviet legacy, the sovkhozy themselves can no longer provide many Natives in Khanty-Mansiisk and Iamalo-Nenetskii Autonomous Okrugs with income to allow them to sustain a decent standard of living.
By the late 1980s, the Northwest Siberian plains, the traditional territories of the Khanty, Mansi, Iamalo-Nenets and several other indigenous peoples were already completely transformed and re-identified and re-invented for resource extraction and industrial use, rendering the land in severe environmental peril. The ecological destruction and environmental pollution in the region were of massive proportions. By the early 1990s, the press in the Soviet Union and then the Russian Republic candidly reported the pollution about which indigenous peoples bitterly complained. Industrial enterprises dumped huge quantities of heavy metals and cities directed sewage into the rivers Ob’ and Irtysh in Northwest Siberia. For example, various fish on which Natives of the Berezovskii region rely had diminished in numbers from 1/20 to 1/100 of previous levels in the period since oil and gas development began in the early 1960s.^[41] Intense exploration and wide prospecting for oil and gas reserves polluted rivers, river basins and lakes putting into jeopardy fish processing operations.^[42] Additionally, the frequent occurrences of catastrophic gas field fires because of careless exploration and extraction practices destroyed and continue to destroy grazing and pasture lands for reindeer herds and forests inhabited by wild animals.^[43] This left Natives contending that not only does this ecological degradation threaten their sources of food and trade, it also threatens a major component of their traditional lifestyle.
Reports in the early 1990s suggested much of the pollution came from the use of inferior equipment in the drilling and extraction of oil, as well as its transport through oil pipelines. In 1991, Pravda, citing an interview with the Chief Administration for Petroleum Transport and Delivery and Central Dispatching Administration, reported that there “were more than 900 accidents involving oil field pipeline in Western Siberia in the first four months of this year”.^[44] Moreover, the representative for the administration monitoring pipeline operations suggested that such accidents were on the rise. Long tracts of pipeline in disrepair and requiring replacement lay at the heart of this massive environmental damage. The problem faced by the oil and gas industry with regard to increasing inefficiency and general breakdown is systemic. Other industrial sectors failed to deliver 123,000 tons of pipe in the first four months of 1991 leading to the massive oil spills as the oil industry attempted to meet its own deliveries. Exacerbating this was the pollution caused by the efforts to clean up the oil spills. Much of Northwest Siberia is swampland making it very difficult to clean oil spills, so the solution has been to “burn oil-soaked ground and later reclaim the area,”^[45] resulting in air pollution. Burning oil in the fields of Northwest Siberia is all too common an occurrence, whether by accident or by design, prompting one journalist to write “clouds cry oil.”^[46]
The identity of the indigenous peoples living in Northwest Siberia is integral to the environment in which they live. For the Natives of Siberia, the land represents their livelihood and spirituality as it traditionally gave them their subsistence needs in the form of fishing, hunting, reindeer-herding, and berry-picking activities. Pollution and degradation of this fragile environment and land call into question their survival and their identity as Natives. The interviews of Natives, as well as the complaints and petitions by Native settlers and villagers, forthrightly attest that land is the most important element in the maintenance of their traditions and their culture as indigenous peoples. Land use and rights define Siberian Native peoples’ struggle to survive as indigenous peoples in Northwest Siberia. Proposals from Native leaders on laws and regulations regarding land use and rights are abundant,^[47] but the shadow of oil and gas renders this fight a most formidable one as the Russian government claims that oil and gas make Russia a viable nation-state.
The Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets are caught “betwixt and between.” They desire to recapture and maintain their lost traditions and lifeways, but find it exceedingly difficult to do so within the confines of late-twentieth century Russian economic development. Soviet indoctrination taught them to forget their traditions, their languages, their cultures and their ways of life. In exchange, they were taught how to be Russian, how to speak Russian, and how to think Soviet. With the collapse of the Soviet system and with the environmental damage done to their territories because of oil and gas development, these Natives are hard-pressed to find a way to again practice their traditional cultures, to speak their native tongues and to pursue their traditional economies.
