To drink blood or not to drink?

All members of the TV2 crew answered this question unequivocally: drink! For northern peoples, reindeer blood is medicine, vitamins, and food. Expedition TV2 returned from Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.

Photo: Vyacheslav Balashev

21st century nomad? What is he like? We tried to find the answer to this question by visiting the camp where his grandson continues the work of Yuri Vella. Yuri Valla is a famous Nenets poet. He defended the rights of indigenous peoples when oil workers came to the ancestral lands where the forest Nenets lived and grazed deer from century to century. Yuri Valla died eight years ago. Now his grandson Kolchu lives in his camp.

It took us three days by car to get to Varyogan, which is located in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. Plus, in order to get to the camp itself, our film crew had to make a detour of 280 kilometers and overcome three checkpoints. A local guide was with us. Eduard Karymov is the son-in-law of Yuri Valla. Otherwise they wouldn’t have let me in at all.

Photo: Alexander Sakalov

- Now a person has a car, a snowmobile. Now so many deer are no longer needed. And there is no land for this to support a hundred heads. You keep fifteen heads for the soul, so as not to forget your roots.

— So you pass through three checkpoints, do you feel like the owner of these places?

“But we don’t feel at all, the main thing is that we miss it.” How can you prove to them that this is our land? They have their own laws, their own orders. The security guard has his own regulations. Although he came to us with his charter. We don't go to him. We have lived here on our own land for centuries.

— From Varjogan to the camp it is 120 kilometers directly by snowmobile. In the summer, when you urgently need to get there, you can request a helicopter, the oil workers pay for it. A certain number of hours according to the contract. When they want to put a drilling rig near the camp, they come and sign an agreement.

- So this is payment for the land?

- Yes. Although the land is state owned in any case. You call, order a helicopter, they send it. You can go by car, but there are 700 kilometers around there. Where we are going now is swamps.

For grazing lands, oil workers pay reindeer herders with roads, fuel, electricity and cellular communications. So the camp of the 21st century is not the same as it was ten years ago. Kolchu’s eldest son, six-year-old Matvey, is already a TikToker. Next door to Kolchu, a famous blogger who hosts the “Diary of a Hunt” lives and grazes deer. This is the young generation of modern reindeer herders. They prefer snowmobiles, which are also given to them by oil workers. The only thing that remains unshakable is the deer. This is the basis of the life of the camp and its meaning. True, now Kolchu sells venison, skins, and antlers through Avito.

The Nenets and Khanty are two indigenous peoples living nearby. And already quite mixed. Kolchu is a Forest Nenets. His wife Irina is Khanty. Kolchu can distinguish a Nenets from a Khant, if he does not know him, only by language. The languages ​​are different. Nenets belongs to the Samoyed group of Uralic languages, and Khanty to the Ugric.

Each film has its own complexity. This is how to show the real life of the camp without hurting the feelings of those who prefer to think that meat is sold immediately as steaks in supermarkets. Or those who will probably be outraged by the “barbaric” local traditions... But we solved this moral dilemma for ourselves in the TV2 Expedition project a long time ago. What we see is what we eat. That is, we show life as it is. Whether someone likes her or not.

The TV2 Expeditions film about the modern camp and the legacy of Yuri Vella will be released on YouTube in mid-March. Indigenous peoples are one of the favorite topics of the “Departing Nature” project. We have already talked about the Shors, Selkups, Teleuts, Telengits, Chelkans, Chulyms, Mansi. All films of the “Departing Nature” project can be viewed here.

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And today, March 4, at 7 p.m. live on Instagram TV2, we, journalist Yulia Korneva and cameraman Alexander Sakalov, will talk about the expeditions we just returned from and about future films.