Dust

© Sally Low - Sibarginsky Mine, Kuzbass region, Russia © Sally Low - Map of Kuzbass region, Russia © Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project View all images ↓
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  • Dates
    2017 - 2017
  • Author
  • Topics Social Issues
  • Location Russia, Russia

The indigenous Shors, a Turkic people whose survival and beliefs are intimately tied to the nature around them, and have had their ancestral lands and villages ravaged by mining, leading, many say, to the slow death of their culture and way of life.

Coal is the single biggest contributor to man-made climate change and deforestation accounts for up to a tenth of current carbon dioxide emissions.

Russia is the world’s sixth-biggest coal producer and has the largest area of tree cover in the world, with 882 million hectares of forest (2017). Between 2001 and 2016 Russia lost more forest than any other country in the world.

According to the Siberian Customs Administration, more than half of all the coal exported from Kuzbass ends up in the EU, with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany among the prime markets. 70 - 80 per cent of mining in Kuzbass is opencast and the methods bring their own dangers: threatening the health of those who live nearby, as well as the surrounding environment, with air, water, soil and noise pollution. It has razed forests, blackened rivers, contaminated the air with dust, and created waste mounds.

Russian mining companies intentionally mine close to existing population centres, rather than in less populated areas. This cuts infrastructure costs – including roads, railways, electricity grid and water mains, as well as providing readily available labour.

All who live in the vicinity of the mines are prey to their impact. Official statistics reveal increases in tuberculosis, cardiovascular diseases, maternal and child illnesses and a shortened life expectancy. The paradox, though, is that many locals’ livelihoods are dependent on the mines that are causing them such harm.

The indigenous Shors, a Turkic people whose survival and beliefs are intimately tied to the nature around them, and have had their ancestral lands and villages ravaged by mining, leading, many say, to the slow death of their culture and way of life. It’s estimated that in the past seven years, the Shor population of the region has declined by almost 50 per cent.

Those who live there say the region has become a moonscape from which many are desperate to escape.

Words: Anne Harris

Photo: Sally Low

© Sally Low - Sibarginsky Mine, Kuzbass region, Russia
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Sibarginsky Mine, Kuzbass region, Russia

© Sally Low - Map of Kuzbass region, Russia
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Map of Kuzbass region, Russia

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Valentina” In the Soviet times we were regarded as uneducated, illiterate, without language and incapable. I went to a museum where that was what they said of us. After the end of the Soviet Union, I was protesting for our rights. Within 30 years people’s attitudes to us had changed and in that same museum, they could see that we were cultured and educated with our own language. Shor people will soon become extinct. This is why the most important thing is the protection of our ecology, our rivers and our taiga, for the protection of our nation. The Shor are the children of nature completely in tune with the land. In our culture, we believe that the land, the soil, plants and the mountains all have souls. Mining has destroyed all of this and so destroyed our culture and our health. They have tried to assimilate us, even the recent law that protects minority peoples is merely a public statement. The only law which actually works here is the law of power.”

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Valentina waits for a checkup at the doctors “What is happening here is genocide. The mines have a big impact on our health. Since the mines have arrived my teeth have fallen out and my hair is thinning too. People in our community get sick more often, the cancer rate has grown as has the occurrence of TB and radioactivity from the coal industry. The water is undrinkable and smells like rotting eggs. Before the mining started we drank the water from the river Msrassu but it has been polluted by the Sibarginsky mine. I want the mining companies to supply us with drinking water, but no one brings any in” From 2015 the authorities threatened people in the movement against the mines. People lost their jobs and were struggling to feed their families. They were blacklisted and couldn't get other jobs, as well as being verbally threatened. The repression has been hard. The secret police came to the village."

© Sally Low - Valentina’s parents photo sits alongside an old map of the area surrounding Chuvashka.
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Valentina’s parents photo sits alongside an old map of the area surrounding Chuvashka.

