The “Linguistic and Cultural Heritage” track brought together about 30 young language activists from the regions of Russian Siberia, the North and the Far East within the “Russian North” Youth Forum in Salekhard

Salekhard, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, hosted the “Russian North” Youth Forum

2022 is the Year of the Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of Russia and the first year of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

The forum is a universal platform for constructive interaction between young people, the search for new approaches to preserve identity, language, culture, traditional way of life, the development of new competencies and the generation of new ideas.

The “Russian North” forum was attended by 100 representatives of 30 nationalities from 23 regions of the country, including bloggers, artisans, public figures, language activists.

The participants worked on four tracks:

• Linguistic and Cultural Heritage;
• Youth Entrepreneurship;
• Arctic Hospitality;
• Leaders of the Russian North.

Within the framework of the forum, the participants worked on youth projects and initiatives.

The Russian North. The youth has developed and proposed for implementation a number of projects that will promote the languages and original culture of the indigenous peoples of the North.

One of these projects was the “Booklet of Friendship” in the format of a phrase book in four languages: Russian, Nenets, Khanty, and Selkup. The booklet includes QR-codes with colloquial phrases and words in native languages. Such phrases can become useful when pointing the camera of a mobile device at them when conducting a dialogue with representatives of different nations.

Another youth initiative is the creation of a unified media space for native speakers of the languages of the peoples of the North for the possible prompt receipt of information and the study of native languages.

The projects are approved by participants and experts. The work on their finalization will be continued by regional language activists.

Every year, Yamal residents become winners of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs grant competition to implement their project ideas. In the history of the “Russian North” forum, 11 young Yamal residents from Shuryshkarsky, Tazovsky, Purovsky, Krasnoselkupsky, Nadymsky districts and the city of Salekhard have become federal grant recipients. The total amount of grant support amounts to 4 million 230 thousand rubles.

Since 2016, Yamal has been developing educational and methodological complexes in the Nenets, Selkup and Khanty languages. Some of them have already been included in the federal list of textbooks. Since 2020, experts have begun to translate the works of Russian classics into the languages of the indigenous peoples of the North, for example, Alexander Pushkin’s fairy tales were recently published in the Khanty language.