The Vanishing Nomads Of The Siberian Tundra. Who Are They?

[00:00:12][laughter] >> Roman Silkin is a descendant of the Tundra [music] Enets. He is a true Onay Enchu, a real man.

[00:00:35]He speaks the authentic language and remembers the traditions of the ancestors.

[00:00:40]Now there are less than 30 descendants of the Tundra [music] Enets in Taimyr.

[00:00:45]Are you ready?

[00:00:49]Hurry up.

[00:00:53]>> [crying] >> Check that we have taken everything we need.

[00:00:58]The lasso and the harness so that we don't have to look for them later.

[00:01:06]And don't forget the gun. Do you hear me?

[00:01:09]Don't forget the gun.

[00:01:11]Listening to the father and his son having a conversation, [music] it's not easy to tell that they speak different languages, yet they do.

[00:01:19]And it's not [music] because of the generation gap.

[00:01:22]There's a different reason.

[00:01:26]I have four sons.

[00:01:29]Ivan is the eldest.

[00:01:31]There are also Kostya and Maxim.

[00:01:35]Ivan went to school only for 1 year.

[00:01:38]Maxim for 7 years.

[00:01:41]And Kostya for 9 years.

[00:01:45]Another son is still a schoolboy.

[00:01:49]My wife lives with him in the city.

[00:01:51]She's a Nenets, not Enets. And she raised the children her own way while I was looking after the reindeer here.

[00:02:01]>> [laughter] >> Have you played enough? I'll be finished soon.

[00:02:19]All right, let me show you how to make a proper lasso.

[00:02:24]Watch and learn.

[00:02:27]First you throw one rope over, then the [music] second one and pull it.

[00:02:32]Pull it harder so that the lasso gets stronger. That's it. Like this. Don't hurry.

[00:02:38]The children of Roman communicate with each other in the Nenets language.

[00:02:42]It differs from the language of their father in a similar way that German differs from [music] Dutch.

[00:02:47]That's why misunderstandings happen all the time. For example, the lasso, an indispensable [music] tool for any reindeer herdsman, is tinzyan in Nenets and chedy in the Yenets language. Today it is impossible to find out the origin of these words.

[00:03:03]But no matter how they call it, every family has their own signature style of making a lasso.

[00:03:10]You have to weave it carefully so that the ropes are tightly bound together.

[00:03:14]You see, that's how my father taught me to do it.

[00:03:18]Here, touch it.

[00:03:19]When you grow up, you'll learn how to do it and you'll also learn to catch reindeer. Let's go, I'll show you how to throw a lasso.

[00:03:37]We have been raising our children the tundra since they were 5 years old.

[00:03:41]We take them with us when we move from one place to another.

[00:03:45]I want to focus on my grandson now to give him everything that I taught my children.

[00:03:52]But most importantly, to teach in the language.

[00:03:56]Tell him the old legends.

[00:03:58]Show him the sacred mountain where the Enets were hiding away from the flood.

[00:04:02]Now we are like a small river mixing with ocean waters.

[00:04:23]>> [music] >> The tundra of Taharta region became homeland for the Silken family only in the beginning of the last century.

[00:04:31]>> [music] >> Back then, some of the Enets, in an attempt to escape the famine and smallpox epidemics, moved to the north.

[00:04:38]Others traveled to the south where their ancestors [music] met new neighbors.

[00:04:52]The first disturbing results of the forced migration of the Enets were registered in 1930 by Soviet ethnographers.

[00:04:59]The members of the scientific expedition to the Taymyr Peninsula. They counted as many as 482 tribe members.

[00:05:07]It was four times less than it had been registered in the records of the 18th century.

[00:05:12]Such a rapid extinction happened because the neighboring Nenets tribes involved the most imperceptible form of assimilation.

[00:05:19]In other words, the reason was the increasing number of marriages between the Enets and the Nenets.

[00:05:33]First, the Enets started to forget their traditional winter outfit.

[00:05:38]For example, this overcoat called sakui.

[00:05:42]While the winter isn't over, this is to be put on when it's It's Shall I put it on?

[00:05:48]The fur horn, made from the reindeer tail, no longer tops the hood of this overcoat. From ancient times, it used to be a distinctive embellishment of the Nenets. It symbolized a man's virility and served as a protective charm in extremely cold weather.

[00:06:04]This is used when the temperature is [music] around minus 70.

[00:06:07]At minus 60, you can sleep outside in it.

[00:06:14]Unfortunately, Roman doesn't have a traditional [music] overcoat.

[00:06:19]All the Nenets clothing was gradually replaced with the clothes of the ancestors of [music] his Nenets wife.

[00:06:26]Thus, the tradition of the Nenets people [music] is coming to an end.