It is realities such as these that have led native elites to call for a “reawakening” and a “revival” of Native traditions. Native elites use the rhetoric of nationalism in order to emphasize their pleas, contending that their lives, economies, politics and social organization were far better before colonization. Indeed, the constitution of the Iamal-Potomkam, the association advancing the claims of the Iamalo-Nenets, uses the term “national consciousness” in its mandate.^[48] It is evident that the Iamalo-Nenets elders feel that it is only by emphasizing their parity with the Russian nation that they may have a chance to argue for their rights as a people. While these ideas of “national consciousness” are very real and pervasive in the rhetoric of indigenous elites, they are largely confined to the elite level of Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets societies. Native elites are aware that the Soviet legacy of socialist culture^[49] and Marxism-Leninism are perhaps indelibly stamped on their culture and society. Conversations with Mansi, Iamal-Nenets and Khanty elites and non-elites suggest that the basis of their cultural and social organization can be directly traced to what was learned under the Soviet regime. Non-elites longed for the days of stability of the Soviet period and of the past when they did not have to worry about their future. It was often said with apparent sadness that “I don’t have enough to buy food,” or “my pension cannot keep up with inflation” under the ongoing reforms.^[50] The aim of Native elites and intelligentsia is to recreate, reinvent and remember a history and a past that appears to be better than their present and their future. By summoning memories and feelings of affiliation, and even patriotism towards one’s traditions and culture in order to establish or symbolize “social cohesion or the membership of groups, [and] real or artificial communities,”^[51] cultural preservation and survival seems possible.

Indigenous response: the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets in search of a new identity

The battle for control of resources and territories between the centre and the periphery, together with the decline of cultures, traditions and the environment have led the Khanty, Mansi and Nenets to assert their place within the new Russia. This assertion of place, of existence, is rooted in an attempt to define who they are and how they fit within the state-building mandate of Russia. Defining themselves as distinctly indigenous means remembering, recreating and reinventing their histories and it also means that they can be in a political position of strength when vying for land claims and territorial rights. With the infringement of their lands by the Russian government and the Russian and foreign industrial companies, combined with a growing and influential intelligentsia and elite, a strong desire has arisen among the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets educated and elites to revive and remember their traditional cultures, languages and way of life. Having experienced the paternalistic rule of the Soviet government and the destruction brought on by industrial development, Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets leaders are beginning to realize the need to maintain their territory and to govern their own lands and resources. The question that arises is how is this to be done? With populations that number between 1 to 6 percent of the larger non-native populations in Northwest Siberia, the task is a difficult one. Again, indigenous elites have distinguished themselves from the dominant Russian culture and interests. Frederick Barth postulates that it is conflict or what he terms “dichotomized ethnic statuses” that maintains the cultural differences “despite inter-ethnic contact and interdependence.”^[52] Indeed, Barth argues that the close geographic proximity of different ethnic groups to each other serves “to be a factor encouraging the proliferation of cultural differentiae.”^[53] I argue, moreover, that, for the indigenous peoples of Northwest Siberia, these cultures and traditions have had to be re-invented and invented in order for them to differentiate themselves from dominant ethnic groups around them, namely European Slavs. As Hobsbawm suggests, invention necessarily stems from a linkage (a memory) of the past from which the invention arises.^[54] The thing newly created or invented comes from an attempt to break away from the prevailing order, identity or lack thereof. Far from being static, they are dynamic constructs that serve the needs of survival of cultures, languages and traditions threatened with extinction.
It is, then, vitally important to many Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets elites to maintain and continue their ethnicity and their culture, since their survival as a people can only be ensured, not by the paternalism which led to the start of their demise, but rather through the propagation and promotion of their way of life as superior, or at the very least equal, to the hegemonic polities and societies to which they have been subjugated.^[55] To a great extent, in order to do this, these indigenous elites create memories and imagine their connection to other communities similar to their own. The awakening of ethnic, even national consciousness is inextricably intertwined with the politicization of native elites of Siberia, a legacy of Soviet nationality policies.^[56]
The irony, however, is that it is not only land that has been industrialized, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets themselves have been industrialized. The education and the industrial development imported to the Siberian tundra and taiga was in the framework of Slavic European development. The occupations practiced by the majority of Natives in Northwest Siberia for the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets indigenous peoples fell into the Soviet defined categories of intellectual work and physical labour. Intellectual (umstvennyi) work had a number of categories from supervisory positions in the government to technical engineers, artists, teachers, medical workers and cultural workers.^[57] Physical labour was categorized as work in hard labour, peat mining, machine and metal work, and fishing, fish processing and hunting. The struggle for Natives is to find compromises that would accommodate the modern Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets and yet still allow them to practice and maintain their culture and traditions if they so choose.
