Support of Indigenous Peoples

About 460 members of indigenous ethnic groups (99 families) live in Gazpom Neft’s main upstream operations area around the city of Noyabrsk. Gazpom Neft's corporate policy is to sign economic agreements with each of these indigenous families. These agreements help us not only to provide financial and material support to these families, but also to get them involved in our activities.

We hold regular meetings with the leaders of indigenous communities to discuss the social assistance program developed by Gazpom Neft. Each year, we sponsor the Festival of Reindeer Herders to celebrate the arrival of spring - one of the most important events in the Nenets calendar.

We help to maintain a school in the town of Muravlenko dedicated to teaching indigenous children, and we pay for university education for members of indigenous communities. For many years, Noyabrskneftegas also supported a school in the regional capital of Salekhard dedicated to promoting the art and music of indigenous peoples.

The Nenets and the Khanty, who reside in colder climates, are renowned for their sense of direction and often work as inspectors, using snowmobiles to examine pipelines and check for damage. For this purpose, Gazpom Neft bought 80 Buran snowmobiles for Nenets and Khanty communities, who can now monitor and preserve the environment in their traditional lands.

Sibneft-Noyabrskneftegas allocates tens of millions of rubles to pay for foodstuffs, fuel, clothing, transport, building materials, medical care, tuition for schools and higher education, and for other efforts aimed at protecting indigenous lifestyles.

Nenets

The Nenets people inhabit the polar regions of northeastern Europe and northwestern Siberia, in an area that stretches from the White Sea in the west to the mouth of the Yenisei River in the east. Administratively, their traditional lands fall within the Nenets Autonomous District of the Arkhangelsk region and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District of the Tyumen region. Noyabrskneftegas operates in the latter district.

There are two main groups of Nenets -- the Tundra Nenets who live in the far north, and the Forest Nenets who live in the taiga regions further south. The Nenets are mainly reindeer breeders, hunters and fishermen. The reindeer represents their main source of food and transport. Nenets society was traditionally divided into clans, each with its own grazing, hunting and fishing lands, as well as nomadic routes.

The language of the Nenets belongs to the Finno-Ugric family of languages, and although there are a large number of dialects, most of them are mutually comprehensible. The Nenets for a long time used pictures to communicate, and identified their property using special family signs called tamga. The Nenets only developed a written language in 1932, when a spelling book called Jadei Vada, or "New World", was published, based on the Latin alphabet. Five years later, the Nenets switched to using the Cyrillic alphabet.

The ancestors of the modern day Nenets were the Northern Group of the Samoyeds, who moved to inhabit the polar regions just over 1,500 years ago. Native Arctic people who already inhabited the area were assimilated into the group. As the first Russian settlers arrived in the Arctic regions, the Nenets launched fierce attacks against the newcomers, who brought with them diseases to which the Nenets had not been exposed and who also tried to collect a fur tax. Relations between the Nenets and Russians improved with the spread of Christianity in the region during the 18th and 19th centuries.

After the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviet government proposed the creation of large reservations where indigenous peoples could continue their traditional lifestyles. But this policy was soon ditched in favor of the creation of a number of national districts named after indigenous peoples. The Yamal-Nenets Autonomus District was one of several such regions to be established.

The Nenets largely succeeded in continuing their traditional way of life until the end of the Second World War, when the Soviet government redoubled its efforts aimed at forcing the Nenets to abandon their nomadic life in favor of a settled existence. The upheaval of these years was difficult for the Nenets. The women, children and elderly were forcibly settled into villages, where they were eventually joined by the men. The government built large numbers of schools, hospitals and other facilities, mainly in an effort to tie people to a single location. There were several Nenets rebellions in the Arkhangelsk region in the early 1950s, but their leaders were either executed or banished to remote prison camps.

After the end of the war, increasing numbers of Russians moved into Siberia, which put a further strain on the traditional Nenets lifestyle. The large-scale development of oil and gas fields that began in the 1960s had a major impact on the Nenets, as many of the developments encroached on their traditional lands.

Khanty

The Khanty live in the lower reaches of northwestern Siberia, mainly in the Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Districts. The Khanty language is split into ten dialects and is closely related to the language of the Mansi people, who live in the same area.

The Khanty lifestyle was very similar to that of the Nenets - they led a nomadic existence, living largely off reindeer herding, hunting and fishing. The arrival of Russian fur traders in the late sixteenth century led to sporadic conflicts, particularly following the imposition of a fur tax. Further conflicts arose in the nineteenth century as a result of moves by Russians to take over land and fishing grounds inhabited by the Khanty.

The Bolshevik revolution brought far-reaching changes for the Khanty. The Khanty language was written down for the first time and books were published in the language. At the same time, the Soviet government forced the Khanty to abandon their traditional nomadic lifestyle in favor of fishing, hunting and reindeer breeding organized into collectives. The authorities also tried to crack down on Khanty who exercised their traditional spiritual beliefs.

The opening of new oil fields during the Soviet period resulted in substantial environmental damage to the Khanty's traditional lands. In order to protect their land, many Khanty joined environmental protest groups that were formed during the era of Perestroika.