There are many points revealed by this work of significance for research into post-Soviet conditions for the "small peoples" of the Russian North.  A wide array of economic structures empower and constrain their subsistence and living conditions, and these range far beyond the usually noted sovkhoz, kolkhoz, and obshchina forms.  The same structural terms, are often used interchangeably, when in fact the actual structure at hand may be quite distinct from any of them.  New forms evolve, but prior forms also remain intact.  Often stakeholders hardly know what their encompassing economic structure is, or how it is meant to function.  How things actually function bears little resemblance to how they are supposed to function according to laws and regulations.

The Russian State has declared ownership of all its lands, and as the State needs revenues, it is of course prone to dispense resources to those multi-million dollar businesses eager to exploit traditional landscapes. Under harsh economic pressure, the State has withdrawn its supportive infrastructure to the far-flung native settlements it once created, unless these are of use as nodes in the service of extractive industry.  As the State removes its formerly protective hand and opens the door to foreign investment (in partnership with Russian firms, of course), native settlements are abandoned or sink to their knees.  Local indigenous organizations that try to win sympathy for indigenous claims will lead a tenuous existence. They might well win some short-term subsidy gesture for promotion of cultural activities.  For a number of the lingering settlements we visited, however, they are likely to become "ghost towns", and their inhabitants have frequently already established family roots in the larger cities where chances of employment are better.  However, "outside" workers with better education gain the best positions in the settlement.  Most outsiders contract for only a few years and, because of their "hardship posting" are able to advance their careers dramatically and return south with much improved pension plans.  Former rural-dwelling families increasingly split their residence patterns between those who rely on the infrastructure of the larger cities and those who still access their local, land-based, food resources.  Commonly these split-living arrangements generate an ever-increasing gender asymmetry with women and children in the larger towns and men on the tundra.

There are a great many other developments and issues following in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union for the small peoples of the north, which cannot all be recounted here.  These pertain not only to resource extraction but also to census politics, involving the federal recognition of certain peoples and the lands designated for the exercise of each people’s special rights, but also by extension, matters concerning an individual’s accredited ethnicity—the reasons for aspiring to a particular ethnicity, as well as the rules for ascribed ethnicity .  CLUE researchers have also documented and analyzed changes in language use, belief systems and formal religious affiliations.  Team members have published extensively on all of these issues.

The CLUE project has found these northern communities in a decisive period of rapid direct human induced change--at speeds far in excess of what one can account for under the rubric of "rapid climatic change." This in no way diminishes the importance of research into the causes and effects of rapid climate change, but it does in turn occasion important theoretical reflection about the perspectives of contemporary research devoted to these (and other) peoples.  Crass greed camouflages itself readily in the forest of environmentally noble policies and utilitarian ideals.

Last Modified: 10/31/2016
Modified by: Hugh Beach