Another source of survival and preservation is what some post-Soviet academics have termed neo-traditionalism. While for the ordinary native, neo-traditionalism has meant a return to traditional economies or hunting, fishing and reindeer herding in order to subsist in an uncertain economy,^[58] for indigenous elites the concept of neo-traditionalism means “a guaranteed return to an aboriginal essence,”^[59] something more pure, untrammeled by the Soviet socialist experiment and modernization. This return is a “‘rediscovering’” of “something deep down always known,”^[60] in order to create national feeling where it does not exist. Native leaders realize that in order to fertilize the rediscovery of their glorious and somehow more perfect past, it is crucial for them to educate their peoples in their Native languages, cultures, lifeways, traditions and histories. Hence, demands for national schools teaching in the Native languages is one of the dominant themes in the discourse between Native elites and the Russian government.^[61] Leaders such as Eremei Aipin, a Khanty poet and a past President of the Association of the Numerically-Small Peoples of the North, and Sergei Khariuchi, the past Deputy for National Questions in the Iamalo-Nenetskii Autonomous Region and the current President of the Association of the Numerically-Small Peoples of the North, were also well aware that institutional infrastructures were vitally necessary for the initiation and continuance of these remembered and recreated histories and memories. Aipin proposes the establishment of museums and reservations as one solution to bringing the Khanty back to a healthier environment to conduct “folkloric festivals, peoples’ concerts and art displays.”^[62] Iuvan Shestalov echoed this five years later.^[63] The question that remains to be answered is what form Native traditions and history will take within an economically and socially beleaguered new Russia.
At the height of this imagination and invention is the profound paradox that the Khanty and Mansi seek the protection of reservations in order to preserve their way of life. Although reservations elicit pejorative connotations, especially in the West, the Khanty and Mansi believe that the designation of reservations, based on the North American model, would lead to a preservation of the territory and, thus, the Khanty and Mansi ethnos. It is the definition of this ethnos that is still in question however. Having seen the destructive nature of industrial development in Northwest Siberia and the apparent road to extinction which it brings, the Khanty and Mansi postulate a solution that suggests a heightened awareness of their precarious situation within the Russian polity which is informed by Native elites’ need to demarcate, to form boundaries imagined and invented.
Writer Oksana Petrunenko argues that the idea of establishing a reservation may improve their situation. “Ethnographers, philosophers, lawyers and cultural experts also supported the idea of setting up an ethnic territory or a reservation,” corresponding to the “international agreements on the rights of peoples leading a traditional way of life.”^[64] The reservation they seek would protect their land and their people from the negative impact of industrialization of the region, because "priority is to be given to the traditional crafts, hunting and fishing. As on any reservation, the number of outsiders, such as tourists, builders and oil workers, will be sharply limited. The prospecting parties working there will move elsewhere.^[65] While indigenous northerners see North American type reservations as the answer to their woes, it is clear that Khanty and Mansi natives have not thought of the many disadvantages of establishing reservations such as the capital necessary to operate such reservations, or the attendant need to once again relocate natives from where they live to the designated reservations. Nevertheless, in 1989, one-third of the Khanty-Mansi territory was declared a reservation, and all logging and industrial development was to be stopped within this 100,000 square kilometre reserve. However, much as it was in the Soviet period, the mandated reserve exists only on paper. With Russia in the throes of economic hardship, with oil and gas being its most valuable commodities the designation of this preserve is not enforced, and prospecting and extraction persist.
