Letter, Kremlin, Arctic, war
How the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Russia Embarked on a Path of Loyalty to Vladimir Putin
Author: Andrey Filimonov
In April 1988, a group of writers approached Mikhail Gorbachev, pledging to tell the General Secretary of the CPSU about the "dire situation of the peoples of our country's North, caused by the industrial development of Siberia and the Arctic." The writers themselves were from the North and knew the damage the Soviet regime had inflicted on nature. Thanks to their letter, for the first time in a long time, indigenous peoples began to address the state not in the style of folklore performances at a local festival, but in a businesslike manner, with a list of specific grievances.
Gorbachev valued the art of dialogue. Two years later, on March 30, 1990, the first congress of the Association of Peoples of the North of the USSR opened in the Kremlin. The organization later became known as the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Russian Far East. In international documents, it adopted the English acronym RAIPON (Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North), and this name—pronounced in Russian, "РАИПОН"—also caught on within the country.
The first president of RAIPON was the Nivkh writer Vladimir Sangi, who had once composed an alphabet for the Nivkh language. Beginning in the 1970s, children in national schools in Sakhalin and the Far East used his primers and textbooks.
Sangi considered preserving his native language his mission. As a nine-year-old boy, he was sent from his camp to a boarding school where only Russian was spoken, and the Nivkh language was banned. It was an educational conveyor belt, distilling all nations into a single mass called the "Soviet people." For Sangi, his boarding school education became a lifelong lesson. Although he later made a career in the USSR Writers' Union and moved to Moscow, he maintained ties to his native land, as if he sensed that his fellow tribesmen would outlive the "Unbreakable Union."
In 1993 the writer returned to Sakhalin, where he was elected the leader Nivkh tribe Ketnivgun.
Adapting to urbanization
The early post-Soviet years were a romantic, free-spirited period in the Association's history, when northern intellectuals sought to drag their peoples out of the museum display case and into real political life. In this process, they were aided by the experience of Inuit and Native Americans living in the Western Hemisphere. The small northern peoples of the West faced precisely the same problems—discrimination from "whites," alcoholism amid the loss of traditional hunting skills, and low levels of education. But they achieved autonomy and respect for their rights 20 years before the "Soviet reindeer herders."
The American Mansfield News Journal wrote in 1969 article "Eskimos try to adapt to urbanization":
Urbanization came to Canada's 15 Inuit, bringing them permanent housing and snowmobiles, but also a host of unresolved social problems. In just one generation, the Inuit transitioned from a nomadic life of hunting in tents and igloos, and traveling by dog sled, to jet aircraft and government-built prefabricated homes.
They found themselves caught between two cultures. The old, subsistence-based way of life was almost impossible. Children were leaving for vocational schools, and there were few opportunities for steady employment in the North. It's no wonder that mental illness, alcoholism, crime, and disease had increased…
At the end of the 20th century, this story repeated itself with the Khanty, Nenets, and other tundra inhabitants, whose nomadic lands coincided with gas and oil fields. Gas and oil companies paid them compensation for hydrocarbon stains on the ground and the oily film on the river surface. Not because they sympathized with the problems of indigenous peoples. It was simply that in the "wild nineties," the Association represented a real force, and its representatives had access to the UN podium. It was not worth quarrelling with them. Therefore, they were provided with everything they needed—diesel fuel, diesel generators, snowmobiles, weapons, communications equipment, and even helicopter watches, which some daring aborigines used for the "good life"—to drive from their camp to some liquor store a couple hundred kilometers away.
It may not have been the best time, but it was certainly the freest. The indigenous people caught as much fish as they wanted, without any of the quotas later devised by officials. They could even bar outsiders from their compact settlements. The Siberian taiga and Arctic tundra witnessed a miniature parade of sovereignties, personally authorized by President Yeltsin. The Russian government lacked the resources to control events in the hinterland, especially in the north, where cities were emptying and villages were dying out. Under these circumstances, the authorities didn't object to foreign money flowing into the country. If someone could survive on Arctic Council grants, then let them do so, the thinking went in Moscow.
