ANSIPRA BULLETIN
Arctic Network for the Support of the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Arctic 
Сеть Арктических Организаций в Поддержку Коренных Народов Российского Севера

No. 10, December 2003 - English Language Edition

ANSIPRA is a communication network linking Russian Indigenous Peoples' Organisations with international institutions and organisations alarmed about the future of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. ANSIPRA's main goal is to spread information, to mediate contacts, and to assist in project coordination.

Secretariat:	Norwegian Polar Institute, Polar Environmental Centre 
	N-9296 Tromsø, Norway
Phone: 		+47 - 77 75 05 00
Fax: 			+47 - 77 75 05 01 
E-mail: 		ANSIPRA@npolar.no
Internet: 		http://npolar.no/ansipra/

Coordinator / Editor:	Winfried K. Dallmann, Tromsø
Assistant Coordinator:	Galina Diachkova, Moscow
Assistant Editor:	Helle V. Goldman, Tromsø

ANSIPRA Bulletin is an information publication of the “Arctic Network for the Support of the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Arctic”. The Bulletin is issued twice a year. Additional issues are produced as new information warrants it. The Bulletin is edited in English and Russian. ANSIPRA Bulletin is distributed – by internet or hard copy – to all registered network participants, as well as relevant state agencies and funding institutions. Distribution is free. All written contributions are appreciated. 
ANSIPRA Bulletin is politically independent. A special part of the English language edition, however, presents translations of articles from the newsletter “Мир коренных народов” (Indigenous Peoples’ World), the official periodical of RAIPON (Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation), selected in cooperation with RAIPON. 

CONTENTS OF THIS EDITION:

Letter from the Secretariat   	3
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN OTHER COUNTRIES:
	Australia’s indigenous peoples and politics   Peter Jull	4
ENVIRONMENT:
	The oil adventure and indigenous people in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug   W. Dallmann and V. Peskov	10
		From Polar Environmental Times, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, November 2003
PROJECTS:
	UNDP in Kamchatka 	11
	MSTU and MHI: Main research directions in the “Sápmi” project   Sergey Zavalko	12
INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES:
	Renewed spirit of hope, energy, and resilience among Inuit in Chukotka	15
		Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Canada – Media Release	
	The past and the present of the indigenous peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk    	15
		L.N. Khakhovskaya, translated from “Mir korennykh narodov – zhivaya Arktika” No.8, 2001	
INDIGENOUS ORGANISATIONS:
	Rodnik Legal Centre, a regional public organisation   Yuliya Yakel	18
	Charitable public foundation Yaran’y, Chukotka   I.S. Vukvukay	19
	The community Akkani, Chukotka   G.V. Inankeuyas	20
	Association of Traditional Marine Mammal Hunters of Chukotka  Eduard Zdor	20
NOTES	21
CONFERENCES	23
CULTURE:
	International significance of the Itelmen culture of southern Kamchatka	24
		Petr Bekkerov, Vasiliy Deschenko and V.D. Shevtsov

Letter from the Secretariat

Dear readers!

What’s in the issue
The present issue continues to provide information which we have collected from our contact persons and institutions mainly in the Russian North. The written contributions describe conditions and backgrounds, problems and projects, which concern the indigenous peoples of Russia.
	In addition, we have invited Peter Jull from the University of Brisbane, Australia, originally a Canadian, to write a summary article about Australia’s indigenous peoples and politics. We realise that in remote areas of the Russian Federation, there is very little information available on the situation of indigenous peoples in other countries. We hope, therefore, the article is of interest. Our western readers and others with unlimited access to the Internet, who may drown in the amount of available detailed information, may use the present article as an overview. 
	If we get positive feedback on the article about Australia, we will try to make this a series with similar contributions by invited specialists from countries like Canada, USA, New Zealand, Greenland, and the Scandinavian countries. 
	So, please, let us know your opinion about this! 

About ANSIPRA - origin and budget
We have noticed that many people with whom we have contacts think that ANSIPRA is an NGO (non-governmental organisation). Although this does not cause much of a problem, we still want to set this right. 
	ANSIPRA is a network project, arisen from a private initiative by Winfried Dallmann in 1998 in mutual understanding with RAIPON. The project was then consolidated under the umbrella of the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) with a basic budget allocated from the Institute. NPI is a research and environmental management institution under the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment. ANSIPRA is not registered as an organisation and, consequently, is fully dependent on the Norwegian State.
	The basic budget covers salaries of the secretariat staff, office facilities, and copies as well as postage of the bulletins. For other expenses, like translations and other work which exceeds the capacity of the staff, ANSIPRA needs sponsors. 
	We have experienced difficulties in finding sponsors ready to allocate a small amount of funding on an annual basis. Although the amount needed is only in the range of US$ 2000-3000 a year, it is a hard work to raise these relatively small funds every year, again and again. We would be grateful if any of the institutions which use the information we distribute through our bulletin and website could help – or continue to help – keeping our activities alive.

Contact us

Winfried Dallmann 
network coordinator and editor
e-mail dallmann@npolar.no
phone: (+47)-77750648 / ..500 
fax: (+47)-77750501

Galina Diachkova 
assistant coordinator
e-mail galinadiatchkova@hotmail.com
phone: (+7)-095-1646939 (RAIPON)
fax: (+7)-095-9380600
(NB: E-mail address changed!)

Helle Goldman 
assistant editor
e-mail goldman@npolar.no
phone: (+47)-77750618 / ..500
fax: (+47)-7775050

Feedback from our friends and readers
There is one fundamental thing which makes us go on with ANSIPRA: the many comments and letters from our friends around the world. From these we know that there is a need for the information we gather and redistribute. 
	In remote places of the Russian North, there is a constant hunger for information from the outside world. The lack of basic infrastructure like functioning phone lines and satellite-based communication, and insufficient access to news media, restrict information mainly to the narrow scopes of the local press.
	We have learned that what we do is appreciated even outside Russia. Here are quotes from some of the letters we have received:
	Pëtr Bekkerov, chairman of the Itelmen native community of Elizovo, Kamchatka, wrote: “Let me use this opportunity to thank you and your colleagues for the bulletins with their information which is indispensable for us at the indigenous board. My fellow tribesmen and I receive regularly information about topics and questions which are of vital importance for us.”
	Kathrin Wessendorf, programme coordinator of IWGIA (International Work Group of Indigenous Affairs) wrote: “I think that ANSIPRA’s website and work in general is one of the most extensive sources concerning indigenous peoples in Russia and I very much enjoy reading your bulletin regularly!”
	Odd Rogne, Secretary of IASC (International Arctic Science Committee), wrote: “... with its close contacts with the indigenous communities in the Russian Arctic, I have learned directly from all I have met from those indigenous communities that this initiative is very useful and highly appreciated.”
	Peter Jull, professor at the School of Political Science and International Studies (Univ. of Brisbane, Australia), even sees the relevance for work with indigenous peoples in other parts of the world: “... My students and others at this University make good use of the information and insights they gain from your site and bulletins, and these also feed into the work in Australia among Aboriginal peoples and governments. The ignorance and stupidity of national institutions and commentators here make such things important in many contexts .... It is most important to have the lifeline and communication channel which you provide .... the political studies needed for addressing such ... issues do not exist except in formats like yours which can be accessed directly by indigenous peoples, governments, scholars, and development agencies ...”
Winfried Dallmann

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN OTHER COUNTRIES:

Australia’s indigenous peoples and politics

Peter Jull, Adjunct Associate Professor
School of Political Science & International Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Q. 4072, Australia.

Introduction
Indigenous experience in Australia, Russia, USA, and Canada has been similar in many important ways. The 19th century brought settlement, farming or pastoralism, and industrial expansion in an apparently unstoppable force transforming vast territories into supports for modern industrial states. Europeans pushed into the ancient homelands of indigenous peoples, pushing them out of the way with greater or lesser direct violence, as well as with disease, ethnocide, and devastating social change. National majority peoples, whether Slavic or Anglo-Celtic, have remained studiously ignorant of most of this hardship until very recent times thanks to lack of indigenous expression in forms or forums accessible to Europeans. With rising general education levels, new communications technology – especially TV and computer means of transmitting documentaries and information – and explorations in national history, plus more organised indigenous political and cultural activism, it has been harder to remain uninformed.
	Since 1945 the era of ‘welfare colonialism’, to use a term of Beckett (1987), has been in full bloom. From the 1960s we have seen a new phase emerging as the process of frontier or hinterland development has generated new questions and values. This era has recognised the limits and costs of blind industrialisation, and has recognised regional social, cultural, and political values. This trend has not replaced industrial expansion or unquestioning resource extraction, but in some places has modified old habits. Respect for environmental and ethno-cultural diversity increasingly occupy national governments and world opinion. However, until recent years hinterland peoples – and non-indigenous persons governing them – were too little aware of similarities and common patterns, or potential benefits in sharing ideas and experience to solve common problems across national borders or different continents (Jentoft et al. 2003; Jull 1999a).
	Indigenous peoples with ancient traditions and languages have been sometimes trading partners, sometimes exploited labour, and sometimes merely pushed aside or even killed while their lands or seas are taken by others. Religious and political missionaries have come among them, often with dire results, but sometimes affording some protection. More recently the peoples of these huge regions have also had ‘law and order’, or welfare colonialism, and new forms of political organisation imposed on them as governments have attempted to ‘normalise’ the last remaining hinterland territories under firm nation-state control (Stokes 2002). But this belated legal and political assimilation has not always gone according to plan, and recent indigenous-white, indigenous-government relations have become a frontier along which many indigenous achievements, including a renaissance of indigenous self-determination, have been possible (Jull 1999b; 2001a; 2001b; 2002; 2003a).
Background
In October 2003 the President of China surprised Australia’s Parliament and public by telling them that the Chinese had explored and settled the north of their country from the 1420s and established racial harmony there. Very few Australian historians would accept this view. However they recognise that from the early 1500s the ships of Portugal and Holland, and later Spain, and finally France and Britain, visited these shores, occasionally with dramatic results (e.g., the Batavia shipwreck of 1629, see WAM 2003). The usual founding date for modern Australia is 1770 when Captain Cook visited Botany Bay before sailing north along the east coast naming various places until claiming the whole continent for Britain on an uninhabited island in Torres Strait before returning to England. The written records of this voyage, especially writings by Joseph Banks on flora and fauna of the ‘new’ continent, created a sensation in Britain and Europe. Indeed, right into the present the exotic marsupials like Tasmanian devils, wombats, and kangaroos have fascinated Europeans.
	The British began to settle in 1788 when the first boatload of prisoners in chains arrived in what is now Sydney harbour from London (Atkinson 1997. Unprepared intellectually or emotionally for Aboriginal culture and the Australian environment, the British soon brought European livestock (notably sheep and cattle), grains, and other plant life. The white population, although small, spread rapidly over the continent (Day 1997; Reynolds 2001). This often brought environmental and social disasters whose impacts are only now being fully understood. Today many Australians are trying to recover the continent’s natural heritage, while the Howard government and a small band of Right-wing ideologues fight against recognition and respect for indigenous human heritage (Macintyre & Clark 2003; Markus 2001: Rundle 2001). The Right wish to see Australia as a small pure re-creation in the Southern Hemisphere of high British Empire values, culture, and triumphalism. Needless to say many contemporary Australians think that the Right vision is anachronistic and ludicrous.
	Australia today is a continent with 30 million inhabitants, most of whom live in an arc of urban settlement stretching around the south-east corner from Adelaide in the south to the Queensland coast north of Brisbane, most heavily settled in the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra triangle. Another area of close settlement is in the south-west, around Perth. The total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population was estimated to be 460,140 in 2001. Although most Aborigines now live in cities and towns, they are proportionately large elements in the population of many remote and rural areas. Traditionally indigenous Australians lived in distinct local language and culture groups closely related to the immediate environment – marine or desert, rainforest or light bush – although inter-group relations and even long range cultural ties, e.g., ‘songlines’, were well established. It is generally agreed that Australian Aboriginal cultures are among the oldest cultures on earth, for which reason museums like The Hermitage in St Petersburg pay great respect to their works.

