{{Short description|Nenets writer, poet, environmentalist and social activist}} '''Yurii Kilevich Aivaseda''' (1948 - Sept. 2013), also known by the pseudonym '''Yuri Vella''',<ref name="bio">{{cite book|author1=Erich Kasten |author2=Tjeerd de Graaf |title=Sustaining Indigenous Knowledge: Learning Tools and Community Initiatives for Preserving Endangered Languages and Local Cultural Heritage |publisher=BoD – Books on Demand |isbn=9781452915463 |page=137}}</ref> was a writer, poet, environmentalist and social activist of the Forest Nenets people from Western Siberia.
== Biography == Yuri Vella was born in the Varyogan village in Siberia in 1948.<ref name="wk">{{cite book|author1=Alexander Vaschenko |author2=Claude Clayton Smith |author3=N. Scott Momaday |title=The Way of Kinship: An Anthology of Native Siberian Literature |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |isbn=9781452915463 |pages=78–93}}</ref> In the 1990s, he moved with his family from the Varyogan village to the tundra of the Agan River to revive the traditional Nenets way of life and become a reindeer herder.<ref name="bio"/>
He was a writer and poet writing in the Forest Nenets language, the Khanty language and in Russian.<ref name="wk"/> He was a social activist - in 1990, he organised a protest on behalf of the Nenets people in the Varegansk area, Yamal, against the gas and oil industry expanding into Yamal. The energy industry was destroying the environment, killing the reindeer, and displacing and persecuting the indigenous people. The protest was recorded by Russian TV.<ref name="protest">{{cite book|last1=Mandelstam Balzer|first1=Marjorie|title=The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A Siberian Saga in Global Perspective|url=https://archive.org/details/tenacityofethnic00balz_0|url-access=registration|date=1999|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=9780691006734|page=[https://archive.org/details/tenacityofethnic00balz_0/page/152 152]}}</ref>
In 1996, he created a small Taiga school to teach the traditional reindeer herding skills to Nenets children. The school was closed in 2009, when the attending children grew older and left for other education.<ref name="bio"/><ref name="wk"/>
In 2008, a documentary film about Vella, called ''Yuri Vella's world - the DER documentary'', was created by Liivo Niglas.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.der.org/films/yuri-vellas-world.html|title = Yuri Vella's World}}</ref>
== Bibliography ==
The following works of Vella were published in the 2010 anthology ''Way of Kinship: Anthology of Native Siberian Literature'', pages 78-93<ref name="wk"/> * At the Bus Stop * Watching TV * On Things Eternal * To the Bear * Song of the Reindeer Breeder * Eternal Sky * The Little Shaman and Other Stories * Morning at the Lake * Fyodor the Hunter * News from Vatyegan Camp
Vella's poem "To the Bear" was also published in the anthology ''Grrrrr: A Collection of Poems about Bears'', published by Arctos Press, 2000, {{ISBN|9780965701518}}. <ref name="wk"/>
== References == {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vella, Yuri}} Category:1948 births Category:2013 deaths Category:Nenets people