La mort des Samoyèdes (Kai Donner)

Hutte samoyède en cours d'installation ou de démontage. Photographie: Kai Donner.

"I have already described how the changing circumstances have transformed the manner of living of the southern Samoyed, how their economic equilibrium was upset, and how different diseases quickly spread among them. Also they are not able to compete successfully with the immigrants. For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years they have led their lives in the wilderness, where nature afforded them rich gifts, even abundance. They have never to fight or work for their daily bread, and underthe completely changed conditions of life their existence is now all the more difficult. Surrounded on all sides by the quickly appearing civilization which has taken them unawares, they have neither been able to digest it nor adapt themselves to it. Of necessity they have gotten into a situation from which their only recourse is their own destruction. Thus they die aout and disappear without leaving behind a trace in the wilderness of their fathers or in the blood or in the culture of the invaders. The details of this tragedy are not always edifying, but their fate in its whole scope is deeply moving."

Kai Donner, Among the Samoyeds (1911-13) 1926.

http://pocombelles.over-blog.com/article-kai-reinhold-donner-1889-1935-par-aurelien-sauvageot-85345885.html

http://pocombelles.over-blog.com/article-ra-63234384.html

He who has seen life in his more original form will never forget what he has seen, and once he has left the infinite plains the memory becomes a shining revelation to him from which he can never tear himself away again. He has become an individual with double life, something of him has remained in the wilderness.

Kai Donner, Among the Samoyeds (1911-13) 1926