Dispossession, ‘Blemishes’, Policy
Many of the British, but by no means all, convinced themselves that Australian Aborigines were so primitive and unorganised that they could neither be called a human society nor have any political rights (Russell 2004; Reynolds 1987). They did not appear to cultivate the earth or recognise private property, so in the tradition of the philosopher Locke they were said to have no rights. For many settlers, and some British at home, these Aboriginal lives and lands were not worth saving, while others believed the British Empire should at least bring them Christianity and ‘civilisation’, turning them into black-skinned British. The result of all this was that unlike New Zealand, USA, or Canada, Australia did not have recognised treaties or any other lasting political or policy framework for European-Aboriginal relations (Jull 1998). Nor were the land or water use or territories of Aborigines recognised or respected. Inevitably this resulted in a constantly moving frontier of greater or lesser violence as the White Man moved across the continent, followed by the collapse of previously self-reliant indigenous groups into marginalised or dependent urban people clinging to what bits of land and culture they could retain. In many cases their struggle and remarkable success have been truly heroic. Only in remote or sparsely settled areas did nations or peoples of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders retain much territory, often ‘sharing’ it with extensive cattle pastoralism (Peterson 1985; Downing 1988).
	Although recent Australian historians, most notably Henry Reynolds, have highlighted the many enlightened and liberal acts, words, and hopes of some settlers, some British governing personnel, as well as priests and community leaders, such efforts largely failed to spare or protect indigenous lives or lands (Reynolds 1987; 1995; 1998). The progressive revelation by Reynolds and other historians of the pain and violence of the frontier and of ongoing white-black relations has prompted a major political and cultural crisis in Australia today. Many of the same Australians who say Germany and Japan have not done enough to acknowledge their violent mid-20th Century histories are unable to accept the ‘blemishes’ of their own history, with denialism now a major strain of contemporary public and political discussion (Manne 2001; Rundle 2001; Macintyre & Clark 2003). Many of us would have thought this impossible in an affluent peaceful ‘first world’ country with near-universal education, literacy, radio, and TV, but the dispute unfolds daily in the major news media as well as learned and not-so-learned journals and books.
	In 1901 ten years of argument ended in the joining of the six Australian colonies into a single federation. Two levels of government, federal and state, each has its own constitutionally protected powers which the other cannot override or ignore. The courts, and especially the High Court, are the umpire between these levels of government. However, the six states in this union retained their colonial powers in respect of Aboriginal peoples, and indeed, the national Constitutional specified that the federal government must not make law or policy relating to indigenous peoples or even count them in the census. (A national referendum in 1967 removed these constitutional provisions, giving Aboriginal peoples and Islanders formal equality with whites.) A major motive for federation was fear of Aborigines and other non-white peoples of the Pacific and Asia. Immediate actions of the new Australia were the White Australia Policy whose purpose was to control or remove non-whites from the country and to bar such immigrants in future. As Reynolds has shown in a new book, North of Capricorn (2003), Aborigines and a variety of Pacific and Asian peoples had been instrumental in developing the communities and economy of Australia’s Tropics, from the Queensland Pacific coast around the top of the continent and down the Indian Ocean coast of Western Australia. But now they were systematically discriminated against, and removed. Australians are largely unaware of this whitewash and Reynolds’ book should stir new thinking, especially in the Northern Territory where an attempt is underway to devise a new political structure embracing the region’s Aboriginal and other ethno-cultural diversity (Rothwell 2003; Jull 2003b).
	After the conquest of the country, the White Man adopted a policy of generally ignoring or closely controlling Aboriginal peoples. They might live in camps in rural or remote areas, safe enough if left alone by whites and white police, or be kept in tightly supervised ‘settlements’ which more often resembled concentration camps (Kidd 1997; 2000). The latter policy in Queensland until recent times has resulted in social problems of all sorts and high levels of violence within the indigenous community. In their officially-run camps the Queensland Aborigines were segregated and regulated like children in a boarding school, while being systematically under-nourished (or almost starved in some cases) and denied basic medical and shelter needs. At the same time they were forced to work long hours for little pay, which pay, mirabile dictu, was discreetly embezzled by the state government. Now in 2003 a generally progressive Queensland state government is trying to force surviving Aborigines to accept a very minimal payment in lieu of their life’s wages!
	In much of the country Aborigines were administered by officials titled, in Orwellian style, ‘Protectors’. These persons were products of their times, some of them at least ‘well-meaning’ – never a sufficient or reliable quality in those who administer people denied real social and political equality! Today the Protection era is largely remembered for the policy of removing children, especially but not only lighter-skinned children from their mothers and moving them to state- or church-run orphanages, denied further contact with home, and trained to become menial workers in the White Man’s society. Some of the luckier ones ended up in good homes, well looked after by adoptive white parents, while many others suffered emotional and physical abuse. These so-called Stolen Generations revealed themselves at last through a Human Rights Commission public inquiry in the mid-1990s. The report, Bringing Them Home, was published in May 1997 and created an immediate furore (Wilson et al. 1997). Howard and his ministers sneered at the report’s findings, denied that many Aborigines has been affected, launched a smear campaign against the report’s principal author, a respected former judge, and even argued that the children taken from their mothers and denied family life had benefited from this. (Statistical tables in the report disproved this latter notion.) The report unwisely said that Australia had committed genocide in removing children. While technically true, as the report shows, no word in today’s world is so emotionally charged. For most people ‘genocide’ means forced rounding up and extermination of persons of an ethnic group, most notably the Holocaust in 1940s Europe, or Srebrenica and Rwanda in the 1990s. It became too easy to dismiss the whole report as extreme or hysterical. Nevertheless, many Australians took it to heart, especially the painful personal stories it told, while the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence has taken the subject to the world. In the mid-1930s, long after the policy had begun, the federal and state governments met and agreed to the nation-wide principle of continuing to remove indigenous children until the Aboriginal race were extinct through miscegenation – except for some few remaining ‘pure’ or ‘tribal’ groups who, it was reasonably expected, would soon become extinct in any case. Even today some Australians continue to believe that Aboriginal cultures have nothing to offer the modern world except some survival skills, and that Aborigines are genetically unsuited to the modern world.

Constitutional Reform
The British and Australian failure to sign national or regional treaties, and the lack of similar constitutional formulas, has been a disaster for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders (see more below). Prime Minister Howard refuses to consider treaties, and even threatened to ‘tear them up’ if signed when his political opponents were in power. Despite the fact that all other English settler countries have such treaties, he claims that the concept is impossible. (He also made a great show in the late 1990s of office in refusing to meet Aborigines alone, only meeting them in racially mixed groups. This fastidiousness does not prevent him from frequenting events at whites-only clubs and organisations, of course.) Furthermore, the power of colonial and then state governments to determine Aboriginal policy while their revenues and voters’ interests demanded land, water, and resources development and sale at the expense of the indigenous users and occupants, meant that state governments had little reason to consider Aboriginal needs.
	This combination of near invisibility in constitutional or treaty frameworks, and social attitudes towards Aboriginal ‘primitivity’, produced not only legal but moral terra nullius. Under this doctrine a country is legally and morally uninhabited if its people lack basic recognisable (i.e., to Europeans) structures of government and law. Modern Australia failed its first legal test in 1971 when a court found in Milirrpum, ‘the Gove case’, that Yolngu east of Darwin, despite the strength of traditional law in their society, had no legal rights in relation to land or resources (or land and resource exploitation by others). The International Court of Justice had dismissed the notorious notion of terra nullius in the Western Sahara case, 1975, but it survived in Australia until 1992 when in Mabo the High Court recognised that the islanders on Mer in eastern Torres Strait had their own rights and property system which continued in effect until or unless specifically overridden in law by an Australian government, or removed in fact, e.g., being built on (Sharp 1996). Later, in Wik, 1996, the High Court further found that such ‘native title’ could co-exist with property or pastoral rights on leases, a matter of importance as so much of Australia is covered by pastoral leases. That is, huge areas of land are leased to an owner or company who then graze sheep or cattle, often needing vast areas (‘larger than Belgium’ in some cases) to keep a few animals in arid or even near-desert conditions and through droughts. The tremendous swings of climate change in everyday Australia have made pastoral and cultivation activities a grim and often ruinous business. Well-organised white hysteria greeted Mabo and Wik, despite the principles involved being calmly workable in USA, Canada, and New Zealand, and tremendous campaigns to overrule the courts with new laws, scrapping the national Race Discrimination Act, and converting leases to absolute property rights for their holders. In 1993 the Keating Labor government negotiated a national Native Title Act with Aboriginal leaders which created, inter alia, the National Native Title Tribunal to help mediate and otherwise resolve land claims settlements around the country, especially in Western Australia and Queensland. (An attempt by the Hawke Labor government to enact national land rights after it came to power in 1983 had been wrecked by state Labor politicians and the mining industry, but a strong system brought in by Whitlam Labor and Fraser Coalition governments for the Northern Territory in the mid-1970s has worked well enough.)
	The Howard Coalition (i.e., Liberal and National parties) in power since 1996 took a tougher line towards native title after Wik, diluting the Keating law and keeping the country in uproar for 18 months. That is, many whites, stirred up by lying or misleading political leaders, feared that Aborigines would take over their backyards and swimming pools, or take over their land and resource businesses, or even their cities. Claims in Brisbane and other cities created much excitement, although all that may result in such cases are some Aboriginal-held bits of now-unused land and a share in management of some parks. To many Australians the 1992 recognition of indigenous rights seemed only small and belated fairness, while it generated outrage and anxiety among many others.
	The underlying issue, of course, is the place of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. Many or most of them, if they had the courage to say so out loud, would prefer to be self-governing or self-administering cultural and political communities. This is quite practical in rural and remote areas, of course. But even in cities there is no reason why the large Torres Strait Islander or Aboriginal populations in Brisbane or Cairns or Sydney should not have their schools and other public services, the more so in light of the failure of ‘mainstream’ Australian public administration to meet their needs. Howard and others regard such ideas as dangerous separatism, and have no desire to understand how such approaches work here or elsewhere. Howard and his ilk, however, talk of Aborigines as outsiders who, unlike most immigrants, have failed to ‘fit in’ and be assimilated – reason enough for a nice sensible treaty, one would think! (For Howard see, e.g., ‘PM’s reconciliation [sic] hopes’, The Australian, 6-5-2002.) Of course, it is important for political populists like Howard and Pauline Hanson to claim to be the real and defining Australians by denying the moral authority, rights, and even ethno-cultural authenticity of the real first Australians (Jull 2000).
	In June 1993 a national constitutional conference of experts and practitioners met in Canberra. A consensus emerged that indigenous peoples are distinct political communities with unique needs, and, processes should be established as soon as possible for them to work out the nature and details of their constitutional place in Australia. The February 1998 Constitutional Convention recommended several items in its final statement which presupposed a similar process. The Federalism Forum, October 2000, called for
wide-ranging national debate within the framework of the reconciliation process about the representation of Australia’s indigenous population. In this context, Australia should consider as one option the recognition within the structure of the Australian federation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations.
Aboriginal leaders are generally agreed on such needs, and have a reasonable and moderate approach which would not frighten intelligent white leaders. However, the governing élite in Australia today neither hear nor listen.