© Sally Low - Valentina chats to her neighbour
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Valentina chats to her neighbour

© Sally Low - Chuvashka, Kuzbass region, Russia
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Chuvashka, Kuzbass region, Russia

© Sally Low - Valentina ‘cuts’ coal for her indoor stove
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Valentina ‘cuts’ coal for her indoor stove

© Sally Low - Valentina carries coal for her indoor stove
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Valentina carries coal for her indoor stove

© Sally Low - Valentina scrubs the coal off her fingernails
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Valentina scrubs the coal off her fingernails

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Valentina “I used to collect plants from the forest, but not any more, with the coal killing our plants, our culture is dying. The coal mines are making the plants of the forest unhealthy, they are covered in dust I don't want to go into the forest because it is so impoverished from what it was before. I used to collect Kolba from the taiga, now I buy it in the market. It is a wild onion which is good to eat at this time of year as it has nutrients which keep us healthy in winter. We respected nature, we took what it could provide and protected it. Now people fish all they can and shoot everything that moves. There is no respect anymore, everything is destroyed.”

© Sally Low - Valentina washes her potatoes at an outside pipe.
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Valentina washes her potatoes at an outside pipe.

© Sally Low - Valentina's family photographs.
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Valentina's family photographs.

© Sally Low - Valentina at home.
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Valentina at home.

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Larisa “I grew up in Chuvashka. I was born in the house of my grandfather, it is so old not even he knew who built it. We are indigenous Shors living in Myski but we spend a lot of our time in Chuvashka during the summer. We grow vegetables, forage herbs and visit my brother whose house is opposite. How can they take my home when I was born here? I was born here and I want to die here. My grandfather lived to 104, my father died at 67, but my sister was sent home from hospital in late 2017 with cancer with only a couple of months to live. She was only 46. We think that the cancer is because of the ecological situation here, she's breathing dirty air and drinking polluted water. The life expectancy of my family and our community is decreasing with the coming of the coal mines. I feel I will die at 50 because our ecology has been destroyed. Coal is a big problem for us Shors. The indigenous people are being driven to extinction. There are no laws which protect our culture. Everyone is working in the mines.- Shor and Russian, we are all dependent on mining to put food in our mouths, but at the same time they are killing us. I thought that we were the only one’s suffering, but in fact the entire Kuzbass is crying. Our problems are similar to other indigenous people across the world. We have contacts with leaders of indigenous people’s from Asia, the Såmi, Latin America, the USA and Canada. We are different peoples but we have the same issues where we have a lack of decision making for our lands and families, resource extraction and racism. There used to be a spirit in the forest and we were brought up knowing that we weren't allowed to raise our voices here or we would upset its soul. The Shor spirituality is very eco-centric and no one can survive without roots. If they destroy Chuvashka what reason do we have to live? If they destroy our roots, how do we continue? I think the souls of nature have left because of the mining and all the explosions to get the coal. When I hear the blasting I feel like my soul is exploding.”

© Sally Low - Explosions near Chuvashka are a daily occurrence.
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Explosions near Chuvashka are a daily occurrence.

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Sasha (Larisa's brother) “I live in Chuvashka opposite the house I was brought up in. I work in the underground coal mine and have done for twenty years and before that, I worked on the railway. I have been on a pension six years since I was 50. But I still work underground because the pension is not enough to live on. My son and I work down the same mine. I work for three consecutive days and then have three days off. I work eight hours a day and I enjoy my work. To be honest work at home is sometimes harder than at the mine, as I have cows and dogs and other animals to keep as well as the garden. There used to be more cows kept in the village, but the mines took the fields and so they have to graze at the sides of the road. The only work here is coal mining. If the forest was still alive like it used to be I could still hunt and fish. The opencast means that forests are cut and there can be no hunting. These activities are in my genes. If I had enough money to keep my car going and had no other expenses then I could do traditional activities and not work in the coal mine. The coal companies prefer to mine by opencast methods as it is cheaper. I'm speaking with you because the administration and the oligarchs don't listen to us when we speak of the suffering. We are without rights on our own land. We are powerless. Some people in this community are receiving money and selling our collective rights and this is a big issue for us. My father kept bees for honey, the hives are still behind the house but now there are no active hives in the village, the bees all died when mining came. Nothing of the ecology which was once here remains. All of the fish in the lake are sick, yet we get fined if we go fishing without permits. People are getting sick but the administration doesn't want to listen. We used to drink the water from the river or the lake but now we need to drink bottled water. In order to grow you need ecology. The food in the supermarket is just chemistry.”

© Sally Low - Sasha's wife engages in traditional craft.
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Sasha's wife engages in traditional craft.

© Sally Low - Sasha and his wife in their home.
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Sasha and his wife in their home.

