Reindeer Nation

Life Among the Kalar

We are sitting on a layer of soft larch

tree needles in a

spacious summer tent.

The smell of tar from the needles mixes with the melodic dinging of bells. The reindeer herd is returning to the

settlement from its mountain pasture.

We are in Kalar district, Chita region,  to visit and study the Evenk people – to understand the modern lifestyles of this indigenous people. Getting here required a six-hour flight from Moscow to Chita with a stopover in Yekaterinburg, a long trip in a stuffy train car along the Baikal-Amur Railway (BAM), followed by a two-hour drive along a dusty dirt road from the district capital of Chara to the Evenk village of Chapo-Ologo. Finally, there was a steep hike into the Kalar mountain range, to this small reindeer herders’ settlement named Gevan (Evenk for “rainbow”).

Having reached the settlement, the students accompanying me are accommodated in thick-walled, warm canvas tents, heated with iron stoves. My husband and I opt – despite the cold emanating from a July snow – to spend the night in an ordinary summer tent.

Next to me is an Evenk with a very Russian name, Alexei Gabyshev. Dressed in camouflage gear, Alexei is focused on cleaning his gun before the upcoming hunt. At 25, he is an excellent shot and a learned reindeer herder. Born in Yakutia, he has lived a nomadic life since childhood, hunting, herding and fishing.

There are just 500 Evenks like Alexei in Kalar district, or 4.5% of its population of 12,000, mostly Russians who emigrated here in centuries past, but also Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Belarusans, Latvians and others who came here to work on the “building project of the 20th century”: the BAM. The Evenks are indigenous to this area and most all of Siberia east of the Urals. In 1926, there were an estimated 34,000 Evenks in Russia; today there are just 30,000. In this region, as their numbers have dwindled, they have been pushed into the northern part of Kalar.

Created in 1939, Kalar is the northernmost of Chita region’s 31 districts. Chita region itself is almost twice as large as Romania and about the same size as Iraq. Even though Chita region is on Russia’s southern border with China, Kalar district, because of its extreme climactic conditions, is officially one of Russia’s Far North territories. There are sharp fluctuations of air-pressure and temperature, and the area rests on a firmament of permafrost. The local mining town with the passé name 11th Anniversary of the October Revolution has a record low temperature of -64o.

The morning welcomes us with an autumnal drizzle. The heavens are black with rain clouds. Alexei and the other locals are drinking some strong tea and breakfasting on an Evenkian soda cake. They are in no hurry to get to work. Alexei and a couple of other hunters are going to climb into the mountains to hunt wild Northern reindeer. Meanwhile, Alexei assigns chores to the other Evenks: some will bring firewood from the forest, others will watch the herd and make smoke fires, to attract reindeer to the settlement (instinctively drawn to anything that will protect them from the pervasive gnats and flies), others will milk the vazhenkas (a local, northern term for female reindeer).

At day’s end, wet from the rain, tired herders will relax in the tent on a floor of reindeer skins to perform their daily ritual: smoking two or three harsh Prima cigarettes while playing cards. The settlement’s youngest inhabitant, 18-year-old Anton Malchakitov, turns the handle of his street-organ, which mixes with the sound of Russian pop-songs, playing on a beat-up, Chinese-made tape recorder.

The following day, Alexei and his companions return from the hunt. They are tired but satisfied. In the evening, they will harness up several pack reindeer to retrieve the meat of a sogzhoy (“wild reindeer”) which they have secreted in the taiga. Hunting is one of this Evenk community’s main activities. Headed by Alexei’s father, 45-year-old hunter and herder Spiridon Gabyshev, it includes some 30 Evenks and two Buryats. Most of the community’s members live in the village of Chapo-Ologo and only spend the summer or winter season hunting on the taiga. About 10 truly committed members live the nomadic life year-round, looking after the herd and hunting wild reindeer, elk, musk-deer, sable, squirrel, and other game.

“The main thing we do is hunt – it yields the greatest profit,” Alexei says. “But if the reindeer multiply, that will be good as well.” A passion for hunting is in the Evenks’ blood; wild animals are hunted and eaten year-round. During our short stay, we were treated to wild reindeer meat on two occasions. Most popular among members of our expedition were the fragrant bouillon of fresh boiled meat, the juicy shashlyk, roasted over larch twigs, and the reindeer liver chops. Some also dared try such Evenk delicacies as chomuga (raw reindeer marrow), and axunge (fat from entrails), which tastes, if it is well-salted and your eyes are closed, similar to the salt pork salo familiar to Russians.