Northern Territories: Torres Strait & N.T.
The Torres Strait Islands lie between the north-eastern tip of Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), created when rising seas covered a large Ice Age land-bridge between Australia and PNG (Lui 1994; Mulrennan & Hanssen 1994; Shnukal 2001; Beckett 1987; Jull 1997; Singe 1989). These small islands and reefs are home to Torres Strait Islanders, a Melanesian people living in some 19 communities. Torres Strait has c. 8000 people of whom c. 6000 identify as indigenous Islanders. Most non-indigenous people live on Thursday Island, the regional centre, itself as racially and culturally diverse with South Pacific, Asian, and European origins as any imaginable. Most of the early pacification, colonisation, Christianisation, and British Imperial incorporation of the region was conducted by a mix of South Sea Islanders who brought Britain’s religion and Pacific shelling economy (Ganter 1994). Torres Strait Islanders were ferocious head-hunters who slaughtered whole shiploads of Europeans unlucky enough to wreck on the reefs in the 18th and 19th centuries, so British and Queensland governance was an early priority. Recently the islands had all but slipped away into a South Seas dream of long hot days and a bit of subsistence fishing until fear of Asian diseases and insects, drug-running, illegal immigration, and unrest on the Strait’s north shores in Indonesia and PNG steadied Australian attention. Since the late 1980s the Islander leaders have talked about creating regional self-government to better manage public services, job creation, environment protection, and the passionately felt Islander commitment to their traditional sea rights (TSRA 2001). The lack of a clear plan or persistent advocacy by Islanders has delayed progress, while federal and state governments blow hot and cold on the project (Groves 2001; Jull 1997). In 2003, however, a series of local Torres News essays on self-determination or autonomy, and ‘decolonisation’ as the United Nations uses the term, are providing a valuable focus for action. Australia is a country which badly needs an indigenous success story to show a sceptical world who know only two things about the country – the existence of kangaroos and racism – so it is surprising that governments have not already made make Torres Strait and its amiable people a showcase of well-being and self-governance.
	The Northern Territory, or NT, is a self-governing region with powers like those of Australian states in most respects. In this central slice of the continent, there were c. 200,000 inhabitants in 2001, of whom some 25% were indigenous. The White Man’s NT seems to consist of a red line on the map, the Stuart Highway, running approximately along the line of the telegraph line which in the 19th century linked Australia to London, with the four predominantly white towns of Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine, and Darwin along its route from south to north. Today the NT is a patchwork of Aboriginal lands (about 50% of the total) won under 1976 land rights legislation, these mostly former Aboriginal reserves and large swaths of arid land unwanted by the White Man, the rest being mostly large cattle stations of very mixed productivity (Downing 1988). The populist Right government in power in the NT from the beginning of self-rule until 2001 believed that if only it could gain control of the Aboriginal lands from the national government and from the Aboriginal land councils it would suddenly produce wealth as if by magic. As usual in such regions, vehement populist free-enterprise rhetoric among settlers is in inverse proportion to the dominance of government spending in the economy (Crough 1993). There has even been a frank belief that indigenous languages can be simply forgotten and English installed as a cure-all in the NT by government for Aborigines (Nicholls 2001).
	NT constitutional change or graduation to statehood is a power of the federal Parliament, requiring approval of both the elected House and Senate. In other words, it will be an important test of Australia’s democracy and maturity, and of learning from the experience of more than a century of bad national policy, to renew or re-create an NT which is suited to all its people (Jull 2003a; 2003b). That is, the NT is primarily a region of large Aboriginal territories with a few predominantly white towns whose population enter and leave the NT so quickly that the 5-yearly census barely begins to count them. Should the permanent Aborigines not design the government under which they must live as much as highly transient tourists and short-term workers visiting for quick money or exotic experience? The new Labor government under Ms Clare Martin sees the opportunity and the difficulties clearly (Jull 2003). For the moment both whites and blacks are dissatisfied with the political system, so that may provide a basis for agreement on a new approach (Pritchard 1998). The experience of indigenous governments in Alaska, the rest of USA, Canada, and Greenland provides good precedents (Nettheim et al. 2002; Jull 1998; 199b; 2001a; 2001b; 2002; 2003a).

Prospects and Possibilities
Despite a flurry of activity abroad by Australian Aboriginal notables in the 1970s, part of the first wave of indigenous internationalism, in more recent times there has been too little such activity (Jull 1999a). Like most other Australians, indigenous people have been insular and sceptical about the value of overseas contact, activity, and travel. This is unfortunate because the practices of various other countries, and the developing standards of international bodies like the UN provide much inspiration and example. Not only has the Howard government treated international human rights standards with disdain but has publicly bullied UN leaders like Kofi Annan and told them not to discuss such matters. In 2003 the Australian government put in an unhelpful paper to the new UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and then tried to prevent national indigenous ATSIC leaders from attending its meetings. At the same time the government stripped ATSIC, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the national indigenous administrative body, of its powers, most of its budget, and remaining credibility. Since coming to power in 1996 Prime Minister Howard has made attacks on indigenous leaders an important part of his political program, a rhetoric and program designed to humiliate those peoples and direct public anger and worry about the effects of economic globalisation at Aborigines, refugees, Asians, Muslims, et al. (Rundle 2001; Markus 2001) The world caught a glimpse of this in 2001 when Howard used the navy to brutalise and risk drowning desperate refugees trying to reach the north Australian coasts in small fishing boats, then and now violating international law and practice in such matters (Marr & Wilkinson 2003). Throughout his political career Howard has opposed ethno-cultural diversity and tolerance, even while endlessly claiming that Australia is ‘tolerant’ and ‘compassionate’, words he invariably uses when announcing some new measure which is in-tolerant and un-compassionate.
	However, Australian scholars and research institutions, notably the universities and scientific bodies, as well as many artists and writers and other intellectual workers, and the interested public, have a record of interest in and commitment to indigenous culture and rights perhaps unequalled by any other country. Every bookshop has excellent specialist and popular works on indigenous topics. Yes, there is a loud body of racist rant and Euro-centric foolishness unknown in other ‘first world’ countries, but No, that is not the whole story. Foreign visitors and tourists are amazed to see elderly Australians driving thousands of kilometres through deserts and 40°C temperatures to visit Aboriginal ‘sacred sites’ and to hear Aboriginal guides explain rock paintings, traditional environmental knowledge, and unique cultures, ceremonies, and traditions. In spite of Howard the public and public bodies are becoming more receptive to Aboriginal and Islander culture and social prerogatives. The stage is set for major debates and discussions for reform across party lines when the present far Right Howard government goes into oblivion.
	Meanwhile Australia has achieved an ‘ideal’ White Man’s policy. The government plays up the worst indigenous violence and poverty as a living lesson for the Howard government’s moralising smugness about self-improvement. That is, material improvement, because Howard and Co. seem uninterested in mind or spirit. With help from a cabal of Right commentators in the media, the official view is that these awful black people deserve their own misfortune, that we would be quite wrong to feel badly for them or to provide them with more financial resources to help, and the best we can do is to remind them of their own fecklessness and scold them for having deceived us over past decades into pretending to deserve our tax dollars. In short, having crushed the life out of Aboriginal Australia for over 200 years, we whites are now blaming the victims for their own problems. Howard talks of ‘practical reconciliation’ by which he tries to take credit for those government programs like schools and hospitals which are merely universal features of modern ‘first world’ nation-state administration (except in USA).
	Unlike experience since 1945 in USA, Canada, and New Zealand where Aboriginal socio-economic conditions have been much improved, Australia remains mired in very poor statistics. Of course there is nothing like North Norway which leads the world. The shared experience of disadvantage and discrimination, together with learning how to use the White Man’s law, technology, languages, and politics to good effect, has meant that indigenous peoples have become a significant cultural and political force in many countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and USA. (For Canada’s experience parallel to Australia’s in this paper see, Jull 200-.) In hinterlands, Outback, or ‘northern territories’, indeed, the very determination of powerful nation-states to assimilate indigenous peoples and ‘unify’ – really to make uniform rather than unify! – their national political structures has produced the precise political force to prevent it – the ethno-cultural consciousness and political mobilisation of the local peoples. This is true of Nenets, Sami, and Inuit no less than of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. State governments, such as Queensland with Aboriginal communities on the great Cape York Peninsula, Australia’s north-east point, are devising pragmatic service delivery improvements an forms of local government. So far governments in Australia have not been very bold – not like proposals in Russia or Canada – thanks to the Australian penchant for keeping tight control which is so at odds with the need for indigenous liberation. As Peter Russell has noted, the struggle to come to terms with Aboriginal and Torres Strait history and peoples is the defining political and constitutional challenge of Australia and will determine much else (Russell 2003; 2004).
	There is indeed a social crisis in Black Australia. The level of violence within that community is tremendous. Unless problems are solved that violence will be turned outwards against whites. It cannot be solved only by more expensive social programs, or only by constitutional and political reforms, but any solution must include both of those elements. If Howard and the Right want indigenous people to find solutions of their own, unaided, he should not be surprised when those solutions which bubble up are so hostile, as they surely will be, to 1940s fantasies of white hegemony and social peace. Reconciliation, the term used in Australia for the goal and various projects to achieve social and political equality, as a form of cultural respect, social equality, and political partnership had been the approach of national government and élites before Howard, and it is the only workable way after him (Jull 1998; 2003a). That will necessarily involve local and regional self-government by indigenous peoples in the north, west, and centre of Australia, and encouragement, including financial and legal empowerment, of the many indigenous community and functional bodies elsewhere. The only alternative – the Howard style of smalltime Anglo cultural isolation – would leave Australia an oversized touristic curiosity in the Southern Hemisphere like the Falklands, or Easter Island, or parts of the Hebrides in the North Atlantic.

***

References and Suggested Reading

Annual reports on Australia are found in The Indigenous World, published by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen.

Atkinson A, 1997: The Europeans in Australia: a history, Vol. 1, The Beginning, Oxford University Press.
Beckett J, 1987. Torres Strait Islanders: custom and colonialism, Cambridge University Press.
Crough G, 1993. Visible and Invisible: Aboriginal people in the economy of Northern Australia, Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, Darwin.
Day D, 1997: Claiming a Continent: a new history of Australia, Angus & Robertson (HarperCollins), Sydney.
Downing J, 1988. Ngurra Walytia: Country of My Spirit, Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, Darwin.
Ganter R, 1994. The Pearl-Shellers of Torres Strait: Resource Use, Development and Decline, 1860s-1960s, Melbourne University Press.
Groves, Christie. 2001. Indigenous Self-Determination in the Torres Strait, Honours Thesis, Department of Government, University of Queensland, Brisbane. Online: 
http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00000508/
Jentoft, Svein, and Henry Minde, Ragnar Nilsen (eds). 2003. Indigenous Peoples: Resource Management and Global Rights, Eburon, Delft (and Centre for Sami Studies, University of Tromø).
Jull P, 1997. 'The political future of Torres Strait', Indigenous Law Bulletin, Vol 4, No 7 (November 1997), 4-9. Online: 
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/1997/39.html
Jull P, 1998. Constitutional Work in Progress: Reconciliation & Renewal in Indigenous Australia and the World (A background paper for Indigenous Law Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney), University of Queensland, Brisbane, August 11, 1998, 62 pp incl. ‘exec. summary’. Repaginated version online:
http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00000108/
Jull P, 1999a. ‘Indigenous Internationalism: What should we do next?’, Indigenous Affairs, 1/1999 (January-March), International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, 12-17. Online:
http://www.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham/nost202/jullart1.htm
Jull P, 1999b. ‘New Deal for Canada’s North’, North, 1/1999, Vol. 10, published by Nordregio, Stockholm, 5-10. Full draft online at: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00000238/
Jull P, 2000. ‘Hansonism and Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders’, The Rise and Fall of One Nation, ed. M Leach, G Stokes & I Ward, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 206-219.
Jull P, 2001a. ‘”Nations with whom We are connected”: Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s Political System’, 3rd ed., Discussion Paper, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Sept. 15, 2001, 55 pages. Online:
http://eprint.library.uq.edu.au/archive/00000099/
Also, abridged in Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 6(2) & 6(3), 2001.
Jull P, 2001b. ‘Negotiating Nationhood, Renegotiating Nationhood: Canada’s Nunavut and Nunavut’s Canada’, Balayi: Culture, Law and Colonialism, Vol. 3, 2001, 67-86. Full draft online at: 
http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00000098/
Jull P, 2002. ‘The Politics of Sustainable Development: Reconciliation in Indigenous Hinterlands’, Paper for international research project, Indigenous Peoples, Power and Sustainable Development in the Global World, University of Tromsø, Norway, 11 October 2002, 29 pp. Online: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00000097/
Jull P, 2003a. ‘Reconciliation Constitutions: Canadian & Australian Northern Territories’, Indigenous Issues and the Nation, being Australian Canadian Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, 37-73. Online: 
http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00000322/
Jull P, 2003b. ‘Why the Northern Territory matters’, Arena Magazine No. 66, August-September 2003, 24. Full draft: 
http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00000649/
Kidd R, 1997. The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs – the untold story, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane.
Kidd R, 2000. Black Lives, Government Lies, Frontlines series, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 65 pp.
Lui G, 1994. ‘A Torres Strait perspective’, Voices from the Land: 1993 Boyer Lectures, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney, 62-75.
Macintyre, Stuart, and Anna Clark. 2003. The History Wars, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Manne R, 2001. In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right, The Australian Quarterly Essay, Issue No. 1, Black Inc/Schwartz, Melbourne. 
Markus A, 2001. Race: John Howard and the remaking of Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Marr D & M Wilkinson, 2003. Dark victory: the military campaign to re-elect the Prime Minister, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Mulrennan M & Hanssen N (eds), 1994. Marine Strategy for Torres Strait: Policy Directions, Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, Darwin, and Island Coordinating Council, Torres Strait.
Nettheim G, Meyers G, & D Craig, 2002. Indigenous Peoples and Governance Structures: A Comparative Analysis of Land and Resource Management Rights, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2002.
Peterson N, 1985. "Capitalism, culture and land rights", Social Analysis, 18, December, 85-101.
Pritchard S, 1998. ‘Constitutional Developments in the Northern Territory: The Kalkaringi Convention’, Indigenous Law Bulletin, Vol. 4, No. 15 (October 1998), 12-13 (plus document resulting, pp 14-16).
Reynolds H, 1987. The Law of the Land, Penguin, Melbourne.
Reynolds H, 1995. Fate of a Free People, Penguin, Melbourne.
Reynolds H, 1998. This Whispering in Our Hearts, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Reynolds H, 2001. An Indelible Stain? The question of genocide in Australia’s history, Viking Penguin, Melbourne.
Reynolds H, 2003. North of Capricorn: the untold story of Australia’s North, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Rothwell N, 2003. ‘We of the Never-Never’, The Weekend Australian, June 28, 2003.
Rundle, Guy. 2001. The Opportunist: John Howard and the Triumph of Reaction, being Quarterly Essay 3/2001, Black Inc, Melbourne.
Russell PH, 2003. 'Colonization of Indigenous Peoples: The Movement toward New Relationships', Parties Long Estranged: Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century, ed. Margaret MacMillan and Francine McKenzie, UBC Press, Vancouver, 62-95.
Russell PH, 2004 forthcoming. Recovering Terra Nullius, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Sharp N, 1996. No Ordinary Judgment: Mabo, The Murray Islanders' Land Case, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.
Shnukal A, 2001. ‘Torres Strait Islanders’, Multicultural Queensland 2001: 100 years, 100 communities, a century of contributions, ed. Maximilian Brändle, Multicultural Affairs Queensland, Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Brisbane.
Singe J, 1989. The Torres Strait: People and History, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia.
Stokes G, 2002. Australian Democracy and Indigenous Self-determination 1901-2001. In G. Brennan and F. Castles eds. Australia Reshaped: Essays on Two Hundred Years of Institutional Transformation. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, pp. 181-219.
TSRA, 2001. A Torres Strait Territory Government, Statement from Bamaga Meetings, being TSRA News No. 40 (October 2001), Torres Strait Regional Authority, Thursday Island, Qld. Online:
http://www.tsra.gov.au/4001.pdf
WAM, 2003. Batavia 1629: A seventeenth century shipwreck, Online exhibition, Western Australian Museum, Perth,
http://www.mm.wa.gov.au/Museum/march/department/batavia.html
Wilson R et al., 1997. Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Commonwealth of Australia, Sydney.