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Larisa with a photo of her father “My father was a fighter. He fought for this area against the mining company. He is my inspiration. He is both a village and people's history figure as he fought for the Shor's rights when we still had them to fight for. He was at the forefront of saying “No” to the mining company. They came and offered him a mountain of gold, but he always chose his children. I want to walk in his footsteps. I want a revival of our culture. I am fighting for the education of young people; the rights of Chuvashka; a return of the National Shortsi Council; to defend and support the rights of the natural territory and to prevent the exploitation of the taiga. I have to fight for these things and the things my father fought for because if they are not realised in my lifetime, my children will never follow them up. We think about the future for our children and for other generations. If we don't protect our rights and forests today then our children will not have any land, clean rivers, any space for nature or be able to practice our traditional ways of life. Hunting, fishing, gathering, it is today we need to protect our earth. We often speak about principles of Free, Prior and Informed Consent but that's not how the mining companies operate. There is false information being spread about the situation in the international arena. A governmental organisation, which acts like it is an NGO, says that the situation for indigenous people in Russia is good and that there are no problems and this a lie. Just because the coal companies have bought the region, they think they have bought the people.” Image 2. Larisa and Sasha stand on the road where their Father fought against the previous mining company."

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Sweta  “I work at Эне Таг ("Ene Tag"), the yurt and cultural area in built-in Chuvashka and funded by the mining companies operating in this region. Here I am responsible for tourism and I welcome guests and tell the stories of the Shor village. Since 2014 we have built Ene Tag in Chuvashka. According to maps, this is the site of the centre of the village, so it is the appropriate place to revive the culture and give something to the youth population. We wanted more than a building, we wanted to revive the spirituality of the region so we are constructing a home for the spirits.  As is the Russian tradition, on particular days everyone from the community comes together here and builds things, like collecting the stones from the river which were used to make the site. We wanted a spiritual centre as there are churches, synagogues and things for other religions but not for individual spirituality.  We believe that the wolf is the protector of the population, they have always protected us and should be placed as the spiritual centre. The yurt is the oldest method of construction and it represents our ancestral heritage. You should bow to the fire in the yurt's centre and so the door is low forcing you to do so.  We celebrate the solstices as the main festivities, but there are other cultural rituals around prayers for good things and well-being. We have kept some of our traditions alive despite the pressure of civilisation and Russianisation. Things like family values, relationships, food, hunting methods, for example, using a slingshot rather than a gun, woodwork, legends, myths and of course the Shor language.  In the time of the 1917 October Revolution, there was a big program to fight illiteracy and now a lot of Shor people are doctors, teachers or in government. The impact has been the development of the population.  Due to civilisation, our comfort levels have increased. Now every family has a car and can survive without having to go into the taiga to hunt.  The coal mining development in this area has had an impact on the village and there are now jobs so it is a good effect. Some people see the good and others see the bad in any situation. We live in harmony with nature and our resources. We want to keep the resources for our children and protect the spirits of our water and the environment. We bow to the spirit of the taiga and the fire.”

© Sally Low - Larisa and Sasha stand on the road where their Father fought against the previous mining company.
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Larisa and Sasha stand on the road where their Father fought against the previous mining company.

