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This article illustrates how the Yamal-Nenets, a group of reindeer pastoralists in West Siberia, perceive a series of recent natural disasters to be connected to one another through a conspiracy – i.e. caused by the agency of malevolent human forces which are beyond the pastoralists’ control. Recent fieldwork during the peak of the global Covid-19 epidemic served as a trigger for this observation. Their self-confidence in the robustness of their lifestyle and their embeddedness within their natural environment is so strong that Yamal-Nenets nomads believe only evil forces – not nature – can stop them from being mobile. Alongside Covid-19, they interpret the severe consequences of natural disasters, such as iced pastures, related reindeer starvation and the outbreak of anthrax as man-made attempts to reduce the number of people and animals in the tundra. The blame they place on humans for these disasters takes place in the context of hitherto unseen gas industry developments in the area. Such interpretations may become a general pattern for changing perceptions of the world by remote indigenous populations when deprived of their once customary shamanic dialogue with the spirits.

State-region relations involve negotiations over the power to (re)-constitute local spaces. While in federal states, power-sharing ostensibly gives regions a role over many space-making decisions, power asymmetries affect this role. Where centralization trends may erode regional agency, law can provide an important tool by which regions can assert influence. We examine a case where, in response to a proposed Russian federal law highly unpopular with a regional population, the region's government sought to ameliorate its potential impacts by using opportunities to co-produce the law, amending regional legislation, and strategically implementing other federal and regional laws to protect its territory.

For the past three decades, risk has occupied center stage in the energy discourse. Systemic risks have proven particularly challenging for government energy planners and corporate executives, as they are characterized by their complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and ability to causing ripple effects throughout economic, social, and political structures. In this article we analyze two approaches to governing systemic risks arising out of energy megaprojects, one mandated under the Russian legal and regulatory regime and one employed by the largely indigenous hunters, fishermen, and reindeer herders residing in the Sakha Republic. Our study focuses on the 4000-km-long natural gas transmission system “Power of Siberia” to be constructed in the sub-Arctic part of the region. We employ a complimentary and corroborative analysis of legal texts, fieldwork observations, semi-structured interviews, and transcripts of official meetings. We establish that the approach to risk taken by the people who occupy the land that the Power of Siberia traverses could provide a useful insight for handling systemic risks in connection with pipeline transportation systems. We also determine that the current Russian legal and regulatory regime fails to provide an adequate basis for governing such risks. We conclude the article by identifying four pathways for integrating valuable elements of the indigenous approach into the current legal and regulatory framework.