Web addresses

European Network for Indigneous Australian Rights	http://www.eniar.org/
Reconciliation Australia	http://www.reconciliationaustralia.org/
Torres Strait Regional Authority	http://www.tsra.gov.au/www/index.cfm
Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation	http://www.antar.org.au/
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissio	http://www.atsic.gov.au/

ENVIRONMENT:

The oil adventure and indigenous people in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug
(Northwestern Russia) 

W. Dallmann, Norwegian Polar Institute, http://www.npolar.no/ansipra/
V. Peskov, President of “Yasavey”, http://www.raipon.net/yasavey
Earlier published in Polar Environmental Times, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, November 2003

Approximately 6500 Nenets and 5000 Komi indigenous people, most of them somehow related to reindeer husbandry, live in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO). Large portions of Nenets reindeer pastures, especially in the neighbouring Yamal area, were devastated by reckless oil prospecting in the 1960s to 1980s. 
	Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in the hydrocarbon occurrences in the NAO. Naturally, people are worried about their future. How have conditions, policies and attitudes changed in modern Russia?

Bad preconditions
In addition to the high unemployment among indigenous peoples, the situation in the reindeer husbandry sector is deteriorating: decreasing numbers of reindeer, misappropriation, absence of appropriate marketing schemes for products. These and other factors provoke a general degradation of indigenous society.
	A Federal law on land use rights for indigenous communities has been in force since 2000, but new political policies are developing, which try to remove certain rights from the law. Legal norms for implementation are still absent, and a regional legislation on this issue does almost not exist in the NAO. In 2002, the okrug administration developed regional regulations for the establishemnt of so-called Territories of Traditional Nature Use, and a few of such territories for reindeer farms were created. But this was mainly done on paper, and the regulations are not applied in reality. Land can be allotted for industrial and resource-extractional purposes, while users receive miserly financial compensations. 
	Until recent years, the NAO Administration was in charge of representing the interests of the indigenous peoples in these allotment processes. Participation of the indigenous peoples’ organisations and representatives of the concerned communities and farms is a fairly new achievement. Processes result in agreements, where the amount of financial compensation is regulated.

Continuous violations
In an open letter of October 2002 to President Putin, the Association of Nenets People “Yasavey” complained about an uncontrolled situation, which has developed around the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the NAO, accusing oil companies for grave violations of ecological standards and Russian legislation. The letter expresses the impression that many companies, in particular Russian ones, have not changed their attitudes since the 1970s. Especially in the southeastern part of the NAO, there seems to be no control whatsoever. Numerous oil spillages and other degradations of the upper soil layers occur periodically in the tundra during the summer season, inflicting irreparable damage to the Arctic natural environment. 
	Not only the oil companies are to be blamed for this situation, but also the Okrug Administration, which does not fulfill their functions when it comes to surveying and monitoring.
	Nenets and Komi in this region have for many centuries maintained a traditional way of life rooted firmly in reindeer husbandry in the area. These are the people who mainly suffer as a result of the attitudes of newcomers to the Arctic natural environment, in spite of all legal guarantees. 

Transparent relations
The most effective means to achieve positive interactions between indigenous peoples, government and companies is the establishment of transparent contractual relations. Roundtable fora were held. Several oil companies participated in a constructive dialog, while others – including foreign ones – refused to attend. 
	The Yasavey Association and the “Union of Geologists and Oil Workers of the North” have established a work group to assess the overall problems of the NAO concerned with hydrocarbon exploitation. Oil companies are financing this group, but do not sufficiently participate in problem solving.

The choice is there
Up-to-date technology with clean production, however, is largely being employed by other companies such as Polyarnoe Siyanie (Russian-American) at Ardalinskoye, TotalFinaElf (French-Belgian) at Haryaginskoe, etc. 
	So, the choice is there. But time is short, and appropriate attitudes towards environmental problems have still to be developed, both in the companies and throughout the authorities in post-Soviet Russia.

PROJECTS:

UNDP in Kamchatka

This autumn it became publicly known that important UN-supported development projects in Kamchatka were organised without the participation or representation of the concerned indigenous communities. We have selected a few documents from the subsequent debate to show how the matter was handled and to indicate the preliminary outcome. –The Editor

Open letter by Oleg Zaporotskiy
President of "Tkhsanom", the Council of the Itelmens of Kamchatka (NGO)
September 2004

On 26 August 2003 the first meeting of the Coordinating Committee of the new project "Preservation of Salmon Biodiversity and Sustainable Development in Kamchatka" – a joint project of the UNDP/GEF and the Russian government – took place in the Fish Agency Building in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.
	The project without question is of great interest to all inhabitants of the Kamchatkan Peninsula. But I am particularly interested in the participation of indigenous minority peoples of the North in the project. Unfortunately, the first meeting of the Coordinating Committee confirmed my fear that this UNDP project has not made provisions for the participation of indigenous peoples. I found out about the meeting of the Coordinating Committee by chance. It is not clear who represented the interests of the indigenous peoples of Kamchatka in the Coordinating Committee meeting; there were no representatives of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, nor from indigenous communities. Maybe somehow this time they forgot to invite the natives?
	In the application process for employment in the project, the positions were won by employees of the Northeast Fish Agency (Sevostrybvod) and KamchatNIRO. One gets the impression that it was all decided in advance. Then why did UNDP announce an application process for the vacant positions? We do not even know how many applicants there were for any of the positions or by what criteria the successful applicants were chosen. 
	The one thing at which we succeeded was in extending the selection time for the community participation coordinator, who represents the point of view of the indigenous peoples of the North in UNDP’s project. In the view of the organisers of such projects, indigenous people are not suitable as managers. In this regard, it should be mentioned that there were no natives in the first UNDP project. This has been a regular pattern.
	All of my critiques and suggestions on the role of indigenous peoples or consideration of their interests were cut off by the president of the Coordinating Committee, the head of the main Fish Agency, Grigory Kovalev, supported by the head of the Ichthyology Department at the Moscow State University, Dmitri Pavlov. At the same time, all the other members of the committee were silent; they went along with it. I looked at the members of the Coordinating Committee, who would have an interest in the future results of the project, and asked myself the question: why preserve salmon in our region? For the world society, for Moscow, for Petropavlovsk? Or for us, Itelmens who participate in necessary poaching, simply because we have nothing?
	My suggestion – to make the main emphasis of the project be alternative sources of subsistence for the local population – was rejected. Again there will be many seminars, training sessions and conferences. And there won’t be any real help to people who fish for salmon in order to live. There are some indigenous people in the project, but they are counted only on paper for the purposes of presentation. 
	Respected friends, if you are in agreement with my thoughts, I ask that you voice your comment on this matter. If we don’t help one another in difficult situations, then our point of view will NEVER be counted in the organisation of various projects and programs.

Note from the Ethno-Ecological Information Centre “Lach”, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy
5 October 2003

During the public conference “Kamchatkan nature and society: ways of evironmental problems solution”, the 1st vice-president of RAIPON, Pavel Sulyandziga held a members’ meeting of the Network of Indigenous Peoples’ Public Organisations for Solving Environmental Problems with the director of the Environmental Unit of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Russia, Elena Armand. At the meeting a Memorandum of Understanding between RAIPON and UNDP concerning the projects “Demonstrating Sustainable Conservation of Biological Diversity in Four Protected Areas in Russia’s Kamchatka Oblast” and “Preservation of Salmon Biodiversity and Sustainable Development in Kamchatka” was signed. The Memorandum shows the intention of UNDP and RAIPON to cooperate in realising these UNDP/GEF projects in Kamchatka.
	They also agreed to establish a working group to include representatives of state authorities of the Kamchatkan Oblast and the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, as well as indigenous peoples’ organisations of Kamchatka. The working groups will regularly hold consultations, prepare, develop and implement programme measures which are relevant to indigenous peoples.

Memorandum of Understanding

between Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) concerning the projects “Demonstrating Sustainable Conservation of Biological Diversity in Four Protected Areas in Russia’s Kamchatka Oblast” and “Preservation of Salmon Biodiversity and Sustainable Development in Kamchatka”

Based on the decision of the 72th General Assembly of the UN on developing partner relationships with indigenous peoples,
Taking into consideration the “Agenda-21” adopted in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, in which Paragraph 26 is wholly devoted to the strengthening of the role of indigenous peoples in environmental problem solving,
Marking that the Convention on Biological Diversity considers it necessary to preserve and use indigenous peoples’ traditional experience and knowledge,
Taking into consideration the intention of UNDP and RAIPON to cooperate in realising the projects “Demonstrating Sustainable Conservation of Biological Diversity in Four Protected Areas in Russia’s Kamchatka Oblast” and “Preservation of Salmon Biodiversity and Sustainable Development in Kamchatka” (hereafter called the Projects),

the present Memorandum of Understanding was signed, and in this connection:

1.	 UNDP singles out from the Projects programmes related to the indigenous peoples, which will form a separate category, and elaborates programme measures concerning this population group in accordance with international and national principles and norms, with the participation of regional and ethnic divisions of RAIPON in Kamchatka.
2.	 It is agreed that new applicants will be sought for the position of the indigenous peoples programme category coordinator. The UNDP will give due consideration to RAIPON’s recommendation in this regard. The recommendation must be approved by the Kamchatka Regional Association of Public Unions of Indigenous Peoples of the North, the Union of Public Organisations of Indigenous Peoples of the North of the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, and the regional public organisation Council of Itelmens of Kamchatka “Tkhsanom”.
3.	 RAIPON and UNDP will establish a working group numbering 7 persons to include representatives of authorities of the Kamchatkan Oblast and the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, the Kamchatkan Regional Association of Public Unions of Indigenous Peoples of the North, the Union of Public Organisations of Indigenous Peoples of the North of the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, the regional public organisation Council of Itelmens of Kamchatka “Tkhsanom”, the Ethno-Ecological Information Centre “Lach”, and RAIPON. This woroking group will hold regular consultations, prepare, develop and implement programmes of the indigenous peoples’ programme category.
4.	 UNDP assists in maintaining the connection of the Projects with indigenous peoples’ organisations and in timely distribution of the information on the Projects’ activity, in particular, through the Information Centre “Lach”.
5.	 RAIPON and its regional and ethnic divisions inform UNDP on their activities on environmental protection in Kamchatka, in particular, through the Information Centre “Lach”.
6.	 UNDP develops and implements educational programmes for indigenous peoples’ representatives aimed at giving them the necessary qualifications to carry out programme measures.
7.	 RAIPON and UNDP will hold joint educational seminars for Project officials and representatives of indigenous peoples involved in the Projects’ activities to study international principles, norms and experiences in working with indigenous and local populations, and Russian legislation relevant to indigenous peoples.

