Doctoral Dissertation: When we got reindeer, we moved to live to the tundra
Roza Laptander's "When we got reindeer, we moved to live to the tundra - The spoken and Silenced History of the Yamal Nenets" is based on the stories of the Nenets reindeer herders from the Yamal peninsula, Western Siberia. [original article from Arctic Centre - University of Lapland]
It shows that spoken stories and interviews concerning big changes on the tundra reflect a general mechanism of making Nenets official historical narratives. Through analyzing silence in the example of the Yamal Nenets people stories, Laptander studied the role of silence and silencing offering a new approach to understanding how small indigenous societies keep memories and stories about their past.
The Nenets represent the largest community of Uralic language speaking indigenous northern people of the Russian Federation. The spoken history of the Nenets includes individual life stories, personal biographies, stories about relatives, friends, and neighbours, historical narratives, individual songs, stories of songs and people who made these songs, and collective narratives. There are single narratives, dialogues, group talks, discussions, and different versions of a single story told by many people
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