[00:06:41]The only possible [music] way to feel the spirit of the past times is to look at the photos of the early 20th century.

[00:06:48]>> [music] >> Back then, ancient patterns were used.

[00:06:52]Women made their clothing following the traditions [music] of their mothers. Men made dog sleighs and built reindeer skin tents [music] the way their fathers had made them.

[00:07:01]They lived according to the laws of the tundra, >> [music] >> where Ona Niga was the only real god.

[00:07:19]In the summer, the descendants of the Nenets move around the tundra with their reindeer skin tents. But in the winter, they move into fixed structured shelters that are placed on the sleighs.

[00:07:31]First, they appeared in the 1930s. In one of such winter shelters lives Lydia, Roman's sister, together with her daughter, the daughter's sick husband, and little Nadia.

[00:07:42]The old woman is teaching her granddaughter some basic traditional skills. [music] >> Grandma.

[00:07:50]What are you doing?

[00:07:52]I'm making stroganina. [music] You're not slicing it very well. Why?

[00:07:58]Because I can't do it that way.

[00:08:09]Well, then watch me.

[00:08:12]>> [music] >> When I grow up, I will do that.

[00:08:20]Like your grandmother does, right?

[00:08:22]>> Stroganina is frozen reindeer meat.

[00:08:26]It's the oldest Nenets traditional [music] dish. It is easy to cook.

[00:08:29]The secret is to slice the meat the right way.

[00:08:32]According to a thousand-year-old tradition, it is exclusively [music] made by a woman who manages the entire household.

[00:08:39]A woman is respectfully called [music] the mistress of the house, the guardian of the hearth.

[00:08:45]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Like it has been done for centuries, the food reserves are kept outside on the sleighs.

[00:09:06]This is a natural and very reliable fridge.

[00:09:16]We store all food here.

[00:09:19]Tea, sugar, everything, actually.

[00:09:24]In the summer, we have to buy a lot because we cannot get to the village in the winter.

[00:09:32]We have no transport. No helicopters.

[00:09:36]So, we buy things in the summer in advance while there's still no snow. We need to buy a lot before the snow falls.

[00:09:43]Flour, sugar, tea, the essentials, and some butter maybe.

[00:09:48]We wrap butter in reindeer skin so that it doesn't melt.

[00:09:54]>> [music] [music] >> In the absence of the mistress, the tent turns into a tea house on sleighs.

[00:10:12]This is how [music] the Enets prefer to spend their spare time nowadays.

[00:10:16]Although this tea drinking tradition has recently [music] appeared.

[00:10:26]>> [music] >> In the 1930s, the Soviets introduced the program for the far north development.

[00:10:32][music] It was aimed at civilizing this territory.

[00:10:36]The so-called [music] northern supply hall consisted in regular supplies of food to the remote areas of the country.

[00:10:43]>> [music] >> Those areas included the lands of the Taimyr Enets who were first [music] in their history introduced to the benefits of civilization.

[00:10:52]In exchange for those [music] goods, the reindeer herdsmen had to quit their nomadic lifestyle and forget the language in which they had [music] prayed to Oney N'ga since ancient times.

[00:11:03]The god who once gave them the tundra and the reindeer.

[00:11:26]The nomads didn't make use of the gifts of the mainland, but they did lose their language.

[00:11:33]Probably the only one who's continuing to speak the forgotten language of the ancestors is the elder Silkin.

[00:12:10]My sons don't know it. I speak my language and my sons don't understand me.

[00:12:19]I have no one to talk to.

[00:12:24]So I also start to forget it.

[00:12:28]A young chap came here from Moscow. He somehow learned to speak my language. He used a dictionary to learn it. He found it somewhere and just learned the language.

[00:12:40]The young chap from Moscow turned out to be a young language major from the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences. Not only did he describe [music] the dialects of the tundra and forest Enets, he also managed to decipher the phonetic code of the modern Enets language.

[00:12:54]>> [music] >> In 2009, I joined an expedition to the Takharder region with the veterinary doctors who [music] would come here to vaccinate the reindeer.

[00:13:05]And a very remarkable thing happened to me when one of the people told me, "I got used to talking to you in my own language."

[00:13:13]You do understand me. Oh, when I start to speak in front of my nephews, I know they don't understand what I'm saying.

[00:13:20]And I thought there is a chance that in the end of my life, I'll be the only one left who is familiar with this dialect.

[00:13:30]Andrei Shluwinsky is in some way a pioneer of the 21st century.

[00:13:34]>> [music] >> The results of his research are not new land on the modern map of the world, but instead they help to fill in the blanks on the map of universal human culture.

[00:13:43]In this virtual world, he does what he calls a linguistic archaeology.

