Assembly helps put reindeer herders in spotlight

Representatives from China's only reindeer herding people have shared their stories of climate change for the first time at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Although their territory is not in the Arctic region, the experience of the Ewenki people of China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region is sufficiently relevant to other herding people further north for them to have been invited this year to participate in the assembly.

At a session on Saturday, chaired by Feng Qu from the Arctic Studies Center at Liaocheng University, two Ewenki herders from Aoluguya township, Yiqia Kaltaqun and Qiqi Kaltaqun, shared the stage with Yilina Eduugdaat, a lecturer at China's Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, and Anders Oskal, secretary general of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, to tell their stories.

For centuries, said Feng, indigenous people had too often been "pushed to the background" of Arctic narratives shaped by colonialism and empire, but in a new challenging environment, their traditional knowledge is changing all that.

"Reindeer are not just an economic resource or symbol," he continued, "they are part of a world of relationships involving people, the forests, the seasons, animals, ancestors, memories and knowledge", a tradition built over generations that, he said, "offers us another way of thinking".

The delicate equilibrium of herding requires herds to move on before they exhaust resources, Yilina explained, quoting one elder in saying "they don't own the land, they rotate through it, so it remains for the grandchildren".

But the settlement of many herding communities in 2003 has seen tourism become increasingly economically important, risking turning living knowledge into a museum exhibit, and the visible impact of climate change also poses challenges.

"Herders describe the appearance of an ice crust, meaning winter rain that freezes, so reindeer cannot access their food," she said. "Also the seasons have slipped, so the inherited migration calendar no longer fits, and wildlife is returning, which is ecologically good, but some of those animals are now a danger to roaming herds."

She ended her discussion with a plea to "keep local knowledge in the room — herders are the earliest climate sensors on the ground, and their observations deserve a place in Arctic governance, not just in ethnographic papers".

Qiqi, whose family has China's largest reindeer herd, explained how herding culture combined ecological knowledge, spirituality and social practices, and said that although the growth of tourism increased awareness of herder life and brought in income, it also brought risks.

"If cultural presentation matters too much to tourists, our own ways may be pushed aside, so tourism must help people understand our culture while caring for reindeer and our community space," she explained.

Young herders need to combine the skill of elders with digital technology to keep herding and the community alive, she said, with videos about herding life helping visitors to see Ewenki practices as a continuous way of life.

Yiqia explained how the Ewenki system works on people following the reindeer, rather than the other way around, and spoke of her childhood memories of traditional herding practices, some of which have been lost since the tribe's hunting era was ended by settlement.

A delegate from the Faroe Islands asked how the Ewenki tradition was being kept alive, and Yilina said preservation of the spoken language was hugely important, because "if you lose your language, you lose everything".

Oskal's role gives him an insight into the 24 different indigenous peoples around the world, scattered across three continents and 10 different national states, who still base their lives around following reindeer.

Mobility, he said, "is a choice — it is not placelessness, or something we were forced to do because of poverty, it is a conscious choice to follow reindeer, so it is a system of adaptation".

The Ewenki people are the southernmost of those tribes, and he paid tribute to their resilience.

"Where they are living is considered sub-Arctic climate, but it is as cold in winter there as it is where I am from, in the high Arctic," he said. "The tribe is small in numbers, but it is very important for many reasons."