ABSTRACT
Indigenous conversion generated profound social and moral tensions in the tundra. Early converts embraced radical “rituals of rupture,” burning sacred objects and abandoning traditional lifeways, signaling a break from ancestral life. This provoked conflicts, marginalizing converts and highlighting collision between global religious frameworks and regionally embedded lifeworlds. Missionaries framed the tundra and indigenous practices as demonically charged, casting conversion as spiritual warfare, while converts navigated the pressures of a “born-again” identity within a culturally distinct environment. Over time, many Nenets reconciled Christianity with ancestral practices, expressing regret over destroyed idols and renegotiating social norms. Conversion thus evolved from rupture to negotiated continuity, reshaping identities, moral orders, and understandings of indigenous belonging, revealing the dialogical, contested, and spatially mediated nature of religious change.
