East of Dreams

By: Nastassja Martin

Published by New York Review of Books, 2026-03-17

Displaced after the fall of the Soviet Union, an indigenous family works to reclaim their former self-sufficient way of life in this lyrical work of anthropology and colonial Russian history.

After her work in Alaska among the Gwich’in people, French anthropologist Nastassja Martin crossed the Bering Strait to continue her research on the effects of colonialism and climate change on indigenous communities, this time in the Russian far east. East of Dreams is Martin’s powerfully vibrant account of her seven years living with the Even people of Kamchatka. During the Soviet era, the Even people were dispossessed of their reindeer herds and settled on collective farms. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, one family, led by their matriarch Daria, decided to leave their enforced urban existences behind them and return to the Icha forest to lead a self-sufficient life based on hunting, fishing, and gathering.

How did this small collective, violated and despoiled by the colonists before being forgotten by history, reclaim its autonomy? How did they restore their relationships with animals and nature and learn to dream again? Generous, lyrical, and audacious, East of Dreams brings colonial history and indigenous cosmologies into dialogue to highlight the many voices that give the world its vitality.