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27-426: The most recent census figures show a population of 531, of which 279 are men and 252 women. The village is a traditional Chukchi settlement, in which most of the citizens are reindeer herders, taking advantage of the pasture present around the river Amguema ( Chukchi : O'mvaam ). It is the only native settlement in the district to have a stable economy, thanks in part to the available land. The population as of 2006

54-407: A boarding school for all ages, which is a rarity in the region, and the village serves as an educational hub for the surrounding villages whose schools do not cover all age groups. As well as the school, Abramovich funded the construction of 46 new homes, at a cost of nearly $ 2.5 million, with hot water and indoor facilities, as well as a guesthouse, barbers and banya . There is also a food store,

81-606: A post-office, a daycare center and a bakery. The school in Amguema is a boarding school and is used to educate not only the children from village but also other children from Nutepelmen and Vankarem , who are sent there when they are seven or eight. Amguema is situated on the Iultin-Egvekinot road, one of the few permanent roads in Chukotka. Within the village, there is also a small road network including: A class of polar cargo ships

108-504: A whole is Luoravetlan (literally 'genuine person'). The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins called the Chukchi "tribes without rulers". They often lacked formal political structures, but had a formal cosmic hierarchy. In Chukchi religion, every object, whether animate or inanimate, is assigned a spirit. This spirit can be either harmful or benevolent. Some of Chukchi myths reveal a dualistic cosmology . A Chukchi shaman once explained to

135-736: Is a river in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug , Russia . It is 498 kilometres (309 mi) long, and has a drainage basin of 28,100 square kilometres (10,800 sq mi). Upriver there is the small town of Amguema , where about 600 mostly Chukchi people live. The Amguema flows roughly from SW to NE across the Chukotka Mountains . It belongs to the Amguema basin. It empties into the Chukchi Sea between Cape Schmidt and Cape Vankarem . The 154 km (96 mi) long Ekityki on

162-613: The Cossacks and the Chukchi. As the annual trade fairs where goods were exchanged continued, a common language between the two peoples was spoken. The natives, however, never paid yasak , or tributes, and their status as subjects was little more than a formality. The formal annexation of the Chukotka Peninsula did not happen until much later, during the time of the Soviet Union. Apart from four Orthodox schools, there were no schools in

189-689: The Koryaks . Russians first began contacting the Chukchi when they reached the Kolyma River (1643) and the Anadyr River (1649). The route from Nizhnekolymsk to the fort at Anadyrsk along the southwest of the main Chukchi area became a major trade route. The overland journey from Yakutsk to Anadyrsk took about six months. The Chukchi were generally ignored for the next fifty years because they were warlike and did not provide furs or other valuable commodities to tax. Armed skirmishes flared up around 1700 when

216-466: The Reindeer Chukchi , who lived as nomads in the inland tundra region, migrating seasonally with their herds of reindeer . The Russian name "Chukchi" is derived from the Chukchi word Chauchu ("rich in reindeer"), which was used by the 'Reindeer Chukchi' to distinguish themselves from the 'Maritime Chukchi,' called Anqallyt ("the sea people"). Their name for a member of the Chukchi ethnic group as

243-538: The Sovkhoz , with 11,166 head, is thought to have the second-largest number of reindeer in the whole Okrug, looked after by six brigades, the structure a remnant of the Soviet era. Each brigade is responsible for between 760 and 3710 reindeer. In an area where land-based transport is scarce, the village is fortunate to be connected to one of the few roads, being situated about halfway along the paved road that runs from Egvekinot in

270-405: The ethnographer Vladimir Bogoraz that "The lamp walks around. The walls of the house have voices of their own. ... Even the shadows on the wall constitute definite tribes and have their own country, where they live in huts and subsist by hunting." After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the state-run farms were reorganized and nominally privatized. This process was ultimately destructive to

297-472: The Chukchi land until the late 1920s. In 1926, there were 72 literate Chukchis. The Soviets introduced a Latin alphabet in 1932 to transcribe their language, replacing it with Cyrillic in 1937. In 1934, 71% of the Chukchis were nomadic . In 1941, 90% of the reindeer were still privately owned. So-called kulaks roamed with their private herds up into the 1950s. After 1990 and the fall of the Soviet Union, there

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324-697: The Russian Empire, began to trade peacefully with the Russians. From 1788, they participated in an annual trade fair on the lower Kolyma. Another was established in 1775 on the Angarka, a tributary of the Bolshoy Anyuy River . This trade declined in the late 19th century when American whalers and others began landing goods on the coast. The first Orthodox missionaries entered Chukchi territory some time after 1815. The strategy worked, trade began to flourish between

351-693: The Russians began operating in the Kamchatka Peninsula and needed to protect their communications from the Chukchi and Koryak . The first attempt to conquer them was made in 1701. Other expeditions were sent out in 1708, 1709 and 1711 with considerable bloodshed but little success and unable to eliminate the local population on the large territory. War was renewed in 1729, when the Chukchi defeated an expedition from Okhotsk and killed its commander. Command passed to Major Dmitry Pavlutsky , who adopted very destructive tactics , burning, driving off reindeer, killing men and capturing women and children. In 1742,

