ИСТИНА

State ethnological expert review (social impact assessment) in the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic is a legal procedure, implemented uniquely on the regional level in Yakutia and aimed to regulate tense relations between industrial resource developers and local groups of indigenous peoples. Relations are tense as long as ‘industrial’ use of the territory denies its ‘indigenous’ use. State ethnological expert review is required to defend the interests of indigenous peoples. And more, the procedure of expertise is expected to become a medium, ensuring dialogue and partnership relations between industrial companies and indigenous peoples. Still, the whole procedure of ethnological expert review is a bureaucratic procedure, organized by specific bureaucratic means and thus can be analyzed through concept of structural violence, while dialogue requires interpretive labor from the parties involved. The overall argument based on the field research among experts involved in the procedure claims that the state ethnological expert review as a bureaucratic procedure structurally contradicts to the conditions required for the dialogue and partnership.