Mansi

   Ethnic group. Formerly known as the Voguls, the Mansi are an Ugrian people of western Siberia, and one of two titular nationalities of Khantiya-Mansiya, the other being the Khanty. The Mansi are considered to be an endangered ethnolinguistic group, numbering fewer than 12,000. They represent less than 1 percent of the population of their ethnic homeland. Like the Khanty, a significant percentage of the community observes a traditional lifestyle based on reindeer herding, trapping, hunting, and fishing. However, the Mansi tend to be more Russified (often intermarrying with Slavs) than their Khanty counterparts, with only a tiny minority using their language in everyday situations.

   Many Mansi still work on collective-style farms and engage in trade with the nonindigenous community, unlike their Khanty cousins, who have opted to return to a seminomadic lifestyle. The Mansi language is a member of the Ob-Ugric subfamily of the Finno-Ugric languages. While some Mansi practice Russian Orthodoxy, many retain their traditional shamanistic beliefs. Oil and natural gas extraction has accelerated the cultural decline of the Mansi people through destruction of their traditional hunting grounds and pastures. However, since 1991, the Mansi and their Khanty cousins have gained additional land use rights; at the same time, they have also been the victims of high-pressure tactics by petroleum companies seeking access to their lands.

   Life expectancy among the Mansi is drastically lower compared to that of other ethnic groups in the Russian Federation, partly a result of alcoholism and lack of regular health care. Politically, the Mansi are party to the Association to Save Yugra, a nongovernmental organization focused on the protection of indigenous lands, and the Cultural Congress of the Mansi People, which in the early 1990s sought to declare a separate Mansi okrug under the jurisdiction of the Sverdlovsk (rather than Tyumen) Oblast.