The Iamalo-Nenets also wish to preserve their language and their traditions. Sergei Khariuchi, at the time the leader for the Iamalo-Nenets Native association, Iamal Potomkam, has argued that Iamalo-Nenets and others must be given the opportunity to take part in “the revival and development of their language, culture, traditions, customs and production.”^[66] According to Khariuchi, the Russian government must pay closer attention to nationalities politics as it was their past mistakes and policies that led to the problems that the Iamalo-Nenets face. Khariuchi contends that “internationalism” and “Friendships of Peoples” were empty slogans and promises that did not improve either relations between peoples or the lives of the Iamalo-Nenets.^[67] He suggests that the “national problem” will be solved only when the government in Moscow realizes that nationalities politics cannot be “isolated from the political and economic questions.” Furthermore, problems of culture and religion may only be solved with the close coordination between national minorities and the central government.^[68]
Beyond the political coordination between the minorities of Siberia and the Russian government, indigenous elites suggest that because the oil and gas are on their traditional lands, they must have a say in economic development as well, and in how these commodities should be developed and marketed. Natives question why they have not benefited materially from the oil and gas industry.^[69] The Khanty writer Eremei Aipin, who was then a Peoples’ Deputy of the U.S.S.R., questioned why the valuable oil being extracted from his peoples’ land was being sold at below the world market value inside and outside of the country. Aipin thought that selling oil at its world market price would benefit not only his people and his region, but also all of Russia.^[70] Writing in 1991, Aipin was at a loss to explain why, with the oil industry operating at a deficit of 700 million rubles per year, oil from Russia sold at 65 rubles per tonne, while world market prices were at 258 dollars per tonne. Aipin admits that Northwest Siberia was the wealthiest region in all the Russian Republic, with the development of housing occurring at an incredible pace in an attempt to keep up with the migration of oil workers from European Russia. He also noted that as much as 99% of oil industry profits went to the central ministries and the small remainder to the local administration. He demanded a greater devolution of profits and powers from the centre so that local officials and leaders had autonomy over their resources and decision-making.^[71] While there has been some devolution of powers from Moscow to the regional governments since Aipin’s 1991 article, the authority acquired by indigenous elites has not given them the power to influence the oil and gas industry. Khanty and Iamalo-Nenets families in the area around Salekhard and Surgut are still being displaced. Private and state-run oil and gas companies often offer a meager lump sum of money in return for their land.^[72] This presents a great deal of tension between Natives who want to hold on to their land in the hopes of creating obschiny (self-governing communities) and those who have already given it up. For indigenous elites in Northwest Siberia, the answer is in the creation of laws on nature and land use that has substance beyond the written word.^[73] Since there is no open dialogue between the oil and gas industries and the Native people with whom they are dealing, more often than not, those who give up their lands to oil interests do so without the full understanding of the contract signed with the oil or gas company.^[74] Pitted against, and confused by the urban savvy of oil and gas industrialists, some Khanty families have given title and rights to their lands in exchange for a brand new snowmobile or motor boat.^[75]
Indisputably, the modern Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets culture and ethnicity no longer exist in the form that they were at pre-contact with Russians in the Imperial period. However, the attempts to imagine, recreate and reinvent traditional customs, way of life and environment are strong among indigenous elites. With the policies of glasnost and perestroika introduced by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1985, and then the Union's subsequent collapse, Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets elites have become politically empowered because of the devolution of authority from the centre to the periphery. Concurrently, the managers of the oil and gas industry in the Khanty-Mansiisk and Iamalo-Nenetskii autonomous regions have also gained more political control. Using this opportunity to voice their political concerns, these indigenous elites have mobilized the resources at their disposal to place their demands on the political agenda of the Russian government.
The creation of such organizations as the Association for the Small Peoples of the North in 1989, at one time headed by the Khanty writer Eremei Aipin is one form of this new politicization. The Association advocates the protection of Native rights and resources in accordance with the United Nations’ mandate regarding indigenous peoples, including an effort to preserve the environment to which their traditional economies and cultures are intrinsically tied. The association seeks to promote Native peoples’ governance of themselves and their territories.^[76] Local-level associations formed another means by which Natives joined the political arena. The Khanty and Mansi formed Spasenie Iugri (Salvation of the Ugra) and the Iamalo-Nenets, Iamal-Potomkam (Iamal for Future Generations). Both assert political mandates that strongly advance the return to, if not the preservation of, traditional culture, language and economies of native peoples. Indeed, while each association has a different way to achieve its aims, both see that the way to preserving and developing their peoples is by asserting themselves as indigenous peoples, with special land and resource rights under international law.^[77] Therefore, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets are reformulating their identity from Soviet citizens to indigenous peoples with distinct rights, indeed as global citizens.
