Settlement nenets on the Yamal Peninsula: Who are they?

Abstract

The article is devoted to the present situation on the Yamal Peninsula. At the beginning of the 20th century the majority of Nenets living on Yamal were nomads. Over the last decades, settlement component has become a part of Nenets culture; failure to recognize this component while describing the present state of Nenets culture leads to serious distortions. For a present-day Nenets, life in a settlement is a possible alternative to life in the tundra, whereas the spheres of two ways of life existing in Nenets culture, namely, a tundra life and a settlement life, are spatially separated. It is considered normal when a Nenets belonging to a younger generation possesses both alternatives of culture simultaneously, knows the rules determining the choice of the lifestyle, can effectively perform the switch from one lifestyle to another, and can use both.