[00:13:47]>> [music] >> The Enets language belongs to the Uralic linguistic family. It has a more developed case system, although it's not all that complex in the Enets language as in Russian or German. It has a diverse system of the verb modes.

[00:14:02]They use the same verb to denote to leave and to become. For example, I became [music] old.

[00:14:13]Which literally means I was old when I left.

[00:14:18]I think it's beautiful. I really like it.

[00:14:21]>> [music] >> In fact, a language survey can reveal much more about the history of the Enets than archaeological excavations.

[00:14:34]>> [music] >> According to the results of the linguistic research, the modern Enets language developed in several stages.

[00:14:41]The traces of the oldest language were found in the Eastern Sayan Mountains, where a single proto-language had existed [music] up until the 1st century BC. At the same time, the indigenous population of the Sayan Mountains, pressurized by the tribes from [music] the south, were forced to leave the area and move up the Yenisei River.

[00:15:01]That's how the history of the Samoyedic languages started, when a single people with a single language spread along the banks of the great Siberian River.

[00:15:10]That's [music] how the Selkups, the Nenets, the Nganasans, and the Enets emerged. People of the Yenisei River sharing the same family of languages which became their symbolic tree of life.

[00:15:21]There is a certain paradox to the fact that primarily popular languages are studied. Even among so-called exotic or rare languages, the priority is given to those which are spoken by bigger populations. The smallest ones are researched last.

[00:15:39]On the other hand, from the point of view of urgency, rare languages should be given priority.

[00:15:47]By contrast with the majority of popular languages, Enets was an oral language.

[00:15:52]There were no manuals or grammar books published, and most importantly, it was spoken less and less.

[00:16:00]We listen to the stories of various people and write them down with transcription signs.

[00:16:06]These signs denote the sounds of the language.

[00:16:11]We can >> [music] >> literally hear the words when we read such records.

[00:16:19]Scientists have [music] designed the specialized software to make transcription automatically. Here, just have a look.

[00:16:48]The researcher is sure that the preservation of any nation depends on the ability of the people to preserve the language of their past.

[00:16:56]We have our own letters, the "ng" for example.

[00:17:01]Have you heard it? A letter "ng".

[00:17:03]There's no such letter in Russian.

[00:17:05]It looks like "h", "h" with a little curl at the end.

[00:17:11]It takes three Latin letters to write it, "ng".

[00:17:15]The war.

[00:17:16]I'm talking about don't have anything of the kind.

[00:17:21]>> [music] >> To this old man, this is more than a letter.

[00:17:25]This is what created the entire universe.

[00:17:29]The god in Enets means god.

[00:17:33]Onay N'ga, a true god, stands for the power which gave birth to the tundra and to words.

[00:17:41]The god who gave these people the ability [music] to speak.

[00:17:54]It has happened that this language has become the key and the only treasure of this small group of people who are gradually [music] dissolving into the tundra.

[00:18:05]Roman >> [music] >> likes to tell his grandson about his ancestors in the evenings.

[00:18:14]He calls his [music] grandson Dalay, which means a small white stone.

[00:18:21]We >> [music] >> have a sacred place on the other side of the tundra.

[00:18:27]It [music] is called Kaga N'ga, which means the ridge of god.

[00:18:32]Long ago, god N'ga created the first [music] people on earth.

[00:18:36]But soon they forgot about him.

[00:18:43]>> [music] >> And so, N'ga decided to destroy all humankind by flooding the entire earth.

[00:18:52]They say that only one mountain survived the big flood.

[00:18:57]Somewhere over the [music] horizon, that's the N'ga ridge, from where the Enets spread out to all the corners of the world.

[00:19:08]>> [music] >> The past and the future easily and naturally interweave in the language of the forgotten [music] ancestors.

[00:19:16]There's only one question.

[00:19:18]Is there a place [music] for this language in the future?

[00:19:22]And what the world will lose if it sinks [music] into oblivion with all its gods and legends?

[00:19:29]>> [music] >> We are used to the extinctions of certain biological species like some insects and we consider it a great loss.

[00:20:05]Those insects don't mean much to us.

[00:20:09]I won't argue with the fact that it is a loss, but what we have here is a similar process. When a small language becomes extinct, it is equally a great loss to the planet. In fact, the loss that is all the more tragic as it is a loss of a human species of us, not insects.

[00:20:29]The Enets may soon become such an extinct species of people.

[00:20:34]And it's not because there are only 200 of them left.

[00:20:38]But because there are fewer and fewer true people among them. The Onee and Choo. Those who persevere in speaking the language of their ancestors despite the winds of change in the tundra. They are not part of the past. They live in the present here and now. [music] It has been and will be this way while the Onee and Choo hear the name of their creator Onee Niga whispered by the winds blowing over their land.

[00:21:08]>> [music]