Trond Trosterud, Kirkenes
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This memo has been prepared due to a request from The Regional Committee for General Education on the status of the Vepsians and the Karelians in the Barents Region as indigenous people. The only indigenous peoples represented in different boards in the Barents Region are the Saami and the Nenets; however, no assessment seems to lie behind this discrimination. The Nordic countries have different policies towards the Saami; Norway has ratified ILO Convention no. 169 on indigenous peoples, while Russia, Sweden and Finland have not. Finland is preparing a ratification, and is in the process of adapting its laws to the ILO Convention. In a protocol on Saami issues signed by Norway, Sweden, Finland and the European Union, all parties acknowledge that the three countries in question have "obligations to the Saami according to national and international law". The Russian (and previously, the Soviet) treatment of these peoples will be discussed below. As a decisive element in the assessment of this problem, a wider definition of indigenous peoples will also be discussed in this memo.
Vepsian and Karelian belong to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages, a family of languages spoken in northwestern Eurasia. In prehistoric times, the people who spoke former versions of these languages lived in an area stretching from Scandinavia to Ural. The Slavic expansion around the year 1,000 A.D. divided this area into two parts following the Kiev-Moscow axis, and several peoples who probably spoke Uralic languages were assimilated. The western branch of the Uralic languages (Saami-Finnic-Mordvin) was split in half, with Mordvin to the east of the division. Turk expansion from the south-east caused the eastern parts to be isolated from each other. The peoples who spoke Uralic languages made their living in different ways, depending on where they lived. Those who lived far enough to the south (the Finnic, Mordvin, Mari and Permian peoples) took part in the agricultural revolution, and are as a result large groups today, numbering several hundred thousand or more. Several Uralic peoples (including the Saami, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets and Selkup did not take part in this revolution and remained small; today they number less than 50,000 each, and most number less than 10,000. The ILO Convention no. 169 discusses several criteria relating to the status as indigenous peoples. I will here present some of the Uralic peoples (Saami, Nenets, Karelians and Vepsian) in relation to these criteria. The titles of each paragraph refer to passages in the ILO Convention.
The peoples were already living in the region when colonization (by the majority people) took place
This is true for all the people who speak Uralic languages. The Indo-European expansion towards the north is of a later date. According to this criterion, all peoples speaking Uralic languages are indigenous peoples.
The peoples differ linguistically from the majority people
The main problem when using language as a criterion is that a language shift, even on a large scale, can occur within three generations. All research in the process of language shifts has shown, however, that a language shift occurs from (numerical, social, economic or status) minority language to majority language - never the opposite. Hypothetically, a dominant immigrant majority people and a previously existing minority people will, in the course of time, develop into three different peoples: members of the majority people speaking the majority language, members of the minority people speaking the minority language and assimilated members of the minority people speaking the majority language. Using language as a criterion therefore leads to the definition of a minimum, a small group among the descendants of the original minority people.
All the peoples mentioned here speak Uralic languages, and therefore differ from the expanding Indo-Europeans. In any case, the internal relations within the Uralic family of languages transcend the division between agrarian and hunting societies: the nearest linguistic relatives of the hunting and reindeer-herding peoples are the agrarians, not the other hunters and reindeer-herders.
The peoples have a different religion from the majority people
All the Uralic peoples have been exposed to attempts of conversion to Christianity during the colonial period. The conversion was most successful in the south-east and least successful in the north-west. The line can be drawn through the Mari republic, showing that the eastern Mari and the Udmurt (both agrarian) as well as the Khanty, Mansi and Samoyedic (hunters and reindeer-herders) have more or less kept their ancient pre-Christian religions, whereas the Finnic peoples, Mordvin, Komi and western Mari (all agrarian) and the Saami (reindeer herders) have been more or less converted to Christianity. This conversion is more recent than that of their Indo-European neighbors, and in several cases so recent that parts of the pre-Christian religion has been kept or survives.
The people live in a tribal society
In the pre-industrial and pre-Soviet society, the Uralic hunters and reindeer-herders lived in societies that are most correctly termed tribal, while the agrarian peoples lived in villages or widespread settlements.
The people wear distinct clothing
All of the Uralic peoples had a vivid costume tradition which set them apart from the Indo-European population up to the end of the pre-industrial society; a tradition which is still kept alive among the hunters and herders and which still functions as a national symbol for the other peoples.
The people have a distinct way of life
Since the expanding Indo-Europeans were agrarian, the way of life of the agrarian Uralic peoples became very similar to that of the majority population. The lifestyles of the hunters was naturally distinct from this.
Their status is completely or partially governed by their own customs, traditions or specific laws and regulations
Today, this is possibly relevant for the Khanty, Mansi and the Samoyeds, hardly for any of the others. In the pre-industrial and pre-Soviet period it was naturally also relevant for all of the hunters, and perhaps to a certain degree for the agrarians.
The Soviet policy regarding national minorities
After the establishment of the Soviet Union, all peoples with more than 20,000 members approximately were given their own administrative area (with the exception of minorities on the border to neighboring countries inhabited by closely related peoples, such as Slovaks, Hungarians, Greeks etc. who were not given such an area, and areas which were extremely ethnically mixed, such as Dagestan which became a sort of collective republic). The largest peoples (more than 1-2 million) were given Soviet republics (but only if they bordered on the national border of the Soviet Union), the medium groups (100,000 - 1 million) were given their own autonomous republics, and the smaller groups (20,000 - 100,000) were given autonomous areas. This is why Karelia is a separate republic, and the Nenets have three separate autonomous areas. The Vepsians are unusual in this respect; for various reasons they were not given an autonomous area within the republic and the two oblasts where they lived, although they should have, according to the size of their population in the 1930's. This shows that the Soviet Union administratively treated its minorities differently according to size. In fact, the hunting people are smaller than the agrarian people, and the hunters do in fact live in the north. Thus, the Soviet Union had their own special policy for the "small peoples in the far north", regardless of whether they have their own area or not. They have, for example, been listed as a single separate category in census statistics and similar presentations. There is still good reason to claim that the national policy of the Soviet Union regarding the national minorities was the same for all national minorities of the same size, independently of variations in lifestyle, economic basis etc.
Conclusion
The question is whether the social differences between the Uralic peoples caused by the agricultural revolution should be decisive or not. If so, the Saami, Khanty, Mansi and Samoyeds are the only indigenous peoples among the Uralic peoples. If not, the definition of indigenous peoples must be further discussed. The situation can be compared to the Americas, where the decisive criteria was whether the relevant peoples were there before Columbus' arrival, regardless of whether they made their living in a different way from the newcomers. If we put more emphasis on "who was there first", and less on differences in lifestyle, we will find more indigenous peoples than we have defined today.
If our role as political persons is to work towards a value with equal rights for all, in line with for instance the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this can have a positive effect. The aim of the status as indigenous peoples includes correcting the imbalance caused by marginalization and minority status and suffered by the majority of the peoples in the world. The more people that emerge in the most possible ways from this unfortunate situation, the better.