Roza Laptander´s dissertation is based on the stories of the Nenets reindeer herders from the Yamal peninsula, Western Siberia. It shows that spoken stories and interviews concerning big changes on the tundra reflect a general mechanism of making Nenets official historical narratives. Through analysing 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.

In general, all
of these stories represent the Nenets’ past from the beginning of the 20th century
until today. This elucidates how the Nenets society maintains oral history stories
and narratives about past and recent events in the tundra that live in both
individual and collective memory.

– The Nenets transmit their
historical narratives, traditional knowledge, and personal experiences about the
past from one generation to another not only through spoken stories, but also by
leaving some things unspoken, explains Laptander.

However, the
Nenets custom of silencing – the act of keeping certain information unspoken even
when it is still significant – can have different backgrounds.

The principal result of this study made it possible to identify the
mechanisms of how individual and collective memories about the past and recent
history are saved within Nenets society and the meaning of silence and silencing
during narration. It can be connected to the Nenets cultural custom of silencing
some narratives and helps to bring out memories about the Nenets past and their
special meaning in people’s lives.

Three types of
silence

The Nenets can use silence for keeping
important information safe as shared knowledge with open, restricted or closed
access, for remembering it, or for forgetting it. However, the informative role of
silence during communication depends on demands and interests emanating from within
Nenets society. Moreover, the dominant Soviet and later post-Soviet Russian culture
also influenced the role of silencing among the Nenets.

Therefore, the author of the dissertation described three types of silence
common not only to the Nenets, but perhaps also to other people of the former Soviet
Union and indigenous peoples of the Arctic. These three types of silence illustrate
the roles of responsibility, demands and interests of society, and the political
regime of the country.

This doctoral research brings new insights
into the influence of state norms and politics on indigenous people, which is
illustrated here from within an indigenous society. Thus, this particular work also
develops one possible way of understanding the importance of silence and silencing
in the oral history of human societies in general.

Information on the defence

Roza Laptander will be defending her dissertation “When we got reindeer, we
moved to live to the tundra: The Spoken and Silenced History of the Yamal Nenets”,
with the permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland
on 29 April 2020 at 10 a.m.

The public defence is to take place
online at: https://connect.eoppimispalvelut.fi/vaitos/

The opponent is Professor Andrei Golovnev from the Museum of Anthropology
and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The custos is Research professor
Florian Stammler, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland.

Information on the candidate

Roza Laptander holds a degree of “Candidate of Sciences” from the Herzen
State University in Saint Petersburg, the Russian Federation. She is a member of the
Anthropology Research Group/Global Change Research Group of the Arctic Centre and
works in various joint projects of the Arctic Centre and the University of Lapland
in Rovaniemi. Her research interests deal with sociolinguistics, linguistic
anthropology, the Nenets language documentation and oral history of the Western
Siberian Nenets. In her research, she addresses the Nenets reindeer herding
communities and their present life in the Yamal tundra.

www.arcticcentre.org/laptander

Additional information

Roza
Laptander, roza.laptander (at) ulapland.fi

Information on the publication

Roza Laptander: When we got reindeer, we moved to live
to in the tundra: The Spoken and Silenced History of the Yamal Nenets. Acta
electronica Universitatis Lapponiensis 278. University of Lapland Printing Centre,
Rovaniemi 2020. ISBN 978-952-337-200-9. ISSN 1796-6310