Elena Armand, Head of  the Environmental Unit,  UNDP in Russia, and Pavel Sulyandziga, 1st Vice President of RAIPON

MSTU International Environmental Center and MHI Environmental Center: Main directions of research and practical activity in the “Sápmi” project 
(for the period 2003 – 2006)

Sergey Zavalko

MSTU: Murmansk State Technical University
MHI: Murmansk Humanitarian Institute
The activities of the Environmental Centre of the Murmansk Humanitarian Institute started up quite recently, in September 2002. It is mainly run by students specialised in humanities – law, economy, linguistics, and journalism. 
	The first step to be taken was the participation in the international project “Northern Environmental Student Forum” (NESF), in which students of the Murmansk State Technical University, the Tampere Polytechnic (Finland) and the Fraser Valley College (Canada) also participated. Students studied environmental conditions at major enterprises and aquatic ecosystems, and then posted their results on the Internet. 
	The group further dealt with studies on the influence of global climate change on the situation of the indigenous peoples of the Kola Peninsula, the Saami. At first this was a collection and organisation of observations of reindeer herders and hunters, and of Saami experiences of the changes in the tundra. The first summary and analysis of the collected data showed that the situation is significantly more complex and the problems of survival of the indigenous people by far exceed the range of simple climatic influence. 
	It became clear that it was necessary to also take into account aspects like legal regulations on the use of nature, influence of reindeer-breeding conditions on the preservation of Saami culture, problems of industrial influence on the tundra ecosystem and Saami life, as well as problems of education of the Saami youth. 
	For this reason, the subsequent work of the Centre on the study of the problems of indigenous people was restructured into collective groups. Each group (2-3 people) works within one definite orientation (legal, cultural, or medico-demographical). In the end, the results of each study are collected within one general scheme. In the beginning this general scheme showed only the problems of the Saami (see figure below). However, it was soon understood that solving the problems of the indigenous people simply was not possible without the consideration of the entire population (indigenous and non-indigenous) living in the respective regions. Therefore, our final study programme was extended to also consider the non-indigenous part of the population. 
	But, extending the project also meant extending the study groups. At present, studies are conducted within the frame of activities of the Environmental Centre of the MHI and the International Environmental Centre of the MSTU. We are striving to realise the results of the studies in practice. From February to November 2003 a series of informational seminars were held in Murmansk and the Saami village of Lovozero for the representatives of the Saami people, organised within the frame of a Danish-Russian project. The aim of the seminars was to assist the Saami in the organisation of traditional occupations and activities in organisational forms like clan communities. Those participants of our Centre who are concerned with legal problems took part in a juridical-consultative seminar, in which they dealt with questions of legal procedures concerning the registration of clan communities and the organisation of various traditional ways of nature use. This was our first attempt to apply our studies in practice, which hopefully will be continued. 

Project description
Aim:
A. Assessing sustainable development potential for the Murmansk region based on:
•	use of renewable resources;
•	natural resource management;
•	principles of harmonious human existence in nature, as practiced by indigenous people;
•	determination of common interests of the indigenous and non-indigenous population of the Kola Peninsula.
B. Actions which will assist in realising the sustainable development model.

Main orientation:
One land – common interests of all people that live on it.

Main objectives and tasks: 
I. Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), the most important component of the official ecological monitoring
1. Using interviews and mapping to collect, systematise, and analyse indigenous people’s observations of changes in the tundra under the influence of global climate changes and industrial damage.
2. Collection of general scientific, hydrometeorological and ecological information concerning climate conditions in natural tundra ecosystems, surface water bodies and the coastal zone under conditions of global climate changes and local industrial influence. Methods: survey of archives and libraries, use of official hydrometeorological data, own measurements of soil, water, biomass’ chemical composition in tundra ecosystems with the MSTU Environmental Laboratory.
3. Systematisation of TEK information received by other researchers (from Canada, Scandinavia, Alaska). 
4. Analytical comparison of official environmental and hydrometeorological data and TEK. Establishment of a unified scheme to monitor and generalise TEK for its use in the official environmental monitoring system. 
II. TEK and traditional use of natural resources, based on culture and perspectives of indigenous people, under conditions of global climate change, as well as local industrial, socio-political and economic influence
1. Collection of information on TEK, traditional nature use lands, indigenous people’s tribal lands in the past and present. Method: interviews, mapping and survey of archives.
2. Research on the influence of climate, environmental and socio-economic factors on reindeer breeding and other types of traditional natural resources use. Method: interviews, mapping, archives and literature survey.
3. Saami culture under conditions of global climate change and local industrial and socio-political influence: language, reindeer breeding practices, attitude towards nature, succession of generations. Past, present and future perspectives. Method: interviews, mapping, archives and literature survey.
4. Research on various forms of influence through upbringing and education (state–centralised and traditional–family) on the TEK succession through the generations of indigenous peoples.
5. Demographic and medico-social research on the state of indigenous people living on the Kola Peninsula in the past and present, and their environmental and socio-political influence. Observed parameters: morbidity rate, birth rate, death rate, life span, population growth rate, typical migrations of populations, youth vocational guidance, employment perspectives. Method: interviews, mapping, archives and literature survey.
6. Investigation of the legal base in spheres as:
•	natural resource use in the Russian Federation;
•	rights of minor indigenous peoples to traditional ways of natural resource use;
•	organisation of territories of traditional nature use and tribal communities;
•	organisation of activity based on the use of  renewable resources (reindeer breeding, offshore fishery, tourism).
7. Development of legal mechanisms to defend indigenous peoples’ rights to land and traditional ways of natural resource use, as necessary conditions to protect their culture.
8. Formulation of an economic assessment system for the protection of the Saami people, based on reindeer breeding, traditional trades and tourism.
III. Tribal community as a socio-economic model to protect indigenous peoples’ TEK and culture
1. Qualitative and quantitative development of a flow chart.
2. Legal and economic assessment of ways to protect indigenous people’s traditional ways of natural resource use and trades development.
IV. TEK and traditional ways of natural resource use as an ideological and economic basis of Kola indigenous and non-indigenous peoples’ common interests
1. Formulation of general principles and norms of human behaviour in the natural environment based on indigenous peoples’ TEK.
2. General economic and juridical assessment of sustainable (non-industrial) development potential on the Kola Peninsula with major development of tourism and sustainable natural resource exploitation based on traditional subsistence practices: reindeer breeding, hunting, sports fishing, sea fishery.
3. To investigate the interests of non-indigenous inhabitants of the Kola Peninsula in the sphere of alternative development perspectives:
•	industrial expansion based on further non-renewable resource extraction (including mineral deposits, hydrocarbons on the continental shelf, hydrocarbon transport on the Kola Peninsula);
•	realisation of a sustainable development model based on renewable resource use and traditional ways of natural resource use according to principles of TEK. Method: survey of public opinion, interviews with representatives of various sectors.
4. Publication of results in mass media.
V. Informational and consultative support for organising indigenous communities (legal information, fund-raising)
1. Collection and systematisation of normative–legal and economic information needed to prepare documents for the creation of territories of traditional nature use. 
2. Creation of a normative–legal base in the sphere of natural resource use and associated indigenous peoples’ rights.
3. Free oral juridical consultations for indigenous representatives on rights to traditional natural resource use.
4. Arrangement of thematic seminars on the following questions:
•	natural resource users’ rights and duties;
•	indigenous people’s rights;
•	methods of prevention and legal settlement of environmental conflicts.
5. Juridical assistance for communities in preparing documents for the registration of territories of traditional nature use.
6. Consultations on criminal cases connected with problems of traditional natural resource use.
7. Representation in court and other instances.
8. Legal consultative assistance with regard to organising eco- and ethno-tourism.
9. Informational guarantees for the introduction of a small grant programme on the protection of TEK and traditional natural resource use. 

INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES:

Renewed spirit of hope, energy, and resilience among Inuit in Chukotka
Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Canada – Media release
Ottawa, 3 July 2003

Returning on June 24, 2003 from Provideniya and New Chaplino in Chukotka in the Russian Far East, Ms. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the Iqaluit-based Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, reported a renewed sense of hope and optimism among the region's 1,500 Inuit, and an eagerness to work closely with Inuit organisations in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland to promote sustainability and protect and celebrate Inuit culture.
	"Four years ago ICC delivered humanitarian aid—boxes of food andmedicines—to Inuit in Chukotka. Times are changing. With the welcome assistance of Mr. Roman Abramovich, Governor of Chukotka and his administration, the situation of Inuit in Chukotka is visibly improving. People have a renewed sense of hope, purpose and direction, and are committed to standing on their own two feet," said Ms. Watt-Cloutier.
	Social problems remain and the standard of living remains well below that in Arctic North America. Nevertheless, Ms. Watt-Cloutier applauded new investment in the region including construction by Ferguson, Simekand Clark (FSC), a Canadian company operating out of Yellowknife, of houses in New Chaplino, an Inuit community on the Bering Sea opposite western Alaska. She was told how impressed local people are with the after sales service provided by FSC.
	Ms. Ludmilla Ainana, Chair of the Yupik Society of Chukotka, and Ms. Nataliya Rodionova, President of ICC Chukotka confirmed the ongoing economic recovery of the region following the collapse of the rouble in the Summer of 1998, and renewed investment in local infrastructure and housing. Ms. Ainana said "Inuit in Chukotka are no longer isolated and alone. We work with our friends in Canada, Alaska and Greenland. We are learning from them about self-government in Nunavut, Nunavik andGreenland."
	Ms. Irina Appa, an Inuk from Provideniya, currently employed in the ICC office in Ottawa, accompanied Ms. Watt-Cloutier. Meeting her family for the first time in eight years, she helped Ms. Watt-Cloutier launch a Canadian sponsored community economic development pilot project to promote the marketing of aboriginal arts and crafts.
	This pilot project was developed under ICC Canada's ongoing Institution Building for Northern Russia Indigenous Peoples Project, with the objectives of establishing a network of aboriginal arts and crafts suppliers in Chukotka, a centralised marketing centre, and a quality control system including product labeling. Co-funded by ICC Canada, ICC Chukotka, the Government of Chukotka and Cherny International Inc., a Swiss-based art dealer specialising in Inuit art, this pilot project shows the value of international partnerships in promoting economic development in the Russian Far East.
	Ms. Watt-Cloutier praised the efforts of Governor Abramovich, supported by Irina Degtyar, and senior officials of the Chukotka administration in Moscow to work with Inuit organisations in Chukotka. She vowed to return.

For additional information contact:
Ms. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, phone (+1) 867-979-4661
Mr. Oleg Shakov, phone (+1) 613-831-0979, or
Ms. Corinne Gray, phone (+1) 613-563-2642

The article below is translated from “Mir korennykh narodov – zhivaya Arktika” No.8, 2001. We are in touch with representatives of the people referred to in the text about presenting information on the present socio-economic situation in their villages. These materials are not summarised yet, but will hopefully be included in the next issue of our Bulletin. We are presenting the background information here.
 --The Editor

The past and the present of the indigenous peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk 
(Evens and Kamchadals)
	
L.N. Khakhovskaya, Lab. of History and Archaeology, SVK Scientific Research Inst., Far Eastern Div. of Rus. Acad. of Sci.

Recently true enthusiasts of national revival have appeared among the indigenous peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk. One of them is Mikhail T. Yaschenko, a descendant of the well-known Khabarov clan. He and his associates try to recreate traditional economy on the native lands of their clan drawing on the inexhaustible experience of their ancestors. Therefore they are interested both in the past and in the present of their peoples.
Clan membership and territory
The Evens, a distinctive north-eastern branch of the Tungus, have lived in the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk and adjacent inland regions since the 15-17th centuries. By the time of the Russians’ arrival the majority of the nomadic Evens occupied the area between the Upper Kolyma and the Sea of Okhotsk, while sedentary Evens lived on the shore between the mouths of the rivers Ulya and Tauy. From the second half of the 17th century they started migrating to the north-east, to sparsely populated areas. Settling in new places, the reindeer breeding Evens assimilated autochthonous Yukagirs, settled Koryaks, Yakuts, and Chuckchi. This mixing resulted in the formation of the Evens as an ethnic group different from the Evenks with whom they had previously formed a single ethnic group. Many Even clans and families included representatives of other ethnic groups who became their full members.
	The extension of the Evens to the north-east was accompanied by the splitting of large clans into smaller groups and patronymic families (large patriarchal families), which lived at large distances from each other. Aiming to regulate this process, local authorities organised administrative numbered clans. In the second half of the 18th century there were 30 of these clans inhabiting the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk: 14 Uyagans (9 between the rivers Okhota and Tauy, and 5 near the River Gizhiga), 5 Dolgans, 3 Godnikans, 3 Kilars, and 2 Gorbikans.
	Clan composition was never constant. Leading a nomadic life and often migrating, the Evens moved from one clan to another and lost ties of blood relationships. Therefore, before the revolution the Evens had been united into administrated clans mainly on a territorial basis rather than kinship. A clan was headed by an elder (tereste) who was appointed by the Tsarist administration, and was elected by the clansmen themselves. This position was often inherited.
	In accordance with the Even tradition of the pre-Soviet period, nomads settled as a single territorial association consisting of several local groups. Each group, in turn, was divided into nomad camps. A nomad camp included two or three families. The local groups were the main economic cells of the Evens. They represented territorial, social-economic communities. Members of the communities (local groups) were bound by collective ownership of pastures, hunting and fishing grounds. Communities could include households with small or large numbers of reindeer.
	Before the revolution, the Tauy territorial association of the Evens included three local groups, the Ola territorial association included five local groups, and Gizhiga one to six groups. Local groups were exogamous while territorial ones were endogamous, i. e. by tradition, members of different local groups belonging to the same territorial association could enter into a marriage.
	
