Yakutia is developing an international multicultural website dedicated to the languages, cultures and food heritage of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.

“Now the website contains encyclopedic information about all 40 indigenous peoples of the Arctic and presents unique materials about 10 indigenous peoples. It does not have full digitalization yet, but work is underway in this direction,” Head of Yakutia Aisen Nikolayev said at a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2022).

Initially, the Digitalization of the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic project was created as an initiative of Northwestern Federal University and the Government of Yakutia. Later, it was approved as part of the plan for Russia's chairmanship of the Arctic Council.

Nikolayev said that the work with foreign partners, which started at the Arctic Council, was neglected by some foreign colleagues. In Russia, however, work on this project will continue.

According to the head of Yakutia, it is time to move from discussing the problem of preserving world languages to creating a multilingual environment for communication in the global digital space.

“I would like to use the occasion of the UN announcing the Decade of Indigenous Languages in 2022 and Russia’s chairmanship in the Arctic Council to pursue a more active policy in the area of linguistic diversity in cyberspace, especially since Russia is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of preserving cultural diversity,” Nikolayev noted.