But the diet is not all meat. A very popular and tasty treat is ityk, a whipped cream made from reindeer milk. The preparation of this dish requires catching a vazhenka from the herd. Yevgeny Trynkin, 30, shows us how it is done. Carrying a pouch filled with salt, he starts making deep-throated grunting and snorting sounds. Almost instantly, the herd, which is grazing nearby, saunters over to us. The head reindeer in the herd begins licking salt from our hands and the other reindeer soon follow. Their sandpaper tongues scrape our palms as they nuzzle us with their warm, wet noses and brandish their antlers. Young calves suck and bite on our clothing in hopes of finding a few grains of salt. Then, with a swift, well-timed movement, Yevgeny tosses a rope and lassoes two vazhenkas, tying them to the fence, where they can be safely milked.

For the Evenk, life is inconceivable without reindeer. Domesticate reindeer (oron) are not only a source of delicious milk, but also the main means of transport. Deer are both ridden and harnessed. “We mostly use reindeer for transport of heavy loads during migrations,” says herder Pyotr Kuzmin. “When we are hunting, they are harnessed to sledges or loaded with packs; we ride a reindeer in good places and walk them in bad ones.” It is a close working relationship. The Evenk never count their deer when they return from pasture, because they say they can easily “recognize the faces” of each of their 250 co-workers and immediately tell who has not “come home.”

The next day, my husband Dima, carrying gear typical for an inveterate fisherman, went off to investigate local fishing spots with several Evenks and students in tow. Needless to say, a day on the River Kalar offered only one middling grayling and some insignificant other fish which the Evenks immediately fed to their hungry dogs.

Evenks are not fishermen; fish, herbs and edible roots play only a minor role in their diet. Sometimes they will fish in the summer, when tending the reindeer and hunting do not demand so much of their time. But, then again, summer is also the best time for preparing and manufacturing dried reindeer and elk skins, sewing traditional Evenk clothes (like the avun, a leather winter cap), making fur and leather winter boots (amchury, ichigi or unty), winter coats (tergemi), saddle blankets (ten’en) and carpets (kumalan). It is also a time for repairing sledges and for taking up other handicrafts.

It was hunting and reindeer herding that originally made Evenks a nomadic people. Their success depended on large hunting grounds and a wide range across which their domesticated reindeer could forage on yagel (a hardy moss that is their main sustenance). Evenks travel several hundred kilometers every year from their summer pastures in the mountaintops, to their winter pastures in snow-covered valleys, to their fresh and grassy spring pasture grounds where new calves are born. Special care is take not to over-burden the ecosystem. “Spring settlement areas can be used only for two years,” Alexei explained. “In the third year, the place should be left to rest. You should actually leave it for two to four years, so that the forage crops will recover.”

To be sure, the nomad’s life, particularly in this climate, is not for the weak. The Evenks live in portable tents, with storehouses located somewhere “nearby” in the taiga. The amenities of everyday life are more than humble: a bed of skins; shabby tote bags for transporting one’s belongings during migrations; a set of iron cookware, including glasses and plates for each inhabitant of the settlement; a Tigr rifle for hunting large animals (every hunter’s pride); and a Japanese mini-generator, which provides a bit of light for the settlement in rare cases when there is gasoline to be had.

Gevan’s location along the Chitkanda River, 3,000 meters above sea level, ensures early frosts, and frequently means snow- and ice-covered rivers in mid-summer. But these conditions, harsh for humans, are ideal for reindeer – cold, wind, and ice mean escape from annoying gnats, mosquitoes, and black flies. It lets the deer graze in peace, steadily accumulating fat for the long winter ahead. And nothing can be dearer to the heart of an Evenk herder than seeing a herd of healthy, tallowy, fattened reindeer return to the settlement.

Yet the nomadic life of Evenk hunters and reindeer herders – sometimes called “the perpetual wanderers of the taiga” – will soon be a thing of the past. Of the 500 Evenks living in Kalar district, just 20 are permanent nomads. Some 100-200 hunt the taiga during its inhospitable winters. The rest of the Evenk population prefers life in log homes, in villages with names like Chapo-Ologo, Kyust-Kemda, Sredny Kalar,  and Nelyaty. It is the culmination of a process begun by collectivization during the Soviet era. Evenk families were forced to settle in villages that were raised up as reindeer herding kolkhozes (collective farms), and were dispossessed of their belongings, including that which was most precious to them – their reindeer. Leading herders, elders and shamans were declared kulaks and “exploiters,” and were killed or imprisoned. Forced to settle in kolkhozes for most of the 20th century, Evenks were Russianized and made to grow vegetables and raise cattle. Only a tiny fraction of the population was allowed to continue husbanding reindeer.

