Developing democracy institutions and citizen participation in state affairs, the world community focuses on postcolonial studies, which allow us to identify new perspectives, set new priorities in various areas, in law and public administration among others. In Arctic countries, postcolonial discourse has an impact on the methodology of research related to indigenous issues, and this makes possible to understand specific picture of the world and ideas about what is happening in the world. Moreover, the traditions of Russian state and governance are specific and interaction between indigenous peoples and public authorities should be studied with a special research methodology which would reflect the peculiarities of domestic public law and aimed at solving legal issue and enrich public policy. The objective of the paper is to present a new integrated methodology that includes a system of philosophical, anthropological, socio-psychological methods, as well as methods of comparative analysis and scenario development methods to involve peripheral communities into decision-making process of planning the socio-economic development in one of Russia’s Arctic regions — the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District and to justify and further legislatively consolidate the optimal forms of interaction between public authorities and indigenous communities of the North. In 2020, the Arctic Research Center conducted a sociological survey in the Shuryshkararea of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, which seems to limit existing approaches to identifying public opinion about prospects for developing villages and organizing life of their residents. Our proposed methodology for taking into account the views of indigenous peoples can help to overcome the identified limitations.

In the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the project “Nomad Education” has been implemented since 2010, aimed at solving the issues of accessibility of education for children of tundra people in the conditions of family, industrial nomadic camps. For 10 years, the attitude towards nomadic education has changed dramatically, in connection with which the paper presents an analysis of the effectiveness of nomadic education in teaching children of indigenous peoples in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug based on a study of the opinions of the nomadic population. This information can be the impetus for the improving the quality of education in nomadic areas. The purpose of the publication is to identify the problematic issues of nomadic education and determine the prospects for the project. The study involved 622 respondents from the indigenous population in 7 municipalities (districts) of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Statistical analysis was carried out using the Statistica 10 and SAS JMP 11 software packages. The results of a survey of the nomadic population on the effectiveness of teaching children in the system of nomadic education are presented. Nomadic education was assessed, risks and potential were identified. The most active supporters of nomadic education were reindeer herders, which is primarily due to the specifics of their nomadic life. Among the main factors affecting the quality of learning of children of the nomadic population, there is a shortage of qualified teachers who speak their native languages and are willing to work in the extreme conditions of nomadic life. Research materials can be useful to methodologists and teachers implementing the project “Nomadic Education” both in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and in other territories of the Russian Arctic.