Nenets, the last nomads of the Arctic

For more than a thousand years, the Nenets have led a nomadic lifestyle migrating with their reindeer herds through the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic, beyond the Polar Circle. With the arrival of winter the region transforms into a snow-covered landscape with frozen rivers and lakes allowing the Nenets to migrate with their sleds and herds. Hardly punished by the Soviet regime, which tried to make them leave their nomadic life creating farms, today only about 3,000 Nenets of the total of 50,000 in the region, they make this journey of thousands of kilometers through the Yamal Peninsula, following some 175,000 reindeer and traveling the same ancestral migratory routes of their ancestors. However, in recent years, climate change is affecting the climate of their territories causing the thawing of permafrost, which in turn causes the reappearance of ancient diseases that disappeared centuries ago such as anthrax, or leading reindeer to die of hunger from the difficulty to find food. In addition, the increasingly abundant gas extraction fields, the very long gas pipelines and roads that cross this vast territory like scars, put this ancient way of life in danger.