Nganasan People

Nganasan People

The Nganasans are an indigenous Samoyedic people inhabiting the Taymyr Peninsula in north Siberia. In the Russian Federation, they are recognized as being one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North. They reside primarily in the settlements of Ust-Avam, Volachanka, and Novaya in the Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, with smaller populations residing in the towns of Dudinka and Norilsk as well.

The Nganasans are thought to be the descendants of Paleo-Siberian peoples who were culturally assimilated by Samoyedic migrants from the south and went on to absorb various neighboring Tungusic peoples. The Nganasans were traditionally a semi-nomadic people whose main form of subsistence was wild reindeer hunting, in contrast to the related Nenets, who herded reindeer. Beginning in the early 17th century, the Nganasans were subjected to the yasak system of Czarist Russia. They lived relatively independently, until the 1970s, when they were settled in the villages they live in today, which are at the southern edges of the Nganasans' historical nomadic routes.

There is no certainty as to the exact number of Nganasans living in Russia today. The 2002 Russian census counted 862 Nganasans living in Russia, 766 of whom lived in the former However, those who study the Nganasan estimate their population to comprise approximately 1000 people. Historically, the Nganasan language and a Taymyr Pidgin Russian were the only languages spoken among the Nganasan, but with increased education and village settlement, Russian has become the first language of many Nganasans and the Dolgan language is also spoken by some Nganasans who live in mixed villages such as Ust'-Avam. The Nganasan language is considered seriously endangered and it is estimated that at most 500 Nganasan can speak the Nganasan language, with very limited profiency among those eighteen and younger.