378-481: The addition of sea mammal hunting and walrus ivory carving in the coastal areas. Chukchi were educated in Soviet schools and today are almost 100% literate and fluent in the Russian language. Only a portion of them today work directly in reindeer herding or sea mammal hunting , and continue to live a nomadic lifestyle in yaranga tents. The warlike Chukchi waged frequent wars against neighboring tribes, especially

405-462: The government at Saint Petersburg ordered another war in which the Chukchi and Koryak were to be "totally extirpated". The war (1744–7) was conducted with similar brutality and ended when Pavlutsky was killed in March 1747. It is said that the Chukchi kept his head as a trophy for a number of years. The Russians waged war again in the 1750s, but a part of Chukchi people did survive this extermination plans on

432-632: The left is the main tributary of the Amguema. Chukchi people The Chukchi , or Chukchee ( Chukot : Ԓыгъоравэтԓьэт, О'равэтԓьэт , Ḷygʺoravètḷʹèt, O'ravètḷʹèt ), are a Siberian ethnic group native to the Chukchi Peninsula , the shores of the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Sea region of the Arctic Ocean all within modern Russia . They speak the Chukchi language . The Chukchi originated from

459-543: The neighboring Sakha Republic to the west, Magadan Oblast to the southwest, and Kamchatka Krai to the south. Some Chukchi also reside in other parts of Russia, as well as in Europe and North America . The total number of Chukchi in the world slightly exceeds 16,000. The Chukchi are traditionally divided into the Maritime Chukchi , who had settled homes on the coast and lived primarily from sea mammal hunting, and

486-709: The people living around the Okhotsk Sea . According to several studies on genomic research conducted from 2014 to 2018, the Chukchi are the closest Asian relatives of the indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as of the Ainu people , being the descendants of settlers who neither crossed the Bering Strait nor settled the Japanese archipelago. The majority of Chukchi reside within Chukotka Autonomous Okrug , but some also reside in

513-404: The south, to the former mining village of Iultin, on the 91st kilometer. The majority of the population are reindeer herders, with 84 people working on the tundra in 2003. Beyond the comparative ease with which inhabitants of Amguema can reach the outside world, the village has also been a major beneficiary of the money spent on the region by the former governor, Roman Abramovich . The village has

540-495: The traditional lifestyles of the coastal and inland Chukchi. The coastal Chukchi were largely settled fishers and hunters, mainly of sea mammals. The inland Chukchi were partial reindeer herders. Beginning in the 1920s, the Soviets organized the economic activities of both coastal and inland Chukchi and eventually established 28 collectively run, state-owned enterprises in Chukotka. All of these were based on reindeer herding, with

567-469: The very far North East (see on the right a map for population territories during the extermination activity by the Russian Empire). In 1762, with a new ruler , Saint Petersburg adopted a different policy. Maintaining the fort at Anadyrsk had cost some 1,380,000 rubles, but the area had returned only 29,150 rubles in taxes, so the government abandoned Anadyrsk in 1764. The Chukchi, no longer attacked by

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594-412: The village produce a dish called kivlet , boiled reindeer stomachs, complete with their undigested final meal to which venison, blood and onions are added and is said to resemble goulash when cooked. As with many of the settlements in Chukotka, there are neolithic remains to be found in the area surrounding the village. The inhabitants of Amguema survive almost entirely through reindeer husbandry and

621-614: The village-based economy in Chukotka. The region has still not fully recovered. Many rural Chukchi, as well as Russians in Chukotka's villages, have survived in recent years only with the help of direct humanitarian aid. Some Chukchi have attained university degrees, becoming poets, writers, politicians, teachers and doctors. In prehistoric times, the Chukchi engaged in nomadic hunter gatherer modes of existence. In current times, there continue to be some elements of subsistence hunting, including that of polar bears , seals , walruses , whales , and reindeer . There are some differences between

648-455: Was 570, up slightly on the 2003 estimate of 548, of whom 387 were indigenous peoples and of those 379 of them were Chukchi . In August, the village is the host of the Vylgynkoranymat festival (lit. young reindeer festival), during which time, a slaughter occurs so that the residents may have sufficient skins for clothing for the forthcoming winter. At the end of the festival, the women of

675-496: Was a major exodus of Russians from the area because of the underfunding of the local industry. Population estimates from Forsyth: In the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2022, the Chukchis have been reported as one of Russia's ethnic minority groups suffering from a disproportionally large casualty rate among Russian forces. Chukchi jokes are a form of ethnic humor . They are portrayed as primitive yet clever in

702-531: Was among a number of Russian cargo ships and ice-breakers stuck in ice at Kosa Dvukh Pilotov in 1983 on a journey from Magadan to Mys Shmidta , when the winter sea ice formed significantly earlier than usual. Amguema, similarly to Egvekinot , has a transitional polar tundra / subarctic climate ( Dfc/ET ) with bitterly cold, very long winters and very short, cool summers. Amguema (river) The Amguema ( Russian : Амгуэ́ма , Chukot : Оʼмваам , O'mvaam ; in its upper course Вульвывее́м, Vulvyveyem )

729-464: Was first developed in 1962 and named Anguema after the village. This was the first new class of ULA (the Russian abbreviation for "strengthened for arctic ice") a continuation of the Lena class of icebreaker to all intents and purposes, and was felt to have a hull shape far superior to any type of ice breaker constructed to that date. The first of this class of ship named after the village, a polar cargo ship,

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