I no longer understand the tundra that has loved me

Lidia Okotetto

Contents

Ulla Lehtinen: "Indigenous peoples and oil" events in Finland 1999 

Olli Tammilehto: A civilised world or a bloodsucker of the earth? 

Background information on oil 

Russia's oil production 

Florian Stammler: Where does our oil come from? 

Yeremei Aipin: Russia's oil industry and the development of rights of indigenous people 

Agrafena Sopochina: "We Live on what the earth carries on itself" 

Yuri Vella: Kogalym-Lor - the lake where a man died 

Bruce Forbes: Industrial development in the Yamal-Nenets Area 

Lidia Okotetto: I no longer understand the tundra that has loved me

Grigorii Anagurichi: A clash of civilisations at the ends of the world 

Charity Nenebari Ebeh: The Ogoni experience 

Magda Lanuza: Oil production in Central America 

Ecuador and oil 

Arturo Yumbai Iligama: The war against the poor 

Colombia, the U'wa and oil 

Roberto Afanador Cobaria: Oil is blood of the earth 

Workshop 1: The strategies of oil industry and the responses of indigenous peoples' movements 

Workshop 2: Networking of indigenous peoples threatened by oil and gas exploration 

Workshop 3: Northern Dimension

Communique of the participants in the seminar "Indigenous Peoples and Oil" 

Internet links

I am the oldest child. I have been up to the seventh grade in school and it had to be made very quickly because I was in a hurry to help my parents. Later on I could have continued to a university but I could not go there because my parents had 12 younger children. I had to go to work. 

In 1965 I began my main job as a veterinary technician in the tundra. I got married to a reindeer owner and have lived and herded reindeers in the freezing winter temperatures and warm summers. In March or April when the temperatures begin to rise we set off again to the coast.

The significance of women in reindeer herding should not be underestimated. When men got into war, woman folk were left to move with reindeers and take the children with them. On many occasions the men did not return from the war, and the task of reindeer herding was then left entirely on the women's shoulders. 

Previously birds that migrated to our region stood near our camps and were not afraid of us. They were friendly and we did not try to scare them off either. A living animal is sacred to us because it guarantees us life in the tundra. A bird is only killed when it is needed. When we can longer obtain meat from reindeers in the spring, we eat birds. Reindeers change their fur in the spring and so they cannot be killed at that time. Then the Nenets eat birds. This time occurs about two weeks after the birds arrive. At the time they can be hunted. After that we don't need them for food and they become protected and sacred. Killing birds in the autumn is the cardinal sin because at that time the birds need to fly to warm areas, teach their little ones how to fly there and come back.

For hundreds of years we have seen how there has been plenty of game during the autumn. Every Nenets family prepares for the winter and acquires fur for the purpose of winter clothing. Hunting, fishing and rearing reindeer is all we have. Nothing grows at our place and that is why we have to live according to the manners of the tundra. Nenets kill reindeers in the autumn for clothing purposes. Different kinds of animals are hunted during different seasons for different pieces of clothing.

Because I have lived so long in the tundra, I feel I know the tundra. I know the sky above me. I know the grounds that I move on. I know the sea. The tundra is my poetry.

Ten years ago something strange began to fall from the sky. When for the first time we heard this noise in a camp of 16 people we woke up the children and we fled. We saw flying fire in the sky, we took the children in our arms and we fled somewhere else. While we were running in one direction, it felt like something was falling there. When we were running in the other direction, the noise felt the same. This is still continuing, and even to this day in our region, these metal pieces are everywhere.

It feels like our government is benefiting this. When planning these events they try to move us elsewhere by helicopter. When they come, we gather our needed belongings and they take us into their camps. We are held there for some time until they take us back to our own camps.

I don't quite understand what this is all about and no one has explained to us. The land on which I have lived and that has sustained me... I don't quite understand the land, neither do I know what is happening to it1.