Some indigenous peoples excelled at this. Thanks to the international environmental agenda, funding was literally pulled out of thin air. For example, the Udege people of Khabarovsk Krai, united in the "Tiger" national community, received funding from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to implement the Kyoto Protocol's program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The community signed an agreement with WWF and became a participant in the international carbon market. The "Tigers" received a grant for three years, with each annual installment amounting to approximately $1 million. The expression "the green sea of taiga," which the Udege were obligated to preserve according to the agreement, took on new meaning.
At that time, many began to believe that solving the problems of the tundra and taiga no longer required traveling to Moscow. The Russian Association was accepted into the Arctic Council, and Russia's indigenous peoples established direct contact with the Sami of Scandinavia and the Inuit of Canada and Greenland. Iqaluit, the capital of the Canadian province of Nunavut, became an international center for circumpolar peoples. In 1971, the world's northernmost university opened there, offering scholarships to students from Russia's indigenous peoples since 1991.
In the early 2000s, RAIPON, together with the Sami Council and UNEP/GRID-Arendal, conducted research on living conditions, health, and the environment in indigenous communities in Arctic Russia. Parallel programs on persistent toxic substances, food security, and contamination of traditional foods were underway—this time under the auspices of Arctic Council structures and environmental programs. This wasn't folkloric diplomacy with tambourines, but a serious discussion about ecology and resource management.
Although drums also played a role. Delegations of Siberian shamans traveled to Greenland and Nunavut to exchange experiences.
The end of peaceful life
Then the Arctic's value began to soar. Not only hydrocarbon producers but also generals, nostalgically recalling the nuclear tests on Novaya Zemlya and the generous state funding of "atomic mushroom clouds," began casting their eyes on the Arctic Ocean coast. In the 2000s, the patriots' dreams began to come true. The "Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic," adopted in 2008, promised the military-industrial complex's sharks broad access to northern waters. Henceforth, the Arctic was declared the country's most important resource base, and the Northern Sea Route a new transport corridor. This course was later enshrined in the Arctic Zone Development Strategy through 2035, which was now directly linked to national security issues. Under these circumstances, an independent organization speaking on behalf of the indigenous peoples living in the Arctic became a superfluous cog in the state machine.
The turning point came in 2012–2013. In November 2012, the Ministry of Justice suspended RAIPON's activities: formally due to its charter's noncompliance with federal law. In reality, it was because the Association had gained excessive international weight and was becoming too vocal. In the spring of 2013, its activities were reactivated, but with a new president—Grigory Ledkov, a State Duma deputy from United Russia and later a senator in the Federation Council.
Ledkov is best remembered for his role as the author of the "Indigenous Peoples of Siberia and the Far East" registry—an acronym that identifies 26 indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far East. The idea for registering indigenous peoples was borrowed from Canada (Indian Register 1951), whereby members of the ethnic group included in the register automatically become shareholders of a company doing business in their territory. But the "Ledkov version" is designed to keep Comrade Major employed—the list is convenient for searching for nomadic separatists planning to carve off a piece of the tundra from Russia. Even at the draft stage, critics wrote that the law introduces a command-and-control method for determining indigenous affiliation, fails to provide for the communities themselves to participate in the rules for maintaining the register, and relies on interagency comparisons of data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Tax Service. After the law's adoption, these concerns only intensified. The register was integrated into a broader state regime for monitoring interethnic and interfaith relations; independent observers directly wrote that in this configuration, the list, conceived as a means of confirming rights, also turns into a tool for monitoring "true" and "untrue" indigenous peoples. Denial of inclusion in the register has no appeal whatsoever. The situation is roughly the same with the register of "foreign agents." Officials decide everything.