Still, by the early 1980s, the traditional economy of the Evenks had more or less stabilized. Reindeer herding was receiving substantial funding from the national budget and was developing rapidly – in the Kalar region alone, there were some 10,000 domesticated reindeer. But perestroika and the ensuing collapse of the Soviet economic system brought Evenk life to the brink of disaster. Disease was rampant. In 1998, 97% of the adolescent and adult population was determined to have some circulatory, respiratory or digestive disease caused by the degeneration of living standards, malnutrition, and, especially, alcoholism. When state subsidies for reindeer herding dried up, the uncontrolled slaughter of herds began. The number of reindeer fell by nearly 95%. What few nomadic hunters and herders remained moved to villages, where they drank themselves to death. “Control slackened and authorities started hogging everything and selling the equipment,” recalled Gennady Kuzmin, a middle-aged Evenk who lives in Chapo-Ologo. “Reindeer were slaughtered to pay salaries – we needed something to eat... Herders stayed in the village, drank, took a car and went to slaughter reindeer. Then they took the meat to market. It was all haphazard... complete freedom.”

A sturdy Evenk woman, absurdly dressed for a warm summer day, emerges from a paper-board house built in the 1980’s. She directs her formidable, businesslike gaze at the herd and then at the men working nearby. “Why haven’t you made smoke fires for the reindeer?!” she suddenly shouts. “When are you going to finish the fence… you, lazybones?! Do I always have to teach you everything!” The men start trotting about, trying to look busy.

Natalya Danilova is the only female reindeer brigade leader in the history of Kalar district. In her childhood, she worked alongside her father on the family herd. Upon his death, he bequeathed the herd to her and she has been living in the taiga ever since. She is on her fifth husband, but has always been faithful to her true love – the reindeer.

But Danilova is the exception that proves the rule: taiga settlements today are the domain of men. Modern Evenk women don’t want to do the hard work which used to fall to female reindeer herders, or chumrabotnitsas (literally translated as chumworkers or, rather, taiga chumwives). Therefore, many Evenk couples divorce because of long separation and spouses’ differing lifestyles. Alcoholism also contributes to this. Studies have shown that Evenks, like other Northern indigenous peoples, have lower levels of alcohol dehydrogenase – an enzyme responsible for breaking down alcohol in the body. In 2004, some 3,800 alcoholics were registered among a population of 10,000 Evenks in the northern regions, more than half the average national rate for Russia. Yet some experts estimate the actual numbers of Evenk alcoholics to be even higher. And this is compounded by a high incidence of depression.

“Alcoholism is unchanged,” says Svetlana Katkova, a 30-year-old Evenk and director of the Chapo-Ologo House of Culture. Outside, the July sun is unexpectedly hot, but inside, Katkova is a cheerful, energetic presence that belies the bleakness of her surroundings. Katkova is the product of a mixed marriage – her mother was Evenk and her father Russian. She herself married a Russian. Our conversation about mixed marriages is interrupted by the arrival of Katkova’s six-year-old, blond-haired daughter. “Are you Evenk or Russian?” I ask. The young girl is confused: “I don’t know.” She is not alone.

According to Svetlana Simonova, a worker in the Chapo-Ologo village administration, as many as 90% of the region’s children under the age of 16 are born into ethnically-mixed families. In most cases, it is Evenk women marrying Russians or other non-Evenk ethnic groups. Often the marriages are unofficial, and men who come to the region from Belarus, Ukraine, and elsewhere return home alone. Interestingly, Katkova said, the overall population of the villages changes very little: “What is characteristic is that no one either arrives or leaves the village. Of course, newcomers can leave if they are not happy with something. Many people have arrived from Buryatia and Ukraine. But mostly the population doesn’t want to leave.”

Children born in mixed marriages and having European facial features will often choose to call themselves Evenk. This is not due to an intensity of ethnic identity, but more due to privileges provided by the state to so-called indigenous minorities of the North. These include free medicine, tax exemptions for some businesses, allowances for hunting licenses, free tuition at universities, and more. Most Evenk families also qualify for low-income social benefits such as meals in kindergartens and schools, subsidies for transport of firewood to villages, allowances for utility payments, and a one-time allowance of 500 rubles per family.

I am sitting on a shaky stool. The rest of the furniture includes more stools of this sort, a sofa and a folding table. The walls are bare, though appear to have once been papered with a dark covering. Host and guests are gathered around the main object of note – a compact, almost-color TV that receives two or three channels. In spite of these bleak surroundings, Lyudmila Malchakitova, 60, an energetic Evenk pensioner, always gives her guests a warm and hearty welcome. Sipping tea with milk still warm from the family cow and nibbling on homemade wheat bread, we talk about life in the village.

