Scenes of daily life among the Evens of Kamtchatka

This video was filmed in the central region of the Kamchatka peninsula in the autumn of 2004, during a multi-disciplinary research program on “the Reindeer System: biological and cultural adaptations”. The aim of this field expedition was to study the activities and ways of life of the Even reindeer herders of Kamchatka, whose livelihood is now dependent on a changed and threatened environment.
The film shows aspects of contemporary life among this ethnic minority, whose members first arrived in central Kamchatka in the second half of the 19th century, and illustrates the profound changes that have occurred in Even lifestyles. Since the early 1990s, when reindeer herding went into a steep decline with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has concerned only a tiny fraction of the region's indigenous population. The film was shot in different locations: the camp of the nomadic Even herders who manage one of the Esso reindeer herds, during a corralling operation; in the small regional capital of Esso; in the native village of Anavgai, and finally in Bystrya, an old village that was shut down by the authorities in 1974.