Nganasan people
ethnic group
The Nganasans ( əng-GAN-ə-san; Nganasan: ӈәнә"са(нә") ŋənəhsa(nəh), ня(") ńæh) are a people native to the Taymyr Peninsula in north Siberia. In the Russian Federation, they are recognized as one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. They reside primarily in the settlements of Ust-Avam, Volochanka, and Novaya in the Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, with smaller populations residing in the towns of Dudinka and Norilsk as well.
The Nganasans are thought to be the direct descendants of proto-Uralic peoples. However there is some evidence that they absorbed a local Paleo-Siberian population. The Nganasans were traditionally a semi-nomadic people whose main form of subsistence was wild reindeer hunting, in contrast to the Nenets, who herded reindeer. Beginning in the early 17th century, the Nganasans were subjected to the yasak system of Tsarist Russia. They lived relatively independently, until the 1970s, when they were settled in the villages they live in today, which are at the southern edges of the Nganasans' historical nomadic routes.
There is no certainty as to the exact number of Nganasans living in Russia today. The 2002 Russian census counted 862 Nganasans living in Russia, 766 of whom lived in the former Taymyr Autonomous Okrug.
The public source identifies “Nganasan people” as ethnic group. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nganasan, people and ethnic.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1163044. The Library of Congress control number is sh85091667. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nganasan people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.