However, both organizations have run into problems. In the case of Iamal-Potomkam, the problem, as Norman A. Chance and Elena N. Andreeva assert, is that with scant political experience and “no recognized legal base, its political power is severely limited.”^[78] Concerning Spassenie Iugri, interviews with Native villagers indicated that as there was no coordination between the head office in Khanty-Mansiisk city and the smaller villages, there was therefore a great deal of resentment and skepticism that the association would do anything for the local Natives. Many intimated that members of the upper-level elites, such as Eremei Aipin, were aloof from the people.^[79] When asked about their Native leaders, the retort from the Mansi villagers interviewed indicated that they knew little about figures such as Aipin and saw no connection between his activities in Moscow and their need for higher pensions or a banya (a Russian sauna) in their small village.^[80]
Representation at the national, regional and local levels of government is important for indigenous elites and non-elites alike. As Khariuchi has stated, Natives are looking for the close collaboration of all levels of governments with Native groups and associations addressing the cultural, social, economic and religious needs of Natives, along with the larger economic and political concerns of the Russian government. Harking back to the letter from the Khanty and Iamalo-Nenets settlers written in 1989, one of their main demands was representation at all levels of government, especially when it comes to representing their interests against the interests of the oil and gas industry.^[81] The election of the indigenous Khanty leader Eremei Aipin to the People's Deputies of the Russian parliament and the proliferation of local Native leaders are steps towards this, even if non-elites feel that their representatives are not speaking for them. Native peoples are seeking to place representatives in the Russian Parliament to address Moscow on its own terms.^[82] That a Iamal-Nenets representative fighting for the rights of Iamal-Nenets is a member of the Iamalo-Nenetskii Autonomous Region government is also indicative of increasing politicization.
With the petitions to governmental and non-governmental agencies, and the attempts to acquaint the public with the concerns of Native peoples, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets have endeavored to gain support from governmental and non-governmental agencies. While the Soviet state’s and, now, the Russian Federation’s recognition of them as indigenous peoples has become a prerequisite towards putting their concerns on the federal political agenda, the central government lacks the political will to give power to these Native peoples. Despite making up only 1-2 percent of the entire Tiumen' Oblast' population, what Natives want is special status as indigenous peoples as mandated by the United Nations so that they can be given a voice and power within the larger Russian state. Since Russia relies on Northwest Siberian oil and gas for between 66 and 70%^[83] of its energy needs (see Table 5.2) and foreign currency revenues, the requirements of the Khanty, Mansi, Iamalo-Nenets and the environment in which they live is a low priority for the Yeltsin government. This is most strikingly evident in a presidential ukaz (decree) issued by Yeltsin in 1991.^[84] The ukaz begins by listing the priority of development in Tiumen' Oblast’ and not surprisingly, oil and gas takes precedence over all other types of development, economic and social. Yeltsin emphasized the importance of establishing the “efficient use and reproduction” of hydrocarbon resources and the “heightened full use of natural gas and gas condensates.”^[85] While the concerns of indigenous peoples in Khanty-Mansiisk and Iamalo-Nenetskyi regions were taken into consideration, notably with regard to the environment, it is evident that the oil and gas industries would not support any development of fisheries, hunting, reindeer herding and other traditional activities, thus obfuscating the urgent demands of indigenous peoples regarding the environmental degradation of their lands. Five years later, with the Russian economy in the depths of depression, Yeltsin’s directives about making the oil and gas industry more efficient and more responsible towards the environment have not materialized. The voices of Natives have not been heard over the louder and more potent exigencies of the Russian state and society.
The modern Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets culture and ethnicity are marked by assimilation into the dominant Russian culture and language. Moreover, they are also marked by Sovietization and modernization, characterized by massive industrial development. Confronted with this, the attempts to remember, imagine and invent traditional customs and ways of life grow stronger.
The election of Khanty leaders such as Eremei Aipin to the People's Deputies of the Russian parliament and the creation of organizations such as Spaseniye Iugri and Iamal Potomkam are signals that the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets are taking their fate into their own hands.^[86] While this politicization of the elite may lead to the salvaging of Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets cultures and ethnicities, the reality is that it is likely too late especially for the Mansi, the majority of whom no longer speak their native tongue.
There have been some successes made by indigenous peoples in Siberia. In 1995, both the Autonomous Okrugs of Khanty-Mansiisk and Iamalo-Nenets saw legislation passed in the Autonomous Okrug Duma outlining their rights within the context of the Russian polity. The tone and language of both Statutes were generous in giving the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets guarantees of their rights as indigenous peoples “in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the present Statute, the generally accepted principles and rules of the international law and international treaties of the Russian Federation.”^[87] Note that while these Statutes have been passed at the Autonomous Okrug level, they have not yet passed the federal level of the Russian Parliament. While it is evident that there is legislation protecting indigenous land rights and claims and that legislation has been passed designating protected areas for traditional land use, often the federal legislations contradict and supersede whatever beneficial laws have been given to indigenous minorities.^[88] Moreover, Yeltsin has failed to ratify a very important piece of legislation regarding indigenous rights, the Law on the Legal Status of Numerically Small Peoples of the North, which was actually passed by the Russian Duma twice in 1995. Yeltsin argued that the legislation required more reworking.^[89] Nevertheless, the political lobbying by indigenous peoples of Siberia continues.
