Gail Fondahl

Through the Years:Land Rights Among the Evenkis of Southeastern Siberia

Traveling up the Tokko River from the Native village of Tyanya (Olekma County, Sakha Republic, Russia), you may occasionally spot the ephemeral swirl of smoke rising above the dark larch forest. Guide your boat shoreward and a scramble up the bank will find you in a small camp of Evenkis. A family, maybe two, a canvas tent, a corral, a rustic log table, and a blackened teakettle suspended over a fire comprise the camp. A child stares shyly from behind a parent’s leg. Perhaps a herd of reindeer, bunched downwind of the campfire, seek respite from mosquitoes.

Nature Preserves Threaten Land Rights

The 1997 creation of the World Wildlife Fund-Sakha Resource Reserve (Cheroda) was a major territorial initiative that continues to challenge the Evenkis of Olekma County, Sakha Republic. Such an event is not without precedent. In 1984, the Olekma Zapovednik was established in the southeast corner of the county, encompassing 847,102 hectares (five percent of the county’s territory).1 A zapovednik is the strictest form of nature protection in Russia; it restricts human activities to nature protection and limited scientific research.

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