Description
The Nenets (sometimes spelled Nenets) are a Samoyedic indigenous people of Russia living near the Arctic Circle. They constitute the largest of the 26 ethnic groups of Siberia. Nenets means man in the Nenets language. Their traditional activities are reindeer herding and fishing. Highly nomadic, their camps rarely stay in the same place for more than a week. The land of the Nenets is one of tundra and coniferous forest, a permafrost terrain with numerous rivers and vast marshy areas. Along the banks of the Ob River, Nenets settlements border the dense forest zone of the Siberian taiga. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Nenets underwent a policy of forced assimilation and collectivization. They were forced to abandon their nomadic life by settling in state collective farms, the kolkhozes.