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Paper short abstract

This presentation explores mistrust among Evenki reindeer herders as a diagnostic condition rather than social breakdown. Through predation idioms linking animals, the state, and mining, it shows how mistrust guides vigilance, coexistence, and moral repair in a disrupted taiga.

Paper long abstract

This presentation examines mistrust as a key analytical lens for understanding contemporary multispecies relations among Evenki reindeer herders in Eastern Siberia and Russian Far East. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it argues that mistrust should not be seen as the collapse of social relations but as a diagnostic condition revealing how relations among humans, animals, landscapes, and institutions become unstable under environmental degradation, extractive expansion, and state withdrawal. Focusing on the idiom of predation, the talk shows how wolves, bears, state authorities, and mining companies are evaluated within a shared moral framework that distinguishes balanced, reciprocal relations from excessive, one-sided appropriation. Mistrust thus emerges as a form of relational vigilance and ontological labor through which Evenki continue to navigate risk, negotiate coexistence, and attempt to repair fractured worlds in an increasingly unpredictable taiga.