Ethnographies

The Nenets, formerly known as Samoyeds, are an indigenous people widely spread across northwestern Siberia, numbering around 41,000. They live mainly from reindeer herding, but also engage in fishing, fur trapping, and hunting water voles. 

More than 1,500 years ago, the ancestors of today's Nenets retreated from the Huns to the northern forest belt, where they displaced the populations living there and eventually formed two groups – the Forest Nenets and the Tundra Nenets, the latter of whom still live a nomadic lifestyle across a wide area. 

The Nenets language belongs to the northern subgroup of the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic languages. 

Probably due to the extreme living conditions on the Arctic coast, the Nenets have retained their belief that survival depends on the forces of nature. These are believed to reside in certain ritual objects or in special features of nature. Family and kinship groups gather at special places to perform rituals that serve to reconcile them with nature so that it may be favorable to them. 

Ethnographic objects from museum collections are commented on by Indigenous knowledge holders in videos.