01.00.00 | Sleds, reindeers | VO: The Nenets people have come together from the remote northern outpost of Yar-Sale for a unique festival.
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| It's a celebration of a culture and way of life that Communism tried to wipe out.
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| Woman speaking | The young girl is not married, dear guests the girl is not married.
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00.36 | Men fighting | VO: Under Stalin, their clan leaders and holy men were shot. The people were forced in to collective farms.
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| Yet for half the Nenets population, their normal home is still a teepee in the frozen Tundra.
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00.52 |
| Against all odds, they have remained Arctic nomads.
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00.57 | Dr William Fitzhugh, Arctic Studies, Smithsonian Institute | It's really rare. This is one of the unique situations in the north anyway. I've never seen any culture in the American Arctic or the Canadian Arctic that live this way, that keep their culture amidst all the changes.
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01.12 | Timofei about to race reindeer | VO: The Nenets survived by adapting Communism tot he Tundra.
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| Clansmen like Timofei still work in collective reindeer farms.
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| But that never stopped them being nomads.
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01.30 | Race begins | They farmed by herding the reindeers across the open plains, living as they'd always lived, and resisting a pressure to move to towns.
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| By outlasting the system that tried to change them, their lifestyle could, in theory, endure forever.
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01.52 | Teepees | But the nenets could still be denied a happy ending. Because while the life they lead on this land is unique, so is what lies beneath it .. the world's biggest concentration of gas.
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| The nenets land is littered with abandoned rigs ... the legacy of failed attempts to extract 200 billion cubic metres of gas.
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02.28 | Snowmobile | But the opening up of Russia's industry has brought Western capital and expertise to get it out.
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| The American oil giant Amoco .. in partnership with the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom ... are developing multi-billion dollar pipeline project ... it would take the gas from 10 sites on the peninsula all the way to Western Europe.
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02.52 |
| It is potentially the biggest impact on the Nenets people since the days of Stalin.
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| Timofei | They will take all the gas and they will leave all the rubbish there. They will plough the land and we'll suffer from it, we'll lose the pastures. We are suffering now. The people and the dogs are like wolves.
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03.24 | Sled + reindeer | VO: Timofei's home is the vast Tundra of the Yamal peninsula.
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| But this week his camp has come with a sled ride of Yar-Sale for the festival.
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| To see what the Nenets were scared of losing, we were given a rare and daunting opportunity ... a chance to stay with Timofei's clan.
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03.51 | Teepees, camp | As we arrived at sunset, it appeared that the Nenets saw little need for modern goods at all.
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| The adults had brought back a few items from the toen store .. condems, milk, some tea ... but the children seemed happy just to be there.
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04.11 |
| With the temperature plunging toward minus 20, Timofei quickly despatched to the teepees where we'd spend the night.
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04.20 | Women cutting meat | Inside the women had prepared a banquet of raw fish and reindeer steak.
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| Elders like Nadja have chosen this land .. as a child, she spent years in the town school, but returned to the Tundra.
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04.34 |
| She now fears her children may not have that choice.
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| Reporter: | Is that good or bad?
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| Nadja: | It's bad.
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| Reporter: | Why?
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| Nadja: | Because they take the land from us, and where will our children live. Not everyone wants to live in the town. My son, for example, goes to school now, but when grows up he won't live in town. He wouln't want to. He'll have the reindeers which he inherits from his father. He wants to live in the Tundra, where else. That is why we don't want gas.
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05.52 | Reindeer, woman feding reindeer | VO: The day's work begins early in the nenet camps...the reindeers see to that.
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| To survive the isolation and hardship of the Tundra, the nenets depend on two basic certaintees ... clean water, and open pasture.
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06.13 |
| The first chore for the women is to collect a chunk of frozen stream water for tea and washing.
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| Sawing meat | Then they saw some reindeer meat for breakfast.
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06.34 | Herding reindeer | Reindeer provide their food, shelter, transport and clothes - even the sinew to sew their furs.
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| By migrating the herds, the nenets ensure the moss and lichen on which they feed are never overgrazed.
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| It's a delicate balance they have achieved over the centuries.
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| What they fear is that gas companies have no such concerns.
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06.57 | Timofei | Nothing good comes from them. There is nothing we can do, they don't listen to us at all. They decide themselves how it would work, but they don't ask us. And the people here are not literate, they can't speak out. They don't understand politics.
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07.28 | Helicopter | VO: Back in Yar-Sale, executives from Amoco have come to tell the Nenets leaders they have nothing to fear and everything to gain.
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07.36 |
| Their message is the pipeline can be built without harming the land or the reindeer migration.
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07.43 | Randy Joseck Amoco Project Manager | The pipeline will be installed in the winter when the permafrost is frozen, and there will be very little damage to the permafrost at that point. With regard to the reindeer, the animals are herded, so the routes will be mapped part of the development and crossings will be built for the reindeer.
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08.02 |
| VO: But the senior Nenets, like Timofei's leader Sergei Saotretto, just don't believe it.
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08.07 | Segei Saotretto Nenets leader | Gas cannot be extracted without damage to the land. They bring the heaviest machines to dig it, and their tractors weigh forty tonnes. If a 40-tonne Komatsu tractor drives through the Tundra the track will never disappear , the scar will remain forever.