Economy
Two subsistence patterns were typical for reindeer breeders. Some combined reindeer breeding, fishing, hunting, and gathering. Others based their livelihoods on reindeer breeding on the taiga, with other activities playing very secondary roles. On the basis of where they lived the Evens were divided into coastal inhabitants (nametkenel) and taiga ones (donretkenel). The coastal Evens migrated long distances every year: in spring from taiga to the sea coast for fishing, and back again in autumn with the winter spent tending herds and hunting.
	Quite often reindeer breeders who had lost their reindeers became settled at the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, and returned to a nomadic life when they got reindeers again.
	The coast of the Sea of Okhotsk was always an area of mixing of different ethnic groups and the formation of Métis population. In the 18th-19th centuries the sedentary population was constantly mingling with Russian elements, Yakuts, reindeer-breeding Evens, and settled Koryaks. This resulted in the formation of the Russian-speaking group of the so-called Okhotsk Kamchadals. They were not reindeer breeders and were occupied with fishing, sea mammal hunting, dog breeding, and vegetable gardening.

Ethnonyms
Names and self-designations of peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk, the Evens and people of the mixed origin are rather complicated and intricate. Documents of the 17th-18th centuries refered to Evens as “Tungus” and “Lamuts” (the Evenk word lamu means sea). The ethnonym “Lamuts” was used to indicate both reindeer-breeding peoples and sedentary ones and identified their residence area at the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk while the Evenks and the Evens as a whole were called “Tungus”.
	In the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century the name “Tungus” was still officially applied to the Evens of the Sea of Okhotsk. “Lamuts”, a semi-offical name, was usually applied to the Evens of the Lower Kolyma River and Chukotka at that time. Sometimes both names were used simultaneously. Confusion with names of the Lamuts and Tungus persisted in the north-east at the beginning of the Soviet era. Thus, a wrong notion of two Tungus peoples in the north-east appeared: the Tungus proper (Evenks) and the north-eastern Tungus (Evens).
	Studies carried out during the 1920s and ‘30s showed that north-eastern Tungus (also known as Lamuts) lived in this region. Some of the people living near Okhotsk called themselves the “Evens” (including variations like Eben, Evun, etc.). Since early studies by Soviet ethnographers were carried out in this very region the current official name of the Even peoples stems from the self-designation “Even” at the beginning of the 1930s. This ethnonym is translated in different ways: local, of this place, coming down from mountains, etc.
	The reindeer breeding Evens from the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk called themselves “Oroch”. In the 1950s and ‘60s Evens of the elder generation continued considering themselves as the “Orochi”, while middle-aged and young people accepted the official ethnic name, Evens. Russian old residents had called Evens of Olskiy and Northern Even districts the “Orochi”, but eventually everyone came to use the official name.
	Sedentary coastal inhabitants also had several ethnic names. The Evens called old residents of Yamsk, Gizhiga, and Nayahan “Kheekael” (Koryaks), while those of Tauy were known as “Nyoka” (Yakuts). These names are deeply rooted in history as the inhabitants of these settlements are, in fact, the descendants of mixed marriages between alien people and Koryaks or Yakuts.
	Until recently, the Evens called sedentary inhabitants of the villages Ola and Arman “mene” (i.e. “sedentary”). Ola and Arman dwellers as well as Tauy people of mixed origin called themselves “Kamchadals” to accentuate their descent from Russians. The self-designation “Kamchadals” became firmly established among the Métis population of the Okhotsk region, from Tauy to the Gizhiginskaya Guba. This dates from a period when Okhotskiy Kray was a part of Kamchatskaya Guberniya (Kamchatka Province). Gizhiga residents called themselves “Gizhigintsy” (Gizhigins) distinguishing themselves from Russian newcomers and accentuating their autochthonous origin.
	The process of the formation of an ethnically mixed population in the Okhotsk region quickened especially during the Soviet period and couldn’t pass unnoticed by local authorities. From the end of the 1920s to the middle of the ‘80s, the Métis population had been officially considered as Kamchadals, as indicated in their passports. However, the ethnonym wasn’t included in official lists of indigenous peoples. Therefore, during the Perestroyka, it was recommended that Kamchadals re-classify themselves as Evens, Koryaks, or Itelmens. Administrative arbitrariness had strange results: in the north-east coast of the Sea of Okhotsk the Itelmens suddenly appeared though they had never lived there before.
	
History of the Khabarovs
Khabarov was a widespread surname along the Sea of Okhotsk coast and has been known for more than one hundred years. The Khabarovs were a part of the 2nd administrative Dolgan (Dolganskiy) clan. Before the revolution, the clansmen who lived in Olskiy district possessed the largest reindeer herds, hunting and fishing in the taiga of Ola and Kolyma regions, and in particular, at the Siglan.
	The economic power of the Khabarov clan was so widely recognised that the 2nd Dolgan clan was often called the Khabarov clan in archival documents and literature of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, while a common meeting place of intermarried administrative clans at the Siglan (Dellyanskiy, the 2nd Dolganskiy, the 1st and 2nd Uyaganskiy) was called the “Khabarov’ encampment”.
	In 1880 Dolgan clansmen headed by a senior man Ivan Vasilievich Khabarov were parishioners of the Annunciation Church in Yamsk. Wealthy reindeer owners donated generously to the needs of the church. At the end of the 19th century the senior man of the 2nd Dolgan clan, Prokopiy Khabarov, and his relatives built two chapels, the first one at the mouth of the River Siglan (in memory of Saint Innokentiy), and the second one in Izba village. The chapels were decorated with icons bought in Moscow at their expense.
	The Khabarovs’ winter pastures were situated in the upper and middle stretches of the River Kolyma, while summer coastal ones were in the Koni peninsula, in the valleys of the rivers Ola, Lankovaya, and Siglan. In the second half of the 19th century one part of the Khabarovs migrated with their herds to the north, beyond the Great Kolyma Range. Therefore “Tungus of the Khabarov clan”, who became permanent parishioners of the Church of the Saviour in Gizhiga in the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century, are often mentioned in archival documents of the church. Afterwards the Khabarovs of Gizhiga separated from the majority of their kinsmen and became a part of the so-called “Rassokhin” group of the Evens, who led a nomadic life separately in remote parts of taiga until the end of the 1950s.
	During the early Soviet era the main part of the Khabarov clan together with the clans of Amamichi (the 1st Dolganskiy clan) and Zybiny (the 3rd Dolganskiy clan) still led a nomad’s life near the villages of Ola and Yamsk. At that time nomadic Evens were distinguished not on a clan basis but on a territorial one, according to the locality they belong to. In Olskiy District, the former 2nd Dolganskiy clan together with Otdelniy (Separated) Dellyanskiy and the 2nd Uyaganskiy clans were attributed to the Siglan and Magadan groups on that basis.
	The Khabarovs were attributed to the Siglan group of the Evens of Ola. In the 1930s they lost their reindeer as well as their power and influence. Active members of the Siglan nomadic soviet even deprived some representatives of the Khabarov clan of their electoral rights they had as former kulaks. Descendants of the Khabarovs worked at the kolkhoz named in honor of the XXIIth Congress of the CPSU which united the Evens of the Siglan and Magadan territorial groups.

The Khabarovs today
One of the descendants of the Khabarov clan is Mikhail Terentievich Yaschenko, a lawyer, rights activist, and public figure, well-known in the Magadan Oblast. The history of the large Yaschenko family reflects events and processes of the past century which took place at the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. Mikhail Terentievich’s grandfather, Grigoriy Vasilievich Khabarov, was born in 1889. He belonged to “the Tungus of the 2nd Dolganskiy clan”. According to the record No. 3 in a register of births at the Ola Epiphany Church, Khabarov Grigoriy Vasilievich, 25, an Orthodox, contracted matrimony with a “Tungus girl of the 1st Uyaganskiy clan”, Babtzeva Agafiya Ivanovna, 18, also an Orthodox. The wedding ceremony was conducted by Innokentiy Popov, a parish priest of Ola.
	Four years later, another record about the Khabarov family with two children, Maria (3 years old), and Vasiliy (1 year old) was made in a confession inventory of the same church. The whole family belonged to the 2nd Dolganskiy clan.
	In the first years of the Soviet era, registration of the indigenous population was carried out at the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. In documents of the Ola regional executive committee of 1926, Grigoriy Vasilievich Khabarov, his wife and their children were registered as nomadic Evens of the 2nd Dolganskiy clan, tending herds, hunting and fishing in the region of the River Siglan. By that time Khabarov had already had four children, two daughters and two sons.
	Documents of the Ola regional executive committee of February 1929 also mention that G.V. Khabarov led a nomad’s life at Siglan district. He had already had five children.
	To carry out Socialist reorganisations among the reindeer breeding Evens the authorities needed information about where nomads were concentrated. Studies were conducted by K.Ya. Luks at the end of the 1920s. As is evident from his report of 6 October 1928, before the revolution the Evens of the 2nd Dolganskiy clan were concentrated near the River Siglan. Therefore the family of G.V. Khabarov was included in the Siglanskiy nomadic soviet. In a family register of this soviet of 1930 there is a record about Grigoriy Vasilievich Khabarov’s family mentioning that he had 16 riding reindeers, 1 yurta, and that he bagged 15 squirrel skins and 2 ermines.
	Children of the eldest G.V. Khabarov’s daughter, Maria Grigorievna - among them Mikhail Terentievich Yaschenko - consider themselves hereditary Orochi since their ancestors belonged to nomadic reindeer breeding Evens. Indeed, on Mikhail Terentievich’s birth certificate his mother’s nationality is indicated as Orochel (in a copy as Orochi). However, the nationality of her children is indicated in their passports as Even. Mikhail Terentievich’s daughter, Irina Mikhailovna, had been registered as Kamchadal until 1985; then she accepted the ethnonym Even because the alternative name, Itelmen, is absolutely alien to her.
	Thus, the Yaschenko-Khabarov family is a typical family of descendants of indigenous residents of the Sea of Okhotsk coast, descended from reindeer breeding Evens of the 2nd Dolganskiy clan which inhabited the valley of the River Siglan. Today members of this clan are going to return to the traditional occupations of their ancestors, to revive traditional Even culture.
	Mikhail T. Yaschenko is involved in a great deal of work protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and old residents of our region. Last year, the Magadan municipal public organisation “Kadar” (rock in Even) was established on his initiative. The activity of Kadar is directed at legal and informational support of representatives of indigenous peoples; ensuring their participation in ecological assessments of economic projects; participation in land allotment and land use for traditional subsistence activities of indigenous peoples, and many other aspects related to the revival and preservation of the material and spiritual culture of the indigenous residents of the Sea of Okhotsk.
	One of the main activities of the new public organisation is work with the so-called “old residents” of the region. First of all, it is necessary to determine legislatively who the old residents are, who has a right to be categorised as an old resident, and what rights and privileges they can have. Today M. T. Yaschenko’s efforts are focused on this hard but necessary work. Kadar has its own press organ, the bulletin “Voice of the Aboriginal”, which contains a lot of important and useful information.
	M.T. Yaschenko and his relatives established the first clan community of the indigenous peoples of the North named “Nevte” (spring in Even). The charter of the clan community was accepted at a general meeting on 29 September 2000. The clan community was registered by the Magadan Oblast Department of Justice on 16 November 2000. The clan community Nevte is a juridical “person”; its activity is based on principles of independence and self-government, and is guided by the federal laws “On common principles of organisation of communities of indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation” and “On the guarantees of rights of the indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation”.
	The aim of the clan community Nevte is revival and development of original economy, culture, and language of the indigenous inhabitants of the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, ensuring their social defense, and satisfying their material and spiritual demands.
	The clan community is going to carry out traditional subsistence activities, including fishing and fish-processing, hunting fur-bearing animals and sea mammals, furs and sea foods processing, gathering of wild herbs, dressing of skins and sewing of traditional clothes, manufacturing of traditional utensils and implements, and other activities. According to the clan charter, the community can include not only kinsmen but also those who belong to indigenous peoples or old residents and involved in traditional occupations.
	Therefore, both the clan community and organisation Kadar are open for everyone who would like to work on the land of their ancestors and to contribute to the prosperity of our region. The two also aspire to a broad cooperation with the state authorities, public and political movements, sharing the aims and goals of newly established organisations concerned with the protection of Northern indigenous peoples’ rights.
	According to Irina Yaschenko, the chairman of the clan community, partner relationships with the administration of Olskiy District are developing today. This is good to hear because we have a common aim – to secure the sustainable development of indigenous peoples’ residence areas, and consequently the social and economic stability of our population.