Another important indication of the politicization of the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets, and indeed other aboriginal groups in Siberia is their ongoing support of each other, a growing Pan-tribal and Super-tribal movement which goes beyond the boundaries of West Siberia and indeed Russia. The Chukchi, the Nenets, the Evenks, the Nivkh, and others have lent their support to each others' causes in the North and Siberia.^[90] Moreover, these Siberian indigenous peoples have actively and strongly voiced their grievances to international groups such as the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs, as well as other indigenous groups in Canada, the United States and Australia. Here, too, there is a good bit of invention going on as Native elites elicit imagined connections from non-elites whereby the concept of community not only extends to those with whom one has an ethno-cultural and linguistic similarity, but beyond to other indigenous groups in Siberia and worldwide. While it is possible for highly educated natives such as Eremei Aipin and Sergei Khariuchi to make connections with the Lubicon Cree or the Inuit of Canada and Greenland, it is far more difficult for ordinary native villagers to imagine a connection with other Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets from different villages, let alone other peoples from other ethnic groups and other territories.
Moreover, the results of this pan-tribalism and super-tribalism have, thus far, been cosmetic. For example, a festival celebrating indigenous peoples in Northwest Siberia in the summer of 1993, costing billions of rubles and heavily funded by the Texas-based oil and gas company Amoco, turned into a pretty, cultural display of traditional songs and dances rather than an effort to call attention to the dire situation of the cultures of the natives of Siberia. The festival was a pokazukha – a show, very similar to the shows and celebrations in which the former Soviet Union engaged in in order to demonstrate its apparent strength while its core was rotting. The idea of the festival, of the pokazukha, pervades any formal cultural expression so that Native dances become theatrical ballets, Native singing becomes operatic and Native paintings become modern art forms. These are inventions of traditions legitimized by the dominant polity’s elevation of them to Russian high culture – a creation in itself. Much as in Siberia under Soviet rule and of today, festivals and formal cultural expressions functioned and function in much the same way as Clifford Geertz’s description of Balinese state ceremonies, as

metaphysical theatre; theatre designed to express a view of the ultimate nature of reality, and at the same time to shape the existing conditions of life to be consonant with the reality; that is, theatre to present an ontology, and by presenting it, to make it happen – make it actual.^[91]

The gap between the pokazukha and the dying cultures of the Khanty, Mansi, and Iamalo-Nenets mirrors the gap between the indigenous elites and their people living in remote villages attempting to survive on a meager pension or salary, and who are concerned more with daily survival than a political voice. While the majority of those I interviewed were very supportive of indigenous representation in the parliament, and of preserving language and culture, they were more reluctant to support a journey back to their traditional way of life. The television or the snowmobile is as valuable today as sleds and reindeer were less than one hundred years ago. This assimilation into the dominant Russian society is the most formidable obstacle to cultural preservation and yet, for the majority of Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets, assimilation defines who they are as peoples because they have been so thoroughly Russified and Sovietized. The specter of oil and gas development and the attendant infrastructure exacerbates the problems facing both aboriginal elites and their people. And, like Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, the Khanty, Mansi and Iamalo-Nenets of West Siberia continue to be propelled forward and the wreckage continues to pile up.
The most formidable task facing the Native peoples of Northwest Siberia, especially the Native elites, is to define what it means to be Native in a highly industrialized environment, already suffering acute ecological damage. The indigenous peoples of Northwest Siberia now find that they must redefine what their relationship is and will be to the central government in Moscow, to the oblast’, okrug, local administration and to the industrialists so that their interests may be voiced and acknowledged within the political and economic forces surrounding the exploitation of oil and gas resources in the region. In so doing, the indigenous peoples of Northwest Siberia may ably represent themselves in the political arena at all levels of government, especially at the regional where their needs as indigenous peoples may be better considered within the context of land and resource use and rights. Only when the independent and valid concerns and needs of Khanty, Mansi, Iamalo-Nenets and other indigenous peoples are considered can there be an effective and ethical mandate formulated to bring about the co-management of resources and land use in oil and gas rich Northwest Siberia.
For the Native elites, the invention of tradition in order to hearken back to an “aboriginal essence” is key to their politicization. And they maintain that they must remember, imagine and invent their traditions in order to redefine and to renegotiate the relationship between the leader and led, the colonizer and the colonized^[92] in a post-colonial, post-Soviet Russia.