The Yukaghirs. General information (endonyms, ethnographic groups, population according to the latest census, settlement)

The total number of Yukaghirs, according to the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, is 1,813 people (847 men and 966 women).

The 2010 Census put the overall number of Yukaghirs at 1,603 persons. Most of them lived in Yakutia (1,281 persons) in the Nizhnekolymsk, Verkhnekolymsk, Ust-Yansk, Allaikhovsky, Srednekolymsk, districts; Yukaghirs also live in the Chukotka autonomous area (198 persons) and Magadan region (71 persons). Today, there are two principal Yukaghir groups: Tundra Yukaghirs in the Nizhnekolymsk district of Yakutia and Forest Yukaghirs in the Verkhnekolymsk district of Yakutia. Tundra Yukaghirs live in the villages of Chersky, Andryushkino, Kolymskoye; Forest Yukaghirs live in the villages of Zyryanka, Nelemnoye, and Verkhnekolymsk. Some of them are reindeer herders, hunters, and fishermen, and consequently, people do not live in villages permanently, but explore large areas around them. 

One widespread hypothesis claims that the ethnonym “Yukaghir” derives from Even words “yuke” meaning “cold” or “yoke” meaning “remote” that, together with the suffix “ghir” (“people”/”tribe”) are translated as “a remote tribe” / “people of a cold land.” Vladillen A. Tugolukov believed that the first element of the word “Yukaghir” comes from the distorted Tungus word “dyuke” meaning ice. In that case, the ethnonym means “ice” or “cold” people. The endonym of the Upper Kolyma (Forest) group of Yukaghirs is Odul , the endonym of the Alazeya (or Tundra) Yukaghirs is Vadul meaning “powerful,” “strong.” Yukaghirs from the upper reaches of the Kolyma call Tundra Yukaghirs “ Alai ,” while the latter call Forest Yukaghirs “ Kogime ,” “raven people.” 

Wife and sister of the first Alazeya Yukaghir clan (left to right: a Lamut woman and a Yukaghir woman). Photo: Vladimir Jochelson. Late 19 th century. Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. No. 4399-2/1

By the time the first written information about Yukaghirs had appeared in the 17 th century, they lived over vast territories of Northeast Siberia from the river Lena to the river Anadyr. Yukaghirs were not a monolithic ethnic community and were divided into clans and tribes. 

Yukaghir groups’ settlement was closely tied to rivers: the Khoromoy lived in the lower reaches of the Omoloy and the Yana; the Yandin lived in the middle and upper reaches of the Omoloy; the Onondi lived in the middle and upper reaches of the Yana. The Shoromboy lived to the east of them, in the upper reaches of the Indigirka, and the Yangir lived in its middle reaches. The Olyuben lived in the north of the Indigirka, with Alais being their neighbors in the east, along the Alazeya. The Omok lived eastward, in the middle and lower reaches of the Kolyma and in the lower reaches of the Omolon with the Kogime being their neighbors in the south, in the upper reaches of the Kolyma. The Lavren lived in the middle reaches of the Omolon; their neighbors the Khodynts and the Anaoul lived in the catchment area of the upper and lower reaches of the Anadyr. Chuvans lived to the north bordering on the Chukchi’s lands. 

Yukaghir settlement map (according to Vladimir Jochelson). From Jesup North Expedition . Vol. IX

Scholars of the late 19 th century wrote that the Yukaghir people were made up of different collectives that did not possess a common identity or endonym, and the term “Yukaghirs” constituted rather a generalizing administrative category comprising groups that engaged in different economic activities, had different material cultures, languages, and were surrounded by other peoples: Evens, Yakuts, Russians, the Chukchi, Koryaks, etc. Only the Yukaghirs of the upper and lower reaches of the Kolyma at that time manifested the greatest similarity. They preserved their self-identity and endonym until now. 

After the revolution, hunters, fishermen, and reindeer herders mostly move to villages where they are immersed into a different type of infrastructure, interact with different ethnic communities and partially abandon their former sustenance mechanisms. However, they did not fully transition to a different way of life since they had retained many of their traditional occupations and forms of culture even if in a changed socioeconomic and cultural context. 

In the Soviet era, the Yukaghir population of the Nizhnekolymsk district had greatest density in three naslegs : (a nasleg is the smallest administrative unit of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) equivalent to a village council or a village) : Olyorinsky, Khalarchinsky, and Pokhodsky. In 1959, the Olyorinsky nasleg had only 92 Yukaghirs, 58 of them living in monoethnic and 34 in mixed ethnic families: 13 Yukaghir families, 12 Yukaghir-Even families, 5 Yukaghir-Yakut families, 2 Yukaghir-Chukchi families, and also 3 single Yukaghirs. The Khalarchinsky nasleg had 34 Yukaghirs, 29 of them living in mixed families: there was only one monoethnic Yukaghir family, 12 Yukaghir-Chukchi families, 3 Yukaghir-Even, and 2 Yukaghir-Yakut families. 

In addition, to their native tongue, Yukaghirs typically knew Chukchi, Even, Yakut, and Russian. Today’s residents of the district also stress knowledge of three, four, or even five languages as a distinctive feature of the indigenous population. Even though ethnographic materials of the past and present consistently attest to the “Siberian multilingualism” phenomenon, different people have different fluency in various languages. A Yukaghir’s command of Yakut, for instance, could be limited to a laconic set of basic hunting and fishing terms. 

In the mid-20 th century, the Yukaghirs of the upper Kolyma also exhibited cultural and linguistic diversity. The Yukaghir-Yakut collective farm “Svetlaya Zhizn’” (Bright Life) had 45 homesteads, of them 16 were Yukaghir, seven were Yakut, three were Russian, nine Evenk, nine Yukaghir-Yakut, and two 2 Yukaghir-Russian. Four more Yukaghir-Russian families lived outside the collective farm in the village of Nelemnoye, and two Yukaghir-Russian families lived in the village of Zyryanka. In 1959, virtually all employees of the “Svetly Put’” (Bright Path) collective farm were two- or multilingual: 14 knew Yukaghir and Yakut, one person knew Yukaghir and Russian, 31 persons knew Yukaghir, Russian, and Yakut, seven knew Yukaghir, Yakut, and Even; additionally, 10 people knew Yukaghir, Even, Yakut, and Russian. In the mid-20 th century, neighboring Korkodon Yukaghirs Jochelson wrote about were a small group living in the Srednekan district of the Magadan region: they numbered 20 persons: one Yukaghir family, three Yukaghir-Russian families, and one Yukaghir-Yakut family. 

A meal in a chum. Photo: Vladimir Jochelson. Late 19 th century. Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. No. 4399-10

Village of Andryushkino . Photo: Nikolay S. Goncharov. 2021.  6 th Congress of the Yukaghir People in the village of Andryushkino, 2019.