NIKOLAI SHALUGIN, YURI SHALUGIN AND VYACHESLAV SHADRIN |
Yukaghir and The Climate | 2007 | 18x24 inches

The Yukaghir people of Nelemnoye in the Verkne Kolymsk region (upper Kolyma River) primarily depend on subsistence hunting and fishing. The village of Nelemnoye is along the Yashachneya River which provide plenty of fish for the community. While the Yukaghir people of Nelemnoye are primarily hunters, but there aren't enough elk (which in Alaska is called moose, over there it is called elk) to provide adequate meat for everyone in Nelemnoye and so the primary subsistence food is fish. Climate change as predicted by the scientific community may have severe impact on the local fish and thereby on the Yukaghir culture. Decreased abundance and local and global extinctions of arctic-adapted fish species are projected for this century. Southernmost species are projected to shift northward, competing with northern species for resources. The broad whitefish, Arctic char, and Arctic cisco are particularly vulnerable to displacement as they are wholly or mostly northern in their distribution. As water temperatures rise, spawning grounds for cold-water species will shift northward and are likely to be diminished. As southerly species move northward, they may introduce new parasites and diseases to which arctic fish are not adapted, increasing the risk of death for arctic species. The implications of these changes for both commercial and subsistence fishing in far northern areas are potentially devastating as the most vulnerable species are often the only fishable species present. Yukaghir culture is the oldest and most endangered indigenous community in Siberia. At the end of the eighteenth century the Yukaghir people occupied the vast and the entire territory of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), which is the largest sub-national entity in the world and is roughly the size of Western Europe. Due to many reasons of Tsarist expansion, Sovietization, disease and expansion of other indigenous tribes the Yukaghir population has declined massively and today they inhabit only two communities along the Kolyma River, the community of Nelemnoye in the Verkne Kolymsk region (upper Kolyma) and the Nizhne Kolymsk region (lower Kolyma). The fish that Nikolai Shalugin caught during our visit is primarily broad whitefish with some grayling and two lingcods. Subhankar Banerjee's Siberia visit in November 2007 was made possible by an assignment from the Vanity Fair magazine. The story appeared in May 2008 issue with text by Alex Shoumatoff. | READ ONLINE