THE Shaman's Coat by Anna Reid tells the story of the native peoples of Siberia.

Larger than North America and Western Europe combined, Siberia has a population of 32 million, 1.6m of whom belong to its 30-odd indigenous nationalities. Conquered in the 1600s by fortune-hunting Cossacks, enslaved and infected with smallpox and influenza under the Tsars, and shot or sent to the Gulag under Stalin, they hardly figure in most Russian histories, and most Westerners do not even know that they exist. Since Communism's fall they have begun to reassert themselves, rebuilding Buddhist temples, openly practising Shamanism, refusing to pay taxes to Moscow, and demanding rights over their ancient lands.

Though in some parts of Siberia native cultures are reviving, in others, indigenous nationalities are threatened with extinction. In Chukotka, a tundra-bound peninsula on the Bering Strait, the subsidies that used to support local ports and mines have dried up, with the result that half the region's population has emigrated south, leaving the remainder to abject poverty. Alcoholism, tuberculosis and scurvy are rife, and suicide rates are rocketing.

Taking the reader to one of the world's last great wildernesses, The Shaman's Coat retells colonial history from the point of view of the colonised, and paints a vivid group portrait of some of the world's least-known peoples at a time of rapid change. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £20).