Last year we noticed that intestines were gushing out of the reindeers. The reindeers were running and the intestines were hanging between their legs. Until last year we had never seen that in thirty years. At first we noticed it from one reindeer and we thought that it had had some natural injury, and so we did not ant further notice. We just killed it and noticed that stomach had got rotten. After some time we found similar things with other reindeers and we decided to study them. When we operated a reindeer in connection with the study, the odour was terrible. We have never seen that before and don't know the cause of it. 

Due to that phenomenon we lost 18 reindeers last year and 26 this year. I have reported this to the veterinary doctor in our region. No one has taken note of my complaints and presumable would take note only when we have lost all the reindeers.

My surname Okotetto means many reindeers, and surely that's what I am. I have my own private reindeers, and in addition to that I work in the state sovkhoz where there are 14,700 reindeers. This inventory was made on 1 of January, 1999. It is our tax declaration and in accordance with that I give meat away to the state. A year ago, the state still had 16,600 reindeers.

Oil and gas exploration is a significant cause for the worrying decline in the number of reindeers. The animals certainly had illnesses before but our means to handle them have decreased. Herding has been made more difficult by the intensive use of the land. Oil transportation needs railways, which of course have a certain amount of positive significance. This, however, breaks up the land and the reduction of the reindeer stock has been unprecedentedly rapid. One dangerous factor is that the animals in the spring eat grass that grows in the polluted areas. Some die right away. Others fall ill, and the effects emerge in others only the following year. Those with the latter past the infection onto their offspring

The water and land give off bad smell here and there. Is the rapid diminishing of the animal stock an indication that very soon the polluted areas will not be limited to isolated places? Soon clean water and land will be found only in a few places. The river that has provided me water all my life no longer has potable water.

Railways are being constructed in our region, even though the economic crisis that hit Russia has slowed down the work process. But the fish that has earlier swum in our clean river are no longer edible. Fish is destroyed within a radius of about 40 kilometres in surrounding area where railways are being constructed. We don't know the cause.

Our ancestors and those old people still alive have told us that gas is the breath of the earth. The earth cannot live without breathing and be without air just like human beings. When air is taken out of a human being, the stomach sticks to the back and such a person cannot live. That is why our view is that if gas is being pumped out of the land, sooner than later the earth will collapse.

Oil gives birth to gas. It is like fat of the land that holds together the surface of the earth. The earth on which we move, breathe and work. 

We have not prepared for coming of a new civilisation that influences us strongly. A meeting like this, with neighbouring indigenous peoples and the exchange of opinions already slightly prepares us towards its arrival. When workers of the oil and gas companies come, we try to make an agreement with them. We try to construct human relations so that they would not be so caustic. However, we cannot manage without our indigenous means of livelihood.

Nowadays we also move around with motor sledges and we need petrol. And if we need petrol, we need oil. That is why we are of the opinion that oil companies can take something from our land but without damaging what we have lived on for hundreds of years.

Civilisation is certainly a good idea. The railway companies have promised us golden skirts if they come to the tundra. I don't know if we shall receive golden skirts but when the railway came, the following happened: we left our winter items at a certain designated place according to tradition, and our summer needs at another, as we have always done. When we came in the autumn our huts were destroyed or stolen, or then the covers on our belongings were taken for some other purposes and everything got rotten.

Our youth have also largely been negatively influenced. All have not completed school. Parents want to help their children at school but our children have abandoned their traditions. We have very many young people who cannot live in the new civilisation and yet cannot also live our traditional life. Of course, one must have a lot of pity of them.

Lidia Okotetto lives a traditional nomadic life. She is a reindeer technician, and known by the name of Mrs. Reindeer Herding. So far, no gas and oil are being produced in her region on the Yamal Peninsula. On the other side of the Ob Bay, gas fields are already being exploited. On the peninsula however, three large gas fields and a dozen smaller ones have been discovered. In addition a large deposit has been found in the sea. Preparations are being made to exploit them.

1. Evidently the issue in question is the rocket tests that Russia is conducting over the Yamal Peninsula (ed. note).