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Lydia in her office at the yurt and cultural area in Chuvashka. “My name is Lydia. I work in the administration in Chuvashka and this village is also my home. We are working on culture here in the administration and the Shor Yurt. I work with the local people in this village and surrounding ones, having been born here I know people from the village which makes my job easier. Of course, I can speak the Shor language.  As a village representative, my role is to solve questions concerning the village, for example, construction, repair, deaths, the children’s playground, that sort of thing.  This village is hundreds of years old. The oldest building in the village has probably only been here since the 1930s because the area is wet and old wooden houses would rot, especially as they were built without a foundation, just on to the bare ground.  On days of traditional celebrations, we wear traditional clothes and a shaman comes here. It's either a shaman or the oldest person in our village. There are no shamans living in Chuvashka now but we invite someone from Hakazia, Tashtagol, or Buriatzi. Our guests are from this village as well as from Myski. There used to be Kaichis (traditional Shor storytellers) in Chuvashka but there aren't any more.  Here at the Shor yurt, we have constructed a wood workshop. In our past, everyone had their handcraft – blacksmiths, woodwork, boat building, hunting, fishing and needlework. My father had tools for woodcraft which were later gifted to the museum.  The children from this village now go to school in Beredino on the bus. It's a day school. There is no school in this village as there are too few children.  There are no issues in our village as they are addressed by the administration above ours and are resolved quickly. My grandfathers were hunters, in earlier times there were more animals so there was fur production and fishing here. People still fish and there are animals to hunt. There is a safe zone which is not affected by mining, it is for hunting and they cannot cut the forest. There are bears in the forest and lots of fur-bearing animals – foxes, rabbits, and wolves which come and go. You always have to have a permit to be able to hunt. There are too many bears so we give out a permit to kill a specific amount. Farm animals are the main source of meat now. People raise birds and cows and buy meat from the shop. There are water pumps in the village for drinking water, people also get it from the source. The quality of the water is checked here.  The federal government decided to open the coal mines, it is not a decision our administration makes. Coal mining has both good and bad outcomes for our area. I don't know what else to say about it.  The spirits of the mountain, the lake and the forest are important. We are bowing to the spirits of the fire, mountains and air.  The sacred mountain remains in memory.”

© Sally Low - The school bus collecting children in Chuvashka.
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The school bus collecting children in Chuvashka.

© Sally Low - 'Ene Tag' - The yurt and cultural area in Chuvashka.
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'Ene Tag' - The yurt and cultural area in Chuvashka.

© Sally Low - Sweta outside 'Ene Tag'
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Sweta outside 'Ene Tag'

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Alexander 
“I live in Chuvashka. I lived in this house with my wife but sadly she recently passed away. Both of us are Shor and speak the language. The Shor traditions are lost as the old people die. The young people don't care about them. The administration tries to keep the culture alive, but it is futile and our traditional knowledge is lost. A long time ago there were traditional Shor storytellers. The storytellers spoke of people living from the land and beneath the sky. Whether the stories were myths, legends, real or imagined nobody knows. The whole village would gather on winter evenings when there was no work and they would wear traditional clothes and the stories might last a week. People tried to write it down but it was an oral tradition. The old people died and the knowledge was lost. As a child I lived in the village of Kurya with my grandmother. My mother worked in a factory in Myski. There was no work in our village, but that didn't matter as we could live off the land. We tended to the garden and grew potatoes and vegetables. When Kurya was destroyed to make way for the Sibirginsky opencast coal mine, me and my family moved to Chuvashka. There is no other real work in this area and so I had to work in the mine even though it was this mine that destroyed our home. There are opencast coal mines all around our village. They have big explosions which send dust into the air and wherever the wind comes from, it brings more dust. When the wind blows after an explosion you can see the pollution in the atmosphere and on this large a scale it causes cancer. The explosions, the pollution and the chemicals are damaging us. It concentrates in our organs, you can see the dust in the air, but you can't see all the toxins. If we could still grow food here we wouldn't need to work, but there is so much coal on the land that crops fail and so there is no choice but to work on the mines. If the mining companies would listen I would tell them that the mines need to be closed down. The owners of the companies need to stop chasing the Russian Ruble and protect nature and people, not destroy it all by taking the resources. There is no deficit of coal, but there is a huge deficit of untouched nature, ecology and clean water."

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Alexander  "I still tend my garden. I've started to bring the trees which would be killed by the mine expansion into it to grow, as the mining stops them in the forest. I collect herbs for my tea from further away from my house since the mining has come closer The berries don't grow in my garden now, because of the pollution, but I can still use the leaves. If I want to fish I have to take a motorboat upriver away from the mines, there are no fish in the water by the village, it is too polluted.  Shor people used to collect medicinal plants, but for that, you need a clean ecology. Medicine is a clean ecological product. Lots of the older generation used herbs, now people go to the pharmacy but not everyone can afford to go and so they have to travel further for traditional herbal medicine. My grandmother knew a lot about herbs for health. When I was a child I didn't listen to her, now I would love to know the entire process as she did. Finding the plant, preparing it, knowing how much to take and when, these are the things she knew and I don't. Now my tactic is to try and not get sick.  Where do we go? We could all move out of Chuvashka and leave it to them, but this is my land and I was born on it. There is a licence for a mine here in the village and when they decide to exploit the coal under it our village can all be demolished in a day. This feels hard, but what use are feelings. What can I do with those?”

