Trip to a Mansi village

The Mansi are a Finno-Ugric ethnic and linguistic group of tribes living in the Northern Ural Mountains. They are an endangered indigenous group. About 7 kilometers north of Ushma lies a smaller and more remote settlement named "Yurta Anyamov". This is where Anyamov clan lives. Today the tiny population survives by hunting and making cultural artifacts that are sold in town.
During Soviet times, the Mansi were encouraged to abandon their traditions and language and to assimilate. Settlements were built as an attempt to discourage the people from their nomadic ways and so that they could benefit from the communist system. However, the dominant ethnic groups in the region did not accept the Mansi as equals. Decades of marginalization and social degradation followed. Today there are about 11,400 Mansi in Russia. Only about 150 live in the Sverdlovsk region.

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