Mansi people
 |
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (12,500 (rising – 8,500 in 1989)) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Russia) | |
 Russia
|
12,269 (2010) |
 Ukraine
|
43 (2001) |
| Languages | |
| Russian, Mansi | |
| Religion | |
| Shamanism, Russian Orthodoxy | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Khanty | |
Mansi (obsolete: Voguls) are an indigenous people living in Khanty–Mansia, an autonomous okrug within Tyumen Oblast in Russia. In Khanty–Mansia, the Khanty and Mansi languages have co-official status with Russian. The Mansi language is one of the postulated Ugric languages of the Uralic family.
Together with the Khanty people, the Mansi are politically represented by the Association to Save Yugra, an organisation founded during the Perestroika of the late 1980s. This organisation was among the first regional indigenous associations in Russia.
According to the 2010 census, there were 12,269 Mansi in Russia.
The ancestors of Mansi people populated the areas west of the Urals. Mansi findings have been unearthed in the vicinity of Perm.
In the first millennium BC, they migrated to Western Siberia where they assimilated with the native inhabitants. According to others they are originated from the south Ural steppe and moved into their current location about 500 AD.
The Mansi have been in contact with the Russian state at least since the 16th century when most of western Siberia was brought under Russian control by Yermak Timofeyevich. Due to their higher exposure to Russian and Soviet control, they are generally more assimilated than their northern neighbours, the Khanty.
In the 1960s, exploitation of the rich oil deposits of Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug began, causing the Soviet Union's largest internal migration wave since the Second World War. This led to a dramatic marginalisation of the Mansi and Khanty who today constitute slightly more than one percent of the district's population.
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