Oil Threatens Nenets - Russia

May 1996
On the Arctic plains, the Nenet tribespeople are gathering for a unique festival. Skidding across the frozen Tundra in sleds pulled by furry reindeer, they celebrate an antique culture which Communism failed to destroy. After herding reindeer through the white daylight hours, they shelter from the Arctic freeze in leather Tee Pees, eating raw fish and drinking frozen streamwater. But as the elders crouch by their smoky fires, they talk anxiously about a multi-billion dollar pipeline project. American oil giant Amoco and the Russian Gazprom pose the biggest threat to their nomadic lifestyle since Stalin. Timofei, a Nenet leader, is despondent: 'they will take all the gas and leave all the rubbish'. Promises by the oil companies to preserve the landscape are viewed with scepticism. Gifts are treated with suspicion. But independent observers fear that financial bribes might eventually ruin the Nenets once and for all. An intimate document of Nenet culture as it faces the lure of development.

Produced by ABC Australia
Distributed by Journeyman Pictures

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Nenets
• Arctic
• plains
• tribes
• Communism
• oil
• companies
• Journeyman
• Pictures
• wipe
• out
• land
• preservation
• news
• documentary
• current affairs
• journeyman
• journeyman pictures

[kavePizzaHunter]

5*

but translating the interviews?

[gatheringleaves]

Are they still like this today?

[CrazyNative4]

cool

[ohidalgoe]

money is the problem, people of this tribe might get tempted, and live in a more "modern" lifestyle.

[myrddinistheshit]

are they still living there?

[the0th]

it's funny how this documentary says bad things about communism yet it's clearly capitalism that will most likely lead to the extinction of the lifestyle of these people.

[TheStaticage01]

Isn't there a Steven Stagal movie about this shit?...fuckin American geologist working for big oil...a decent and honorable study turned into some fucked up form of exploitation to more naitive people! Its not like oil money and educated white americans didn't fuck the naitive populations of our country over...now they are going over to Russia and fuck their Indians over too? FIGHT EM!

[flyguyinmotion]

@gypsymarika Stalin was one of the world's worst mass murderers. Death camps, imposed starvation, purges and brutal military assaults amounting to nothing but suicide. He also exported death in the name of expanding his twisted vision of communist utiopia. Killing was something Stalin did without a second thought.

[jessgo33]

Good video, how is the culture living today in 2011?