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Yana “My father and grandfather lived in Kazas. My grandfather gave his house to my father. My grandfather died, he didn’t want to sell his house to the coal mining company and like many other people in Kazas didn't want coal mining near his home. Most people sold their homes, but five refused to sell and their homes were burnt down. People wanted to stay as that is where the cemetery is, where our dead lie. The mining destroyed the sacred mountain and people were made homeless, in what was our territory. Our Kazas house was destroyed in December 2013. There is repression here against us raising our voices about the mining. When the experts from an international organization came to visit the Kuzbass they were followed by the mining company. When they followed us recently I was worried that the mining company would cause our car to crash. After five years with no progress, we wrote to the United Nations Committee on Racial discrimination in 2015. In 2017 they finally prepared recommendations for Russia. For us, this is a not small victory. Now and in the future, we have to see about the implementation of the recommendations. It is difficult, it takes a lot of our time. But this is our life and we do it for our children and for a better future."

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Yana looks out the window to check on the car that has been following her. The occupants inside are from the mining company. Not long after this story was finished Yana ended up fleeing the region as the threats against her and her family increased and she was concerned, like so many others who have spoken out, about her safety. Yana is still working with the UN to try and ensure justice for not just the Shors but other indigenous peoples in Russia.

© Sally Low - Image from the Dust photography project
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Anonymous Myski  “I live in Myski, a town in the Kuzbass region of Russia. The area around my home has become an intensive mining zone.  Every year 18.5 tonnes of coal dust is sent up into our air from the coal industry, the mines, the waste heaps, the lorries and the trains. I've been trying to approach different authorities to find out if this is legal but they refuse to answer my questions. All the analysis we have done proves that this is breaking the law, but the state won’t acknowledge it. Now they have sent in the Ecological Department because the other departments say that it is not their jurisdiction.  The Blue Mountain used to be forested, then there was an underground mine and finally, now there is an opencast there. The rainwater water runs from the bare hillside down to the road, where it is pumped over the highway directly into the river with no filtration or any other method of treating it. The water is filthy. The mine at Kijzasskij was first started in 2012. There should have been a sanitary health zone in place from the first day of exploitation. Five years on this still doesn’t exist. There is still no water filtration system at all. Mines use a lot of water in their extraction, but the water waste is not treated at all.  Before the mining intensified in our area there were ten other industries, these included metalwork, chemical factories, woodworking industries and milk processing warehouses. But Moscow doesn't want it to be a diverse economical region here, they want the whole area to be designated for mining. There used to be a brick factory in the forest, a road was constructed for it. Then they built a new road for the mine, the forest is already destroyed by these roads.  Although I am attached to the place I live I think we deserve a better life. I've asked the authorities if they will buy up all of the land, so that we can move away from the industry. But they say that there is no necessity to buy the homes in order to keep mining as they intend. There used to be a better quality of life here. I used to ring people in Moscow and they would ask what was the beautiful music playing in the background. It was the birds in my garden. That isn't the situation here any more.  We used to be able to eat the produce of our land until the soil was contaminated by coal dust and pollution. Recently someone came to me to show me the apples growing on his trees. The old man was crying as they were full of dust. “These are my coal apples that I am now growing here.” We can't grow our food like we used to. The fruit leaves are covered in coal dust, the top is washed by the rain, but where it drips off it leaves a dirty mark. Some crops completely fail, the tomatoes blacken outside and the carrots start growing and then die.  This isn't how it used to be here. The coal industry is choking people out of the region, soon we will be like rats, leaving a sinking ship. The people are being forced from this area. The situation in the surrounding forests is so bad that the animals are leaving and the bears, lynx and wolves are coming into town.  There was a house in Tetenza which was completely burned down near the Kijzasskij mine. They sent the police in, there was an investigation and they said that it was juveniles. But it is the same as in the Shor village of Kazas, before it was cleared. Houses were burnt and there wasn't a proper investigation. We know it is done for the mining company. There is no justice.  During the time of the USSR, there was legislation preventing foreign companies from buying Russian land. Now the Kremlin want to change this so that international companies can buy land.  The scariest animal is the human being.”

© Sally Low - The Msrassu River in Chuvashka.
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The Msrassu River in Chuvashka.

Dust by Sally Low

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