Ice Fishing—Nikolai Shalugin, Yuri Shalugin, and Vyacheslav Shadrin | Yukaghir and The Climate | 2007 | 18 in. x 24 in.

November 2007, Yashachneya River, Sakha Republic, Siberia. In November 2007, on an assignment from Vanity Fair, Robert Thompson and I visited Nelemnoye, the Yukaghir community along the upper Kolyma River in the Sakha Republic of Siberia. The community depends on subsistence hunting and fishing. In addition to economic hardship due to climate change, decreased abundance and local and global extinctions of arctic–adapted fish species are projected for this century. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Yukaghir people occupied the vast and entire territory of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), which is the largest subnational entity in the world. For many reasons, including Tsarist expansion, Sovietization, disease, and the expansion of other indigenous tribes, the Yukaghir population has declined rapidly, and today they inhabit only two communities along the Kolyma River with total population of about fifteen hundred. From our hosts, Yakutsk–based Yukaghir cultural activist Vyacheslav Shadrin (right) and other community members, we learned that they are determined to revitalize both the Yukaghir language—now spoken by about eight people—and their traditional culture.