Line up under the banner of the national park
Under Ledkov, Bikin National Park was established in 2015 near the Udege village of Krasny Yar on the Bikin River. The official goal sounded noble: to protect the Ussuri taiga, the Amur tiger, and the traditional way of life of the Udege people. There were only about 1,500 Udege left in Russia. By then, they had already learned to protect their land: in the 1990s, they expelled loggers, then gold miners. But with the creation of the national park, it turned out that the authorities were protecting nature from the people who lived there. Hunting grounds that the Udege considered their own were closed or transferred to the control of the park administration. People were denied firewood, hunters were denied tickets, and the park's indigenous peoples' council was filled with park employees. A court ordered the administration to allow the Udege into the territory on foot, by boat, and on snowmobiles; the administration did not comply. When residents tried to share their problems with visiting authorities, they were cut off. Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Konstantin Chuikov ordered to those gathered: "Stop subversive activities and line up under the banner of the national park."
The story with "Bikin" was revealing. Afterward, it became clear that RAIPON was no longer what it used to be. In investigations by Pavel Sulyandziga (former head of "Tiger," who emigrated from Russia) and Dmitry Berezhkov (the website's editor), Indigenous Russia) This shift is described as follows: the state began appointing "representatives" of indigenous peoples, independent environmentalists were declared "undesirable," and big business went from being a target of criticism to a partner. The association retained its name, a solid biography, and the right to speak on behalf of indigenous peoples. But the text is now pre-approved by the Kremlin.
In March 2022, the RAIPON Coordinating Council unanimously supported Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. In the organization, which unites dozens of nations, no one dared to abstain. For four years now, public approval of the war has been a mandatory requirement for anyone wishing to join the vertical. On February 23, 2026, the Association's website published congratulation Happy Defender of the Fatherland Day:
"Words of gratitude and congratulations to the career officers, soldiers, and every single participant in the special military operation. You are worthily continuing the sacred military traditions of your predecessors, and with honor and courage you are confronting the threat looming over the country."
At the same time, the cost of the war for those on whose behalf the Association speaks was quite high. Indigenous peoples suffered proportionally greater losses than the titular nation. According to research According to Maria Vyushkova and Mediazona estimates, the front-line mortality rate among the Chukchi reached 5,8 per thousand people, among the Nganasans 4,4, among the Nenets 4,0, and among the Itelmen 3,9; this is several times higher than the Russian average. By the beginning of 2025, hundreds of deaths were confirmed among the Nenets, Chukchi, and Khanty. In Khabarovsk Krai, indigenous men were conscripted significantly more often than non-indigenous men. In Sedanka, Kamchatka, home primarily to Koryaks and Itelmens, the majority of adult men went to war. Mobilization is destroying the very fabric of life for northern peoples. In the reindeer herding communities of Yamal and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the men who held the brigades together were conscripted. In villages in Kamchatka and Khabarovsk Krai, snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, and trucks are being "voluntarily" donated to the front or military recruitment offices. Hunters, long idle, sign mercenary contracts, tempted by the possibility of millions in earnings for participating in military operations on the territory of another country.
RAIPON, however, retains an international veneer crafted in a different era. On the Arctic Council website, the organization still appears as a representative of Russia's indigenous peoples, working on ecology, culture, education, and social development. The form remains the same, and its historical capital remains intact. On paper, it's still the same Association that once opened a direct dialogue between indigenous peoples and the world—through the Arctic and the UN. But the content has changed. On the outside, it represents Russia's indigenous peoples. On the inside, it's a structure that too often speaks to the world in the language of the Kremlin.
Without this Association, many laws, international contacts, and the very idea of national representation of indigenous peoples in post-Soviet Russia would not exist. Without it, the Arctic conversation, in which Nivkh, Sami, and Inuit could discuss common problems, would likely not have emerged. But over the past thirty-five years, RAIPON has clearly transformed from an organization that spoke on behalf of indigenous peoples into a government agency that speaks for them.
Vladimir Sangi, RAIPON's first president, turned ninety last year. He returned to his ancestral lands of Sakhalin more than thirty years ago. The Nivkh language, for which he fought his entire life and to which he dedicated his primer, alphabet, and books, remains in danger of extinction—as it was during Gorbachev's time.
