here is a Saispaev family tree on one of the walls of the community center between some voodoo books and some textbooks on the Selkup culture. It includes more than a hundred names. This family used to be one of the biggest and the richest among the Ostyaks (the other name for the Selkups — translator’s note), and it is still possible to find more than a dozen people with the last name Saispaev in the phonebook of Parabel’. The senior representative of the richest Selkup family lives in a three-storey pre-engineered block of flats. You’d better gather in your stomach to get inside as the front door is open for just 40 cm. It is impossible to open it wider because of ice frozen over the asphalt. We are approaching the house passing by a menswear store named Pizhon (stands for fancy pants in English — TN). On one of the walls of the flat, there is a picture of another Mr. Fancy Pants, 25-year-old Georgy Saispaev, who is watching over us from it voluptuously.

During the Soviet times, a lot of settlers such as political and criminal prisoners were exiled to Saispaevo. Locals were gossiping that in one of the villages, newcomers had cut off a local woman's head. So, the Ostyaks decided to leave. They moved to the Tym river but didn't settle in as the climate, which is vital for people living in close connection with the nature, changed. Scurvy affected them and the Saispaevs realized that they were not able to live on the Tym river so they had to go back to Saispaevo.

When it was 10 versts (a Russian unit of distance equal to 1.067 kilometers — TN) left to Saispaevo, it got dark so they stopped to stay overnight, and then just started to build dwellings and stayed to live, — Georgy Arsent’evich tells his family story, which sounds as if it were a fairytale.

They didn't come back to the same place and founded another village, Nel’mach, where Arsent’ich was born. He remembers how his grandma made him swallow bitter bear bile instead of pills, tells that his mother and father were contemporaries of shamans. His parents, who were illiterate and could only scrawl their signatures, used to ask their children not to speak the Ostyak language as it was such a tongue-twister. As the language was lost, the Ostyak traditions and customs were not transmitted to the next generation. Saipaevo, the village of Arsent’ich’s ancestors, doesn't exist now.

Georgy Arsent’evich takes his passport out of his calico purse for documents. He asks us to find the word “Ostyak”. In the internal Russian passport there is no ethnicity field, thus, there’s no note “Ostyak”. Then Arsent’ich goes looking for his birth certificate. There he finds the word “Ostyak” and the soft female form “Ostyatka” next to his parents' names.

The Russians used to say that the Ostyaks were untidy. That's probably the reason why Grigory Arsent’evich's flat is perfectly tidy, and he does all housework alone. The Russian used to say that the Ostyaks were not very intelligent. Georgy Arsent’evich quotes scientific works by Marx, poems by Pushkin, and lines from Belinsky; his deskbook is a big encyclopedia. The Russian used to say that the Ostyaks were scruffy-looking. In all photos, Georgy Saispaev has a perfect beard as if it was done in a barbershop and is wearing a soft single-breasted overcoat and fashionable glasses. Russian people used to think that Ostyak women were not beautiful. Saispaev calls his first wife Marilyn Monroe.

— The Ostyaks were hu-mi-li-a-ted, — Arsent’evich tells us pressing his lips together bitterly.

He didn’t have any problems at school: Arsent’evich studied at boarding school for the Indigenous People of the North, where there were only the Ostyaks. Though, as Georgy Saispaev continues telling, “in the army, they knew somehow that I was Ostyak and bullied me.”

— I didn't say anything opposing that as it wasn't possible to change everyone's minds, — Georgy Arsent’ich says.

After the army, his main dream to enter the Institute of the Peoples of the North in Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg’s name during Soviet times — TN) could have come true. But in the post-war period, there was enough money only to send his elder brother to study.

Georgy worked in hunting and fishing communities, whose owner made them go 40 km down to taiga. His brother would send photos of him standing in front of the cruiser Aurora and on the Palace square. Georgy decided that if he couldn't go to the university, he needed a winning profession. After finishing his studies in Novosibirsk, Georgy Saispaev became the first cinema operator in the district.

— It was a top job. I came to the village and everything came to life.