Our Evenki guests

Our guests are still with us, probably until Monday. We have had a lot of time to discuss a lot of things and are beginning to form a friendship with them. Yura and Alona have invited us to come to visit them in their town of Baikit. We may do that in June.

Baikit is a town of about 4 000, it is the second largest town in the Evenkiya District (Tura the former capital, now district centre is about 5 000, but was previously about 10 000). Evenkiya used to be a separate territory in Russia, but it has now been merged into the Krasnoyarsk Krai (like a state or province). Evenkiya only has a population of about 17 000, with a population density of 0.03 people per square kilometre. It is the least populous region in Russia and possibly the least densely populated in the world. It is located in the large Boreal Taiga forest of Siberia.



(Northern Territory in Australia has a population density of 0.16 people per square kilometre; Nunavut in Canada, 0.039 people per sq km; NWT in Canada, 0.096 people per sq km.) Evenkiya was the location of the infamous Tunguska event. The Tunguska event was the largest meteor impact on earth in living memory. The 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Event is June 30th this year.

About 10% of the population of Baikit are Evenki. The Evenki are one of the smaller indigenous peoples of Siberia. The Evenki population in the Evenkiya district is about 3 800, which is only about 10% of all the Evenki in Russia. Yura is Evenki and a reindeer herder. He works for the Baikit council administration and is responsible for 10 separate herds (or brigades) of reindeer. There are currently about 4 500 reindeer in the Baikit region, but they are based at a village further north of Baikit called Surinda.

The Evenki District flag. The colours represent the polar days and nights in norther Siberia. The red circle is the solar emblem in the Evenki culture.


We talked with Yura and Alona about the Ket people. The Ket people now number less than 2 000. They are therefore an endangered people group. I have previously mentioned that the Ket people had reindeer until world war 2. After the war many of their men were lost or injured and as a result their herds were eaten and devastated as they could not be maintained. The Ket are a very depressed people. We showed some photos of Kellog, a village of 400 where 300 Ket people live (the greatest concentration of Ket population). We also shared our desire to see the Ket people have reindeer again. As we shared this dream, Yura and Alona quickly understood and agreed that it is a very good idea. Yura then explained that some Evenki from further north did not have any reindeer. They sent 4 men down to work with one of the brigades in Surinda. After 9 months of working there, they were paid with 150 reindeer, a significant number to start a new herd. At once we were very excited by the prospects of potential success for the Ket people. Yura says that now is a actually a good time, because they are attempting to build their stock up from 4 500 to 9 000. They have plans to mix their stock with a herd in the far north on the Taimyr Peninsula. So there is no culling going on at the moment. The current plan is then to take Yura to Kellog in June so that he can meet the Ket people and explain to them the possibilities. The are some Ket believers, hopefully they will be interested. Yura was right in saying that unless the Ket people are interested, it will not happen.



So we are very aware that this has week has been a divine appointment and we are excited to see where things could lead in the future. We hope that we and our team can continue to encourage Yura and Alona. They do not have any one to fellowship with in Baikit, this is one of the reasons that Alona came to visit this week, when Yura had business in the city anyway.

Here is Alona playing on a Хомус (Homus) or mouth harp. She is not professional by any means, but it is actually very complicated to play. I bought the mouth harp in Tuva and can barely get a sound out of it. Alona is actually from the Even people group. They number about 20 000 and are from the Siberian Far East. They are related to the Evenki people. Alona is from the far east.