INDIGENOUS ORGANISATIONS:

Rodnik Legal Centre, a regional public organisation

Yuliya Yakel, Head of the Rodnik Legal Centre                                             
Summarised by the Editors

The Rodnik Legal Centre, established in December 1999, is an organisation aimed at uniting professional lawyers and jurists, specialists in the field of human rights protection. 
	Legal experts at the Rodnik Legal Centre are specialised in the protection of fundamental constitutional rights of citizens such as the right to access information, the right to a favourable environment, the rights of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East to lead a traditional way of life and to protect their natural environment, and the right to justice. 
	The main objectives of our organisation are: to contribute to the formation of effective legal mechanisms to protect fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens; and to help Russian citizens to become aware that it is necessary and possible to protect their constitutional rights and civil freedoms on the basis of the prevailing legislation. 
	The Rodnik Legal Centre is one of few professional legal organisations rendering juristic aid to representatives of indigenous peoples and their associations. In this respect, the centre works in close cooperation with the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East (RAIPON) as well as with regional associations of indigenous peoples. The centre has instituted a number of legal proceedings aimed at changing the attitude of authorities towards legal guarantees for indigenous peoples of the North to their traditional way of life and the protection of their natural environment. 
	Today Rodnik’s legal specialists are handling a series of cases concerning the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights. One of these concerns a complaint about the refusal of the Government of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Economic Development and Commerce to establish the significant Territory of Traditional Nature Use, “Tkhsanom”, in Kamchatka. As it is known, the current Russian legislation guarantees the right of indigenous peoples and their communities to establish Territories of Traditional Nature Use where they can lead traditional ways of life on lands with protected environments. Such areas have a specially protected status in the Russian Federation.
	A consultation centre at the Rodnik Legal Centre was established to offer NGOs and individuals free legal aid and assistance in handling their legal cases. Rodnik’s lawyers advise citizens and NGOs’ representatives personally, by post, e-mail and telephone. Such support stirs up citizens’ and NGOs’ activities as they handle their cases on their own using procedural documents prepared by the centre’s lawyers. The consultation centre permanently advises activists and representatives of associations of indigenous peoples of the North on concrete problems. Both indigenous peoples’ rights protection and  their legal education are among the main directions of the centre’s activities. To increase people’s civic activity in the field of protection of their fundamental rights, the Rodnik Legal Centre has developed programs of training seminars and tests for civic activists, NGOs and indigenous peoples representatives.

Our organisation has published practical textbooks and manuals on human rights protection:
Имеем право знать, чтобы жить, практическое руководство по праву на информацию для активистов и общественных объединений коренных малочисленных народов России. (We have a right to know to live. Practical manual devoted to the right on information for activists and public organisations of indigenous peoples of Russia.) Moscow, edition MGUP, 2001;
Судебная защита права на информацию, практическое руководство по праву на информацию для активистов и общественных объединений коренных малочисленных народов России. (Court protection of the right on information. Practical manual devoted to the right on information for activists and public organisations of indigenous peoples of Russia.) Moscow, Edition MGUP, 2001;
Община – путь к объединению и возрождению, практическое руководство по созданию общин коренных малочисленных народов России. (A community – the way to integration and revival. Practical manual devoted to establishing of communities of indigenous peoples of Russia.) Moscow, edition MGUP, 2003;
Учредительные документы общин коренных малочисленных народов (образцы правовых документов). (Constitutive documents of communities of indigenous peoples [examples of legal documents]). Moscow, edition MGUP, 2003;
Обжалование незаконных решений власти – практическое руководство по обжалованию в суд незаконных решений органов государственной власти, нарушающих экологические права граждан. (Appeal of illegal decisions of authorities. Practical manual the appeal of illegal decisions of authorities infringing citizens’ rights with respect to the environment.) Moscow, Edition MGUP, 2003.

Address:
Rodnik Legal Center
Russia, 127411, Moscow, Box 1
phone/fax: (+7) 095-165-07-54
E-mail:  rodnik@orc.ru

Charitable public foundation Yaran’y, Chukotka

I.S. Vukvukay, President of the Foundation 
Summarised by the Editors

The Yaran’y Foundation (Yaran’y means house, dwelling) is a non-commercial organisation established in Anadyr, the capital of Chukotka. The foundation was established to help solve the numerous social problems of the indigenous peoples of Chukotka. Its founders envisaged that the foundation would contribute to the achievement of charitable, cultural, organisational, educational, and other social goals. According to its charter the foundation’s main aim is to take care of social needs. It is financed by voluntary subscriptions and other contributions.

Main objectives of the foundation:
-	to revive national consciousness, to preserve and develop the traditional way of life, traditional occupations and subsistence practices, and the original culture of the indigenous peoples of the Chukotkan Autonomous Okrug;
-	to protect the rights and legal interests of the indigenous peoples of Chukotka;
-	to contribute to collecting, studying and analyzing materials concerning the history of Chukotka;
-	to contribute to youth education in the spirit of respect for the traditions and culture of Chukchi society;
-	to cooperate with mass media of Russian as well as Chukotkan native languages;
-	to promote the Method of Persuasion, developed by G.A. Shichko, which is aimed at releasing people from alcoholic and nicotine addiction and supporting their conversion to sobriety;
-	to contribute to the development of international non-commercial tourism. [This is a literary translation from the original; what is meant is tourism on the indigenous peoples’ premises without being exploited by a third party. ]
To achieve its objectives, the foundation conducts informational and educational work and cooperates with other public, political, religious, charitable, sport and youth organisations and movements, including foreign and international ones. The foundation cooperates with relevant federal and regional authorities, industrial corporations, native enterprises, as well as foreign firms and their representatives.
The foundation is financed by subscriptions and donations. It renders financial and organisational aid and welfare, and other kinds of support to individual and collective initiatives and projects. It allocates means, on a charitable basis, to finance scientific research programs which study modern Chukchi society and culture and to forecast its development in the Chukotkan Autonomous Okrug. It organises the exchange of scientists between interested institutions and organisations, organises and finances the work of permanent and temporary scientific and informational centers and creative collectives, and courses in political science and humanities. It finances research in the fields of history, political science, ethnology, sociology and humanities, concerning various aspects of history and contemporary civilisation development in the Chukotkan Autonomous Okrug. It also promotes the development of international tourism.
The foundation is independent in its activities and in managing its property and financial assets. The foundation may join international NGOs, maintain international contacts, and conclude agreements. 
The establishment of the foundation is an essential step towards the integration of the indigenous peoples’ organisations of the Chukotkan Autonomous Okrug. At the present stage, top priorities are to select and allocate personnel—first of all, a deputy president, an accountant and a lawyer—and to raise funds to finance foundation activities and basic running expenses, such as rent, public utilities and phone connections, and office equipment. Partners and sponsors must be sought and funds must be raised for projects. The foundation’s representatives are open for contacts and look forward to cooperating with other organisations.

Address:
Yaran’y Foundation
Russia 
689000 Chukotskiy Autonomous Okrug
Anadyr, ul. Energetikov, 6–1.

The community Akkani

G.V. Inankeuyas, Head of the community Akkani

E-mail for contacts: galinadiatchkova@hotmail.com

The indigenous community of the northern indigenous peoples, Akkani, was established in 2002 in the Chukotskiy District, Chukotkan Autonomous Okrug. The members of community are occupied with sea mammal hunting (whales, in the future walruses and seals), fishing, gathering wild plants, and sewing traditional ethnic clothing. This year four grey whales have been caught in the Bering Strait.
	The most difficult task for the community was the purchase of weapons and fuel for the boat because of a lack of funds. In the future, revenues from seal hunting (sale of skins and furs) are expected to pay for such supplies and equipment.
	The community Akkani consists mainly of young men who have grown up with sea mammal hunting, while elder women teach young girls which edible plants and roots to gather and how to preserve them. In summer, the members of Akkani live mostly in the native village of Akkani, which was closed at the end of the 1960s and which they are now trying to revive through common efforts. The village is situated in picturesque surroundings near the Bering Strait, between the district settlement of Lavrentiya and the village of Lorino in the Chukotskiy District.
	The community Akkani is willing to cooperate with other organisations interested in the preservation of traditional occupations and environmental protection.

Association of Traditional Marine Mammal Hunters of Chukotka (ATMMHC)

Eduard Zdor, Assistant secretary of ATMMHC

The Association of Traditional Marine Mammal Hunters of Chukotka (ATMMHC) was formed a few years ago at a general assembly of marine hunters of eastern Chukotka. Today, the association consists of 300 professional hunters, 500 individual hunters, 2500 members of hunters’ families, 25 native villages, and 10,000 traditional consumers of marine mammal products. 

The Association has five commissions:
•	Polar Bear Commission, Chair: Vladilen I. Kavry;
•	Fisheries Commission, Chair: Oleg P. Yatynto;
•	Seal Commission, Chair: Sergey Pucheneut;
•	Whaling Commission, Chair: Gennadiy V. Inankeuyas; 
•	Walrus Commission, Chair: Igor N. Makotrik.

The main goals and tasks of the Association are:
•	preservation of traditional marine hunting as the basis of indigenous peoples’ traditional subsistence; 
•	preservation of marine mammal populations and marine biodiversity;
•	representation of marine hunters’ interests at international, national and regional levels; 
•	participation in the rational distribution of marine mammal quotas between members of the Association;
•	preservation of traditional marine hunting from commercialisation; 
•	coordination of sea-food products’ marketing according to the requirements of international conventions; 
•	coordination of research programs on marine hunting; and
•	collection of native peoples’ traditional knowledge.
Priority programs of the Association are:
•	establishment of the ATMMHC organisational structure for implementing scientific, conservation and other projects, and protecting interests of marine mammal hunters;
•	the legal support of marine mammal hunters, willing to establish community enterprises and other non-government entities in order to preserve traditional subsistence (development of the charters, by-laws, articles of incorporation, and assistance in registration);
•	organisation of seminars, training and exchanges for native grey and bowhead whale harvesting;
•	establishment of a service and consulting centre for repair and service of the outboard motors and navigation equipment (radios and GPS);
•	establishment of a shop in Chukotka to produce aluminium boats for marine mammal hunting;
•	organisation of a program for improving hunter safety; and
•	development of  health programs for marine mammal hunters.
In June 2003, in the village Lorino (Chukotsk District) the board meeting of the ATMMHC took place, at which the annual report of the Association was presented. It was noted that ATMMHC had become a significant public organisation in questions of legislation and the defence of marine hunters’ interests. Among the main problems of the hunters mentioned were the low salaries, the processing of marine products, the establishment of facilities for health rehabilitation of marine hunters, etc.
	Together with scientific organisations from Russia, USA and other countries, ATMMHC participates in projects dealing with traditional knowledge of polar bears, and biological and migrational studies on marine mammals.
	During recent years the Association has achieved representation at the international level in negotiations about the distribution of harvesting quota of marine mammals. Formerly the hunters were represented by officials of various Russian departments. One of the representatives of the Association is its Chairman, Gennadiy Inankeuyas, from the village of Lorino, where many well-known marine hunters live.

Address:
Association of Traditional Marine Mammal Hunters of Chukotka (ATMMHC) 
ul. Polyarnaya 20-14, Anadyr, Chukotka A.O, Russia 689000
phone/fax: +7-(42722) 2-2531, E-mail: ezdor@anadyr.ru; atmmhc@yandex.ru;
689315, Lorino, Gagarina 14-5; phone/fax: +7-(42736) 9-3355 

NOTES:

New website on Chukotka and its Yupik population

Danish Chukotka Expeditions has produced a website that contains information on the Yupik population in Chukotka, their language, occupations, and politics. It also has information on Chukotka in general and on a series of expeditions. The website’s languages are English, Russian and Danish. 
	Furthermore, the web site offers 125 brilliant photos from Chukotka, a video on walrus hunting, and an audio file with traditional Yupik song and music.

