Indigenous numerically small peoples of the Russian Federation: on some issues of their “ethnic” and “cultural” rights protection

Introduction: the article considers some issues of protection of “ethnic” and “cultural” rights of indigenous numerically small peoples of the Russian Federation. It consists of several paragraphs: cultural rights of the indigenous peoples; “cultural” and “ethnic” rights in the Russian Federation; the issue of preserving “ethno-cultural diversity”; the issue of preserving “traditional medicine”; customs of indigenous numerically small peoples as a source of law. Purpose: the authors analyze and compare different approaches to defining the legal nature of the cultural heritage of Russia's indigenous numerically-small peoples as well as measures to protect this heritage, and also give a general description of legal regulation of these peoples' rights protection. Methods: the methodological framework of the research is based on a set of methods of scientific cognition, among which the dialectic method is the major one. The authors use general scientific methods (dialectics, analysis and synthesis, abstraction and concretization) and methods specific to legal science (formal-legal, technical-legal, comparative legal). Results : 1) the international law only mentions “ethnic” and “cultural” rights as well as “traditional knowledge” of indigenous peoples, not giving any legal definitions to these terms; 2) the constitutional law of the Russian Federation also does not contain a legal definition of the above terms; 3) protection of “ethnic” and “cultural” rights is a subject of joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and its constituent units, but is actually implemented only at the level of the constituent units; 4) in the Russian Federation there is no well-regulated system of support for “ethnic and cultural diversity” since such a system may impede the prosess of a unified nation formation; 5) existing regulations do not address the issues relating to the support for “traditional medicine” as a manifestation of “ethnic” and “cultural” rights of indigenous numerically small peoples; 6) the rulemaking process in Russia does not take into consideration traditional forms of habitat and customs of these peoples. Conclusions: analysis of the current legislation of the Russian Federation on cultural rights of indigenous numerically small peoples, as well as of scientific literature on the study of ethnic and cultural diversity of the peoples of the Russian Federation has been conducted.