Paul Goble
Staunton, July 11 – The leaders of the movements of the indigenous peoples in the Russian Federation have met to expand cooperation among them both to limit the possibility that Moscow will play them off against one another and to allow them to negotiate as a group with Russian opposition groups.
At the end of last week, representatives of these groups most now in emigration held a conference in Berlin on “Indigenous Vision: Centering Our Voices, Resilience and Knowledge” (themoscowtimes.com/2025/07/11/conference-seeks-solidarity-among-indigenous-peoples-of-russia-ukraine-and-central-asia-a89789).
Three of the leaders, Buryat activist and Indigenous Peoples of Russia leader Viktoriya Maladayeva, Buryat opposition and co-founder of the Nomads Indigenous Collective Seseg Jigitova, and Sakha activist Vilyuya Choinova outlined the purposes of the meeting at a press conference.
Choinova said that one of the chief goals of the meeting and indeed of indigenous activism now is to “create a platform for Indigenous voices so we can start a dialogue on equal terms with the Russian opposition,” a group that was not represented at the Berlin meeting and that remains divided as far as its identity is concerned.
Maladyaeva said that the Russian intelligentsia and the current Russian opposition has suffered from an identity crisis “for many centuries. They don’t know who they are” in that regard. The situation of the indigenous populations is different: “we know who we are [and] we know what we want.”
And Jigitova specified what most of the indigenous believe: “the hyper-centralized, Moscow-centric system is incompatible with decolonization, as it creates projects where indigenous people are invited” to participate but marginalized and not put at the center of what is going on.
All three stressed that their cooperation is at “the dialogue stage,” one designed to “find ways to build solidarity and amplify their voices” rather than laying down any “shared vision for the future” given that “every region” in the Russian Federation is “different and [has[ different issues.”
What they do hope for is that their group will gain “institutional representation in institutions like the United Nations and the Council of Europe” because that would give them added weight in talks with both the Russian state and the Russian opposition.