Evdokia Gaer

Evdokia Alexandrovna Gaer (; 8 March 1934 – 2 October 2019) was a Russian educator, politician and human rights activist. She was a teacher of Russian language, literature, and history and was a research fellow at the ethnography sector of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok from 1973 to 1989. Gaer was an elected deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union and of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991. She was later elected to serve as deputy of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation representing Primorsky Krai from 1994 to 1996. Gael's legislative career focused on indigenous rights and was a recipient of the Order of Friendship of Peoples.

Early life Gaer was born in the village of , Komsomolsky District, Khabarovsk Krai on 8 March 1934. Gaer's maternal uncle was a poet. Gaer went to school in the place from the sixth to the ninth grade. In 1950, following the death of her mother, who drowned while fishing in the Sea of Okhotsk, she moved back to Khabarovsk Krai. Between 1973 and 1989, Gaer was a research fellow at the ethnography sector of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok. She went on lengthy expeditions to various regions of the Russian Far East and defended her thesis Traditional everyday rituals of the Nanai people in the late 19th - early 20th centuries (On the problem of the sustainability and development of traditions) at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography in Moscow in 1984. She was chair of the subcommittee on the preservation and development of small-numbered peoples of the Soviet Union and helped to establish the creation and activities of the Inter-regional Deputies Group. Gaer was deputy chairman of the Committee for Northern and Indigenous Peoples from 1994 to 1996 and was the chief consultant and advisor to the chairman of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Northern Development between 1997 and 1998.

Legacy In October 2014, Gaer was one of the two first citizens to be made an . The Evdokia Aleksandrovna Gaer memorial in Vladivostok was named for her and unveiled in 2021. Gaer was a recipient of the Order of Friendship of Peoples.