Ziker

In the Taimyr Autonomous Region, an Arctic sub-unit of Krasnoyarskii Krai, in central Siberia, a variety of property relations have taken form in indigenous communities since the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991. Two types of property established during the Soviet period, including both formally assigned territories and common-pool zones immediately surrounding each village, have been augmented by a third type. The newest arrangement, termed the 'family-clan holding' and more recently 'territory of traditional nature-use', is based on a formal claim with the state. While these arrangements and other legal measures have been adopted in recent years to promote the interests of indigenous Siberian communities in the post-Soviet period, collective bargaining with the regional government has been weak for lack of money and expertise, and thus, few people have ventured to make formal land claims. In addition, the collapsing state-sponsored rural economy in the Taimyr Region after 1991 has favored indigenous subsistence hunting and fishing as the preeminent mode of production. Concomitant changes in property relations have occurred. Two primary questions were asked: 1) What conditions favor the transformation of assigned territories into commonly held territories? And 2) Why is it that formal land claims (clan holdings) are not very widespread among an indigenous population pursuing an agenda of self-determination vis-à-vis a national government?

John Ziker (center) with Dolgan and Nganasan hunters at Körölül Hopka
(Lookout Hill) in the common hunting grounds surrounding Ust Avam. Ilja Bezrukikh (left), a Dolgan who procured the caribou, transferred all the meat to Dima Chunanchar (right), a Nganasan who does not own a
firearm.

A total of twelve months of field research took place in and around the settlement of Ust Avam between 1994 and 1997. In 2001, a return visit for four months allowed me to update the situation there. Currently, both Dolgan and Nganasan people inhabit Ust Avam (population 665) and the surrounding tundra, along with a minority of non-natives from other parts of the former Soviet Union. Ethnographic study and participant observation were combined with socio-demographic survey in Ust Avam and archival research in the regional capital, Dudinka, to evaluate the costs and benefits of each type of property relation. On some 120 foraging excursions with Dolgan and Nganasan hunters, I documented production techniques and use of renewable resources. Structured interviews among 79 of 164 households in Ust Avam included questions on the topics of economic exchange, family land-use history, sharing patterns, incomes, consumption requirements, and emographics.

Results

My book, Peoples of the Tundra: Native Siberians in the Post-Communist Transition, published by Waveland Press, Inc. in 2002, is an ethnography of the Avam District Dolgan and Nganasan. The monograph is meant as a text for introductory courses in social and cultural anthropology, human ecology, medical anthropology, and area courses on circumpolar peoples and Northern Asia/Former Soviet Union. Currently, I am working on several article manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals at various stages of completion, concerning property relations, food sharing, and demographics in indigenous communities in the Taimyr Autonomous Region.

"Raw and Cooked in Arctic Siberia," published in the fall 2002 issue of Nutritional Anthropology discusses variation of Dolgan and Nganasan food consumption patterns in terms of seasonality, gender differences, and location.

Only a few elderly men still use the traditional *vetka* (canoe) to check their fishnets and travel on the Avam River. This fisherman, Dmitri Andreevich Antsiferov, fished this way up to his death in 2001.

Land tenure and entitlements: Results described in a forthcoming article. A number of factors when examined together appear to favor common property and traditional management, including: ancestral frames of morality and access; cross-cutting kin relationships; principles of ownership and mutual aid; cooperative hunting; sharing of meat and fish; as well as migration patterns of prey species and relative increases in the cost of freight transport since 1991. Boundaries of hunting territories and favorite spots in common pool hunting grounds are not defended as private property. Rather, social boundaries, maintained through cooperation of close bilateral kin and other local hunters, are implemented to ensure entitlements to resource flows. Non-local people are the most likely not to be included in user groups.