For you
Monday morning listening pleasure, I urge you to listen to this wonderful NPR interview with Piers
Vibetsky, whose new book The Reindeer People chronicles the lives of Siberian reindeer herders. Vibetsky is one of
those hard-core scientific types who has spent 20-plus years among the reindeer herders of Siberia. These people live,
as Vibetsky says, "a total reindeer way of life", and have "a total reindeer economy".
I
love the concept because I am fascinated by the idea of synergies, of symbioses in nature, especially when at least half
of the equation includes humans. I spent a good part of my day yesterday at the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of
National History…something about which I will blog momentarily…and so my head is very much in an evolution kind of
mood. But there’s a great deal more here in this interview than mere science. There’s a dose of history and
anthropology as well. Vibetsky discusses how Stalin messed up the herders when he organized the herds into collectives,
thereby shattering their established social hierarchies which took many thousands of years to develop. The state of
affairs for both reindeer and reindeer herders is rather dismal, as you probably could have guessed, since ancient
cultures in general haven’t fared too well in this day and age.