Kseniia Bolshakova (Dolgan) is an activist from the Russian Arctic working to revitalize her Dolgan language and advocate for her ancestral lands. Her novel, “The Frost Also Melts,” addresses the issues of climate change, loss of reindeer herding, and the ongoing extinction of Indigenous languages. Bolshakova ties the melting permafrost, the severed threads of a nomadic way of life, and the unprecedented southward migration of wild reindeer with the broken line of native language transmission in the community.
I grew up in a reindeer herding family in the tundra on the Taimyr Peninsula. I am one of the youngest guardians of the native language in our Nation. Today, fewer than 10 percent of Dolgans speak the native language. Less than 10 Dolgan families across the nation continue the nomadic way of life and herd reindeer. Just 10 years ago, there were dozens of reindeer herding families. And a hundred years ago, every family had reindeer. In the 1920s, there were 500,000 domestic reindeer on the entire Taimyr Peninsula. Now, the remaining Dolgan reindeer herders have no more than 2,000 reindeer.
The people who are abandoning nomadic life do not do so by choice. Global warming has brought winter rains that have never occurred beyond the Arctic Circle. White moss locked in ice dooms the reindeer to death by starvation. This ecological tragedy affects the reindeer herds of the Yamal and Taimyr Peninsulas. It is extremely hard to restore a diminished population of domestic reindeer, as there are many other natural ways of reindeer loss. The herd can be lured away by wild reindeer, devoured by wolves and bears, or killed by hoof disease and brucellosis.
Elder Dolgan reindeer herders.
Climate change also leads to a language shift. The Dolgans are steadily following the path of other Indigenous Peoples of Siberia who have already lost both reindeer herding and their native language. The interdependence of reindeer herding and native language vitality is a very popular rallying cry in Siberia and is supported by real-life examples. The community of Lower Dolgans (to which I belong) has preserved both reindeer herding and the transmission of our language for 40 years longer than our Upper Dolgan relatives.
However, I believe that this is oversimplified. The traditional way of life is a guarantor of the preservation of the ancestral language. But can I, as a Dolgan, really speak my native language only on a reindeer herding camp in the tundra? My language is vibrant and has very high development potential; in the hands of a knowledgeable native speaker, it applies to all areas of life. So what is really going on? Why is the language going after the reindeer?
Reindeer herding is our own livelihood and our own production. By losing it, we are immersed in a world built and made by the Russians, even in a settlement where 99 percent of the population is Dolgan. This is the root of our problem and the big question of our continued existence as an Indigenous Nation. Until recently, Dolgans tried to shift sustainability from reindeer herding to wild reindeer hunting.
According to the regional environmental services, the wild reindeer population on our Taimyr Peninsula numbered 485,000 in 2009. Next year, we expect only 70,110 reindeer. At this rate, the Taimyr wild reindeer population may completely disappear by 2030. Because of climate change, our wild reindeer go south to the Republic of Sakha. There they lure away domestic reindeer from Evenki and Sakha herders on an unprecedented scale. This poses a serious threat to the survival of reindeer herding in the region.
Climate change is not just transforming our traditional way of life but also an imminent threat to our existence as an Indigenous people in both physical and ethnic terms. The Dolgans live in the permafrost zone. To understand what permafrost is, what it means for the Dolgans, and what global warming is doing to it, I suggest we descend into the frost’s womb.
Kseniia Bolshakova in front of an ice drift.
IN THE FROST’S WOMB (A chapter from the novel, “The Frost Also Melts,” by Kseniia Bolshakova)
Thrown open, the wooden trapdoor upholstered in reindeer hide falls heavily to the ground. The dogs lying nearby jump up, startled, and run out onto the porch. I look down into the passage and the smell of old metal and frost hits my nose. Colliding with the permanent cold, the white clumps of my breath disperse instantly. The dim light of a bulb brightens the bottom of the iron shaft.
I grab hold of the welded ladder and take a decisive step down. The tunnel, made of oil barrels soldered together, leads into the permafrost. With every step the air grows heavier and icier. The most important thing is not to slip. The rusty three-meter-long tube gives out into a tiny underground balok.
The low arched ceiling, walls, the floor— everything in the icy chamber is made of matte crystals. My hands reach of their own accord to touch the tiny crystal bits. Protecting themselves from the hands’ warmth, the icy needles scratch my fingertips. If I was as tall as Hubruu Basi (Gangly Vasya) I would be able to touch the ceiling as well.
Three levels of shelves stretch along the perimeter. Wild deer carcasses lie still in their skins—a kind of natural packaging. The fish is hidden in sacks. I find our sack by its tie. I wrangle out a hefty whitefish.
Mama sent me to the Opanasiuks’ frost tunnel to get fish for stroganina, thinly sliced frozen fish. Kind neighbors, they allotted us a spot in their nature-provided refrigerator. The people in Popigai are nearly all fishers and hunters, but not everyone has their own ice tunnel. There are only seven for the several dozen families in the town. It’s not enough to dig out a frost tunnel, it requires care. Every year the cracks in the fridge walls are “plastered over” with a mix of snow and water.
The Popigai residents spent a long time campaigning for the construction of a shared frost tunnel for the whole village. Work like that is complicated, lengthy and costly. Finally, they got the funding. A team arrived to check the soil, and wouldn’t you know, the earth is no longer what it once was. The frost is melting.
Over the last few years, the pressure of the warmth is pushing back both the polar night and the long Arctic winter. Earlier, people would still be riding around on snowmobiles in early June, and the river ice would only just be starting to break up. Now the ice flow is fully underway by the end of May. Fall also takes longer to come now. The river used to stop moving as early as September, but now it starts freezing over only in early October.
Massive amounts of snow in Bolshakova’s, village of Popigay.
This upheaval of nature is so powerful that soon the reindeer herders will find themselves garden keepers. Around the houses in our villages there are no plots of land to till. People plant potatoes out in the open tundra. If this keeps up, soon it won’t be just potatoes that can grow in Taimyr. Southern animals and insects will appear, unheard of biting longhorn beetles. Wildfires in the Evenki and Sakha lands drive the roe deer north to us.
The taiga has always burned, but the warming means the fires have grown terrifyingly large, threatening animals and humans alike. And what do the authorities do? They just cut back their fleet of firefighter choppers. Allegedly, sending helicopters to put out the taiga fires is more expensive than the timber. You might say that not everything can be measured in profits and losses. Not everything. But that’s not true for everyone.
Wildfires are supplemented by arson as well. To hide the traces of illegal logging, the cut areas are set on fire. And whole regions of Siberia burn. Above the burning taiga the rains cannot fall for months. The precipitation goes off and soaks other regions. The rivers overflow, floodwaters wipe out entire towns. Bureaucrats visit the flood victims in helicopters, unload some bread and blankets, and fly away again. The people, like animals in the tundra, have to fend for themselves.
Half of Siberia burns, the other half drowns. Fanned to a hot blaze by man, the world can no longer be protected from overheating by our land of permafrost. The Earth’s ice cap is helplessly trickling away. The permanent is becoming terminal. The frost is melting. The Dolgans are dissolving in time and among other peoples.
English translation by Ainsley E. Morse.
An ice drift.
Top: Taimyr wild reindeer in Siberia. All photos by Kseniia Bolshakova.
