Inhabitants of the Itelmen village Kovran in Kamchatka Krai objected in 2008 to the industrial fishery on the Kovran river. The Itelmencouncil Tkhsanom appealed to the Association of Indigenous Peoples ofthe North, Siberia and the Far East for help. The massive fishing will drain the stock of smelt fish. In March of 2008 the Kamchatka Minrybprom (Fishery Ministry) considered that the industrial fishing limits on the ovran river were possible. But a month later Roskomrybolovstvo, the Russian Fishery Committee made a competition for fishing sitdes distribution [1]. Often the indigenous rights to fishing resources in Kamchatka are violated by the government or commercial companies who grab the traditional indigenous peoples’ fishing grounds, practise an inequitable distribution of fishing quotas which favours big business, and develop unfair legislation that restricts
the indigenous peoples’ rights on fishing. The Itelmen community of Kovran is located on the Sea of Okhotsk coast. Itelmens are the most ancient people in Kamchatka. The oldest settlements discovered by archaeologists show that Itelmens have lived in Kamchatka for about 15000 years.[2]. Since ancient times the main occupation of the Itelmens was salmon and smelt fishing, and fish has traditionally been a year-round source of nutrition. In summer, the Itelmens used to catch and dry the fish, and sour it in special pits
for the long winter ahead. For smelt fishing, they would use traps that woukd catch thefish without human intervention Fish was fed also o dogs, historically the only form of local transportation. Their main holiday was spring celebrations when the first salmon appeared in the rivers, followed, in the
fall, by the Alhalalalay holiday to thank the Earth for its gifts. The Itelmens have lived across the whole Kamchatka Peninsula. Due to conflicts, diseases and assimilation into the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Itelmens’ population declined dramatically over time. Kovran village was a centre for the forcible resettlement of indigenous population in the Soviet regime. Some years after the end of the Soviet Union in 1990, the village teamed up with the regionall government to establish a traditional territory, called “Thsanom”, which became the first official territory in Russia specially designed for development of indigenous peoples’ traditional economy, culture and governance. Based on that experience, the Federal Government of Russia later developed the special federal law “On territories of traditional nature use of small-numbered indigenous peoples of the Russian North, Siberia and the Far East”. Later this was disbanded [2].
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