“Nyaryana Ngerm” united Nenets people of Yamal, Taimyr and Nenets Autonomous Okrug

This year the regional newspaper in Nenets language “Nyaryana Ngerm” became a dialogue platform for Nenets people of three regions - Yamal, Taimyr and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. All three regions are places of compact residence of Nenets people - representatives of indigenous ethnic minorities of the North.

“Since the 1st of January of 2020 the newspaper has become an eight-page one. Now it contains not only news from our region, but also news from Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Taimyr. This is how we together preserve our native Nenets language. As for authors, we now attract our colleagues, who work in local ethnic mass media”, Marina Yar, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper told the news agency “Sever-Press”.

The newspaper assigned one page to the forest dialect of Nenets people, also added a separate page for young people and schoolchildren, there is a sports topic, folklore by the request of readers, photo reports and a Nenets-Russian dictionary.

“I hope that our newspaper “Nyaryana Ngerm” and its application for children “Myniko” will become a kind of platform for those people, who write in their native Nenets language. Over the years the newspaper changed a lot, but the most important thing remains - love for the native land and its language, faithfulness to ethnic and journalistic traditions of Yamal”, Marina Yar commented.

It is not surprising that “Nyaryana Ngerm” united all Nenets people of Russia, because about 75% of the entire Nenets population of Russia (approximately 25 thousand people) lives compactly in Yamal. Therefore, among all the Nenets editions the newspaper is most focused on indigenous population and always contained and contains the largest amount of Nenets-language publications. The newspaper is notable for the fact that during long time (1953 — 1990) it was published only in Nenets language, thus being the only newspaper in the country that was completely printed in Nenets.

“Did our predecessors – the editors Ivan Istomin, Leonid Laptsuy, Khabecha Yaungad - ever dream that one day our readers would hold in their hands a colored eight-page “Nyaryana Ngerm”? Of course not, but they did great job for their time, in order the Nenets word was accessible for all remote nomadic camps. And today our newspaper has united all Nenets people of Russia on its pages, because since this year news from Taimyr and Nenets Autonomous Okrug has become available in Nenets language for all readers of “Nyaryana Ngerm”. Even the time difference (when it is 10:20 of a working day in Yamal, and at this time the authors in Taimyr go for a lunch break, and in Nenets Autonomous Okrug residents just wake up) does not prevent all of us from development and preservation of our Nenets language”, Marina Yar said in the interview.

Photos can be found here: https://sever-press.ru/2020/01/21/njarjana-ngjerm-obedinila-nencev-jamala-tajmyra-i-neneckogo-avtonomnogo-okruga/