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08.37 | Gas explosion Vision of Siberian oil spill is owned | VO: It's Russia's past record in exploiting gas and oil that has left the Nenets uncertain and deeply afraid.
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| by APTV - we don't have replacement | Vast areas of the Western Siberian plain have been devastated by explosions and oil leaks.
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Oil leaks | Development by cash-strapped governments has been guided by three principles ... rapid construction, quick returns and disregard for the environment and local people.
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| But Gazprom insist they've changed.
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09.06 | Sulfar Salehov Director, Gazprom Yamel | Of course we show them all our technical plans, they discuss it and introduce their corrections, with some things they do not agree, so we work together, not like we did before when we came, did our buiness and leaving the dirt behind.
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09.34 |
| VO: Gazprom promise compensation to ease the pain ... today, they've come bearing gifts.
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| Sulfar addressing crowd | For the winners of the competition, don't know who will win today but I know the best sportsmen who won last time in Nadym. We have brought a snowmobile, one Yamaha generator and a hundred kilograms of coloured beads.
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10.15 | Nenet moaning and drunk | VO: But not everyone welcomes Gazprom's generosity.
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| About half the Nenets on the peninsula succumbed to Communist pressure to move to towns.
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10.24 |
| Their fate has been unemployment and chronic alcoholism.
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| Valentina Vakina, a collective farm head who has worked with Nenets all life believes gas compensation is making things worse.
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10.43 | Valentina Vakina | They are giving more money now, but this help is rendered in a wrong way, because our people, to be honest have a tendency to drink. People who live in towns and reeived the handouts stopped working. But only in the towns, the Tundra people do work, and the life in the Tundra is very different.
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11.26 | Children singing in class | VO: A sign of hope for the future is the Nenets children are choosing their own path.
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| At this school in Yar Sale, children spend nine months of the year away from their nomad parents ... but they are no longer forced to abandon their culture.
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11.40 |
| A teepee helps the youngest adjust to life indoors.
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| Songs and games help them to keep their language.
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11.50 |
| In a few days they will join their parents for the northern migration across the Tundra.
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| Boy playing on computer | And while they confess they'll miss their computers, they all say they prefer the Tundra.
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| Classroom teacher
teacher | - Because I can hunt there. - What else? - We herd the reindeer - What else? - You can sleep in the morning.
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| teacher | - When you grow up, what do you want to do? When you grow up, finish school go to work, what do you want to do?
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teacher
teacher
teacher | - I'll be a reindeer herder. - A reindeer herder, what about the others? - I'll be a teacher. - A teacher, good boy. What about you Seryozha? - Fisherman - Fisherman. Alyosha, what do you want to be when you grow up? - Hunter.
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12.40 | Boy pulling reindeer | VO: The question for these children is how long they will have the choice.
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| Amoco has plagued to respect the Nenets' culture and traditional roots.
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12.52 |
| The company has helped fund the Smithsonian Institute to conduct the first serious study of the Nenets in seventy years.
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13.03 | Dr William Fitzhugh | Amoco has been able to bring some new ideas and some new technology and I think everybody's evolved. You know Gazprom is thinking more about native culture, about how they can work together with the nenets people, and we've been trying to help with that.
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| VO: There's going to be some hard times. I think they got some bargaining to do. But I think the local people realise that they've got to be economic support. They want their kids to go to school, they want to improve the towns they have. I think it's necessary and I think it'll survive.
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13.34 | Sled | But the injection of what could be $15 billion into the project could test that optimism to the limit.
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13.44 |
| Sven Haakonson is spending three months with a nomad camp to follow the northern migration.
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| Racing reindeer | He fears that after enduring the repression of Communism, the Nenets finally succumb to the lure of development.
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| Sven Haakonson
Street scenes | To be honest with you I think it's going to change them, probably forever. Once you start bringing money into an area where people have never had it before, they're going to want foreign goods, they're going to want snowmachines, the women are going to want a house, they're going to want things that make them seem like the rest of the world. Alcoholism, violence, all of these things will probably increase, once more and more nenets decide to live in the villages.
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14.38 | Herding reindeer | VO: With the festival over, the Nomads once again prepare to resume their wandering.
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| Women taking down teepees. | The women take down the teepees and pack the sleds.
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| The men prepare the reindeer that will pull them.
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| The group will cover 30 kilometres today.
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| It may be months before they see another town.
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| But they insist the Tundra will provide all they need.
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15.06 | Segei Saotretto Nenets leader | If a Tundra man loses his reindeers he does not consider himself a man. They say that gas is wealth. For me itis not wealth. The only wealth for me is the reindeer. If one has reindeers, children and beautiful land, a Tundra Nenets needs nothing else.
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15.53 | Music, Nenets migrating | The migration across the Tundra is a unique and rarely glimpsed sight.
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| The isolation of the Arctic gave the Nenets respite from Stalin's clutches ... but also hid them from the wide world.
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16.11 |
| For a thousand years, the Nenets have survived the coldest, harshest place on earth.
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| They could now be facing the hardest challenge of all.
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16.31 |
| ENDS |