Website: (http://www.connexion-dte.dk)
For further information, please contact:
Bent Nielsen
Department of Eskimology and Arctic Studies
Strandgade 100H, DK-1401
Copenhagen K, Denmark
E-mail: Chukotka@hum.ku.dk 

“Ussuri Trading”

The ANSIPRA Secretariat wants to draw the attention of our readers to a recently appeared website, presented by Andrey Chernyshov. 
	The main objectives of this site are directed towards interests – like commercial enterprises – of indigenous peoples of Canada, Greenland and other western countries, and Russia. It also presents the possibility to apply for grants for work with common problems in the Russian Far East like environmental protection, sustainable development of indigenous peoples, and preservation of culture (“Phoenix Fund” http://www.phoenix.vl.ru/index.htm). 
	Finally, it is concerend with actions like competitions for best drawings presenting traditional costumes of Russian indigenous peoples.
	Together with Andrey Chernyshov we invitye you to visit the website http://www.ussuri.net.

PhD position in arctic ecology

Arctic Centre, University of Lapland is seeking to fill a PhD student post for the period 01.04.2004 to 31.12.2007. The student will work full-time as part of a small research team in close cooperation with a geographer and one or more social anthropologists in the Finnish Academy project “Environmental and Social Impacts of Industrial Development in Northern Russia”. 
	The research will undertake a multidisciplinary analysis of the social and environmental consequences of energy development in northern Russia. Specifically, this project will make a comparative study of effects of petroleum development in two key federal districts in northwest Russia - Nenets Auton. Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Auto.s Okrug - with links to the global level on the basis of scientific and indigenous or local knowledge. The extensive gas and oil fields overlap with the homelands of indigenous peoples whose traditional livelihoods are at risk from changes in land use associated with petroleum exploration and exploitation. 
	Salary will be at the Finnish level A20. The project will be based at Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi, Finland.
	Background should be in some aspect of arctic biology/ecology/geography but most suitable will be experience with arctic plant ecology and, in particular, vegetation science and/or rangeland ecology. 
	Please note: the special nature of this work requires that the student have very good or excellent Russian language skills, in addition to spoken and written English. The position will also require excellent social skills and the ability to work alone or in small groups in remote areas for long periods under challenging logistical and physical conditions. 
	Applicants should arrange for a cover letter, CV and one or two letters of reference to be sent to the project coordinator (address below) by 31 January 2004.

Contact:
Bruce Forbes, Arctic Centre, Univ. of Lapland
Box 122, FIN-96101 Rovaniemi, Finland
Phone: +358-16-341-2710; Mobile: +358-40-8479202
Fax: +358-16-341-2777; E-mail: bforbes@urova.fi

The Tromsø University Master Programme for Studies of Indigenous Issues 

The University of Tromsø proudly presents a new multi-disciplinary Master Programme in Indigenous Studies. Aiming to recruit Saami, Norwegian and international students, the Master programme is designed to equip students with comparative perspectives on indigenous issues.
	The programme offers a unique opportunity for students to specialise in indigenous issues and give them a deeper understanding of the diverse yet similar realities of indigenous peoples. Key areas to be covered range from theoretical issues to resource management and social development; from colonial histories, indigenous rights, world views, art, identities, cultures and health issues, to local, regional and international politics. Lectures on the situation and history of the Sámi people will form a basis for comparative and international perspectives. 
	The programme starts at the beginning of august each year and will be taught in English. Application deadline for the following year is 1 December. Russian students can apply for acceptance within the university’s quota programme.
More information: 
Master programme:
http://www.sami.uit.no/master/
Quota programme: http://www.adm.uit.no/studie/foreign/english/quota.htm

An invitation to join a special media project 

The Saami division of the Norwegian Broadcasting Cooperation (NRK) has started a new project with the purpose of building up a common network linking indigenous television and radio stations worldwide. This cooperation will enable indigenous broadcasters from all countries to quickly exchange news stories, documentaries and other information on indigenous issues.
	As an alternative to mainstream news, this cooperation focuses on indigenous journalism and sharing indigenous stories. This provides an opportunity to broadcast comparable and related information. In this way we can benefit each other and bring the indigenous world closer together.
	The common network will be based on a website, e-mail and address list. Any indigenous broadcaster with access to this network will be able to view, listen and download full-quality news stories from all other broadcasters in the database. The website is at the planning stage and under construction at the NRK main office in Oslo.
	Currently NRK Saami Radio has beneficial relationships with Swedish Television and radio and YLE in Finland. In addition, we cooperate with Kalaallit Nunaat Radio (KNR) in Greenland and the Saami radio station in Lovozero (Murmanskaya Oblast, Russia).
	We are inviting broadcasting stations and reporters with relations to indigenous communities in Russia to join our project. We will find measures to overcome the language barrier. Please contact us for more information!

Contact:
Jan Henrik Hætta (producer and photographer)
E-mail: jan.henrik.hatta@nrk.no
Phone. +47 - 78 46 92 46, mobile phone: +47 – 41 27 77 78
Fax. +47 - 78 46 92 22
Address:
NRK SAMI RADIO
Museumsgate 12
N-9730 Karasjok, Norway

CONFERENCES:

21-24 September 2004:
ACIA International Scientific Symposium on Climate Change in the Arctic
Reykjavik, Iceland

The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) was formally adopted at the Ministerial Conference of the Arctic Council at Point Barrow, Alaska, in 2000.  The goal of the ACIA is to "evaluate and synthesise knowledge on climate variability and change and increased ultraviolet radiation, and support policy-making processes and the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." The assessment is to address "environmental, human health, social, cultural and economic impacts and consequences, including policy recommendations."
	Climate variability and change, and more recently, notable increases in UV radiation, have become important issues in the Arctic region over the past few decades. These issues have also prevailed in the international
scientific and political scene for over a decade through major programmes of scientific research (e.g., WCRP), through intergovernmental assessments (e.g., AMAP, IPCC, and WMO), and through international treaties, protocols and conventions.
	The results of scientific research and indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge have increasingly documented climatic changes in the Arctic. Models indicate that these changes will be more pronounced in the Arctic region than in other regions of the world and will be critical to our understanding of global-scale climatic processes.
	
Topics and objectives:
- the Arctic climate and its role in the global climate system,
- past, present and future changes in physical and biological systems,
- impacts of a changing climate on people's lives and on the economy,
- impacts on wildlife and other conservation issues,
- Arctic feedbacks on the global climate and other global consequences,
- national and international policy issues and recommended action.
The ACIA scientific assessment will be the primary document under consideration at the symposium. The scientific results and background, including indigenous peoples' perspectives and observations, will be presented and discussed in an integrated circumpolar context. The ACIA assessment should also be discussed within the context of global, regional and sub-regional environmental management and policy development.  Presentations on topics not directly dealt with by the ACIA, but of relevance to climate change in the Arctic, are also highly welcome.

Who should attend
The symposium is directed towards interest groups including:
- scientists working on Arctic and climate change issues,
- administrators, managers and decision-makers with responsibility at both the local and regional level,
- indigenous peoples' organisations,
- representatives of industries and international and non-governmental organisations with interests in the Arctic, and/or global climate change issues.

Registration deadline: 1 July 2004
Abstract deadline: 1 February 2004
Registration fee: 150 US$ (before 1 July); 200 USD (later) – includes a copy of the ACIA scientific
document, the abstract proceedings from the conference, and a symposium dinner.
Language: English, with Russian translation if necessary
Results: Three documents will be delivered to the ministers at the Arctic Council Ministerial Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, in September 2004:
-	Scientific document (fully refereed and detailed scientific assessment report)
-	Synthesis/overview document (a popular version of the scientific document aimed at communicating the science and traditional knowledge of climate change in the Arctic to the public)
-	Policy recommendations (based on the scientific conclusions and findings and elaborated by the AMAP and CAFF working groups and indigenous organisations) for consideration by Arctic Council ministers.
Contact persons: Svanhvit Bragadottir, Ust.  (svanhvit@ust.is); Nirna B. Berndsen, Congress Reykjavik  (birna@congress.is)
More information: http://www.acia.uaf.edu/pages/symposium.html

8-10 October 2004
Generation P in the Tundra
Tartu, Estonia

Viktor Pelevin’s cult book Generation P, published in 2000, describes a new, consumption-oriented generation of Russians and their world, where Pepsi Cola has acquired more importance as a status symbol than poesy. Our choice of using the title of this book as the title for our conference underlines the intention to move away from the classical issues of Siberian anthropology and to discuss the creation, as well as the influence, of mass culture and urban culture on the indigenous youth. We welcome contributions from a very wide range of issues connected with the indigenous youth, for example: 
-	the question of how education influences traditional economies and people who work there;
-	the question of how pop music and other items of fashion shape young individuals’ identities and everyday lives in the tundra, taiga and in the villages, and how they use such imagery and symbols to express themselves;
-	state policies of culture in rural regions (music schools and Houses of Culture as officially legitimised spaces for folk dance and music);
-	a reassessment of the wide-spread tenet that the indigenous youth have lost their culture and become rootless;
-	the growing tendency among the indigenous youth to move to cities and study at universities;
-	the role of the Internet and video culture in indigenous communities; etc. 

We intend to bridge the gap between different academic disciplines and fields and therefore encourage not only anthropologists to participate: the discussion is open for representatives of all disciplines and we hope to receive contributions also from social workers and other individuals working on youth-related projects. If you are interested in participating in the conference, please send an abstract of your presentation (approximately 250 words) to:

Contact: Aimar Ventsel, Estonian Literary Museum, Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu, Estonia
	Fax: +372-7-377706
	Tel.: +372-7-377741
	E-mail: genp@folklore.ee
Working languages: English and Russian
Deadline for the submission of abstracts is 15 March, 2004
Registration fee: 100 Euro (unless agreed otherwise)

 CULTURE:

International significance of the Itelmen culture of southern Kamchatka

Petr Bekkerov and Vasiliy Deschenko, Elders of the Union of Itelmen Families
Shevtsov V.D., Director of Elizovo Regional Museum of Political Geography 

The international significance of the culture of the indigenous peoples of southern Kamchatka, its historical and comprehensive value, is explained by the fact that it is a kind of relict of a formely vast, primordial periphery. In a dialogue with the latter the Far East centers of civilisation crystallised. In this connection, the culture is an integral part of the historical self-consciousness of the peoples of the Far East. It arouses certain public interest and could become a target of the international collaboration aimed at the development and strengthening of peace and sustainability in the region, preservation and enrichment of cultural originality of its peoples, and, which is most important, prevention of possible ethno-territorial conflicts.
	The history and modern-day life of the indigenous peoples of southern Kamchatka are studied by Japanese, Chinese, Korean, American and other foreign scientists who have always been interested in ethnological and archaeological fieldwork in the region. Lately, foreign tourist companies also have shown interest in the land occupied by indigenous peoples. Foreigners are attracted not only by the exotic character of original culture of the aboriginals, reminiscences of their ancestors’ remote past which are linked to the region, but also by its unique natural conditions.
	The  traditions of the indigenous peoples of southern Kamchatka are noteworthy when taking into consideration successful modernisation of the countries of the Asian-Pacific region such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Peoples Republic of China and others. Undoubtedly, one of the main conditions of their rapid development was a rich cultural memory, preserving and maintaining  traditional practices  by modern means.
	The system of communication, supported by such traditions, transmits new information, new values, a new system of traditional ecological knowledge. Under certain conditions these can become prerequisites of a complete socio-cultural synthesis resulting in an “economic wonder” as an alternative to “great leaps”.

* * *
The Itelmens’ legend about the creation of the land called Kamchatka has been transmitted orally through the generations since ancient times to the present day.
	According to the well-known legend, the great Itelmen God named Kutkh (Raven) dived into the ocean, grasped with his claws the bottom of the sea and dragged out the land to the surface, like a fish. After that he let it go. In the sites where he was holding the land, the mountains and volcanoes were formed. After that the land drowned, then raised up again; it is still trembling and balancing.
	When the land was lifted, the peoples could go easily to each other on dry land, stay for a long time and watch other lands created by Kutkh.
	After the land drowned again, many people who left could not return and stayed in the other lands.
	This legend found its scientific approval only in the 20th century, when researchers from the Institute of Volcanology found on the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk the peat layers which prove the fact that it was dry land not long ago.
	This and other facts indicate that colonisation of the Kuril Islands, the Aleutian Islands and America originated from Kamchatka and Chukotka, and peoples living there have many similar traditions, subsistence practices and ways of life.