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Natives in Russia's far east worry about vanishing fish
Veni, Russia (AFP) Feb 25, 2009 There is only one family left in this once-thriving fishing village on the northeastern shores of Sakhalin Island, where the Nivkhs, a small indigenous ethnic group, have lived for centuries. But on a recent winter day, Pyotr Popka was not lamenting the fact that there are only 2,500 of his fellow Nivkhs on Sakhalin or that only several dozen of them can still converse in the Nivkh language. The 27-year-old fisherman was instead concerned about the lack of fish. "Every year there are fewer and fewer," Popka complained after returning by snowmobile from a disappointing trip to haul up his family's fish traps from beneath the ice of Nyisky Bay, a small inlet of the Sea of Okhotsk. The Nivkhs have long grown accustomed to the harsh climate of Sakhalin, a large island in Russia's far east located much closer to Japan and China than Moscow, seven time zones away. They survived the Soviet era when they were forced onto collective farms and their children were made to study Russian in a bid to modernise their ancient culture of fishing, hunting and gathering. But now it is capitalism which is changing their lives, in the form of huge offshore oil and gas projects that have brought Sakhalin billions of dollars' worth of investment but also, the Nivkhs say, deeply eroded fish stocks. "When the drilling began, the problems started," Popka said as he stood outside his family's wooden house. "Before that there were fish." At an oil field just a few kilometres (miles) away, pumpjacks rock back and forth and pipes belch fire over a patch of blackened soil, burning off unneeded gas, a legacy of the Soviet oil industry that began on Sakhalin in the 1920s. However the offshore projects launched in the 1990s, led by foreign oil majors Shell and Exxon, pose an even greater danger to indigenous groups and their way of life, said Nivkh activist Alexei Limanzo. -- Our national foods are now delicacies -- ------------------------------------------- Fish stocks crucial to the Nivkhs have been in a "depressed state" since offshore development started, said Limanzo, head of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of Sakhalin, a local group which lobbies for the rights of natives. "Today's projects are much bigger and more aggressive in relation to the environment and bioresources, despite what they tell us about the use of up-to-date technologies," Limanzo said. Nivkhs say that the dwindling opportunities to fish, hunt and gather mean that they can rarely prepare traditional foods such as "mos", made of fish skin, berries and seal liver. "Our national foods are now delicacies that we eat only two or three times a year," said Lyubov Sadgun, a Nivkh who works as an English teacher in the north Sakhalin town of Nogliki. In 2006 Sakhalin Energy, a consortium developing a massive offshore project near the Nivkh lands, pledged to spend 1.5 million dollars (1.17 million euros) over five years to assist indigenous peoples. The consortium -- which was then led by Shell but is now majority-owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom -- agreed to the programme after Nivkhs carried after a series of protests in 2005. Limanzo, whose union spearheaded the protests, praised the programme and said the Nivkhs were fortunate to deal with a Western oil major. "We are lucky here on Sakhalin that we had dealings with multinational companies, because they have to deal with Western public opinion and it hurts their image if they are seen as being against native peoples," Limanzo said. In the village of Veni, Pyotr Popka's family has a new Buran snowmobile courtesy of Sakhalin Energy's assistance programme. But the snowmobile will be of little use if there are no fish and the family is forced to move to the city, away from the coast where Nivkhs caught fish and hunted seals long before the oil companies arrived. That prospect terrifies Lidia Muvchik, the 68-year-old matriarch of the family and one of the last speakers of the Nivkh language. "We are accustomed to living in the taiga, on the periphery, with forests, rivers, the sea, with berries," she said, seated inside near the stove. "That's all we want. In the city we would just die, because there are no fish!" Share This Article With Planet Earth
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