The Mansi From The Village of Lopaevo (2026)

Meet Vasily Viktorovich, a man whose roots run 13 generations deep in the village of Lopaevo. Each of his forebears is listed in official records as Vogul—the former name for the people we now call the Mansi. But here's the twist: Novaya Lyalya District in Sverdlovsk Region, where the Lopaev family has tilled the land for centuries, isn't legally acknowledged as ancestral ground of Russia's Indigenous Northern peoples. So how did history take this turn—and what's Vasily Viktorovich's next move?