“After perestroika, life became hard,” Malchakitova says. “…A 700 ruble pension – that’s our entire income. Transportation of firewood from the forest alone costs 350 rubles for the gasoline, payable up front.”

The main sources of income for settled Evenks living in villages are pensions (for officially retired people), which average 700-850 rubles ($25-30), or unemployment benefits. The second most important source of income is sales from hunting and farming. State subsidies and benefits come third.

The overwhelming majority of Evenk families live below the poverty line. A main reason for this is epidemic unemployment: their traditional livelihood stolen from them by collectivization, many rural Evenks do not have permanent jobs. According to the Chapo-Ologo administration, some 56-58% of Evenks in that village are jobless. The employment bureau tries to retrain villages as stokers or as low-level personnel in state organizations in the nearby villages of Chara and Ikabya. “The bureau provides jobs and special courses for jobs in Chara,” Simonova says. “Some – family men, for example – are uncomfortable with commuting to the town; others just don’t want to. There many families in the villages living below the poverty line, there are many orphans.”

Ayat Bidekellu Mutni Dunnedut!
(Evenk for “Welcome to our land!”), reads a multi-colored poster in the Chapo-Ologo secondary school. Behind the door of a small classroom, young Evenk language teacher Lyudmila Danilova shows us a bookcase neatly full of Evenk textbooks and dictionaries published in St. Petersburg, Yakutsk, and elsewhere.

“Learning Evenk today is harder than learning a foreign language,” says teacher Maria Syngalayeva, 45, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of the Peoples of the North and a teacher of Russian and Evenk languages and literature in Chapo-Ologo elementary school for over 20 years. “Children can learn words, but grammar is mastered only with great difficulty. Another problem is the lack of textbooks written in our dialect. We don’t understand textbooks based on the dialect spoken in the Evenkian Autonomous District [in the Krasnoyarsk region], and must translate textbooks with a dictionary… I offered a course of Evenk spoken language in our dialect, but neither children nor parents were interested in studying the language. How can we revive the culture if Evenks don’t know their own language?!”

Today, in spite of the efforts of teachers in the Chapo-Ologo school and in the Kuanda boarding school, where Evenk is a compulsory subject, it is very difficult to find an Evenk, especially among the young, who speaks the native language fluently. Why should the language of taiga hunters and reindeer herders be spoken when all around you, people are communicating in Russian? Children growing up in mixed families can’t speak Evenk at all.

A contributing factor to the loss of language is the low educational level among the Evenk population. According to the Chita regional administration, in 2004 Evenks in the region included 25 persons with higher education, 171 with secondary education, 88 with incomplete secondary education, 53 with vocational training, and 298 currently studying in schools. At the same time, of the 1,084 Evenk people living in Chita region, 42 percent did not have any education.

“Our cultural activity in respect to indigenous peoples of the North is oriented both on their own education and on the education of the rest of the local population, on its acquaintance with Evenk culture,” said Svetlana Roshkova, head of the Department of Culture of Kalar district administration. “We would like to establish connections with other northern districts, regions, and provinces. Unfortunately, there is no connection with the Evenkian Autonomous District [in Krasnoyarsk region], so, for now we maintain contacts with Buryatia and Amur Province.”

Thanks to efforts of Roshkova and others who are not indifferent to the fate of the Evenks, there are programs and events devoted to the traditional cultures of indigenous population. For instance, the Kalar Regional Museum has a permanent exhibition with about a hundred ancient objects of Evenk culture; the village of Kyust-Kemda is home to a regional Center of Evenkian National Culture, where Evenk children and grown ups learn to sew traditional clothes, make handicrafts out of reindeer bone, leather, and fur, and participate in an event called Motives of the North. Still, there is much more to be done. The Chita Oblast Administration has concluded that “the logistical base of cultural institutions is poorly equipped and well-worn; library collections require renovation and lack books in Evenk language.”

In our last day at the settlement on Chitkanda River, the weather cleared, as though inviting us to stay a bit longer in these untamed and less-than-welcoming expanses of the northern taiga. Soon after we leave, Alexei Gabyshev and the other Evenk nomads will pack for their trip to the autumnal pastures and mating grounds. They will prepare for the “big hunt,” testing the safety of their newly-built sledges, harness obstinate reindeer, and clean guns that have rested for the summer.

We are sitting with the herders in a windy tent in the mountains. After another card game, the conversation turns to life and plans for future. When asked if they will ever leave the taiga, Artyom Hegay exclaims, “Where? To the city?! I would die there. You really have to work there. I couldn’t work there.” Experienced herder Pyotr Kuzmin agrees, “Life has became harder in a village, you die even sooner there. One can only survive in the taiga.”  RL