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The Nivkhs (also Nivkh or Gilyak; ethnonym: Nivxi; language, нивхгу - Nivxgu) are an indigenous people inhabiting the region of the Amur River estuary and nearby Sakhalin Island. They number 5,287 (2002 Russian Federation census). Most speak Russian, though about 10 percent speak the Nivkh language. Nivkh derives from the autonym of these people, which simply means "human being"; Gilyak derives from a Tungusic exonym.

The earliest mention of the Nivkhs in history is believed to be a medieval Chinese reference to a people called Gilyemi (Chinese: 吉列迷 Jílièmí), who were in contact with the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty of China.

For many centuries the Nivkhs were tributary to the Manchu empire. After the Treaty of Nerchinsk, 1689 they functioned as intermediaries between the Russians, Manchu, and Japanese, these last via their vassals, the Ainu. Their lands extended along the northern coast of Manchuria from the Russian fortress at Tugur eastward to the mouth of the Amur at Nikolayevsk, then south through the Strait of Tartary as far as De Castries Bay.

The Nivkhs suffered severely from the Cossack conquest and imposition of the Tsarist Russian penal policy which turned the whole island of Sakhalin into a penal settlement. There followed two occupations by the Japanese in 1904-5 and 1920-5, plus the Russian Revolution, Stalin's witch-hunts and the collectivizations, with the Nivkh being used as a 'model' nation that had gone directly from the stone age to socialism.

Despite these vicissitudes, the Nivkh nation survived. After the Russian revolution, a Gilyak Autonomous Okrug was created during the 1920s straddling the Tatar Strait. Chuner Taksami is the first modern literary figure. In the post-Soviet Russian commonwealth of nations they have fared better than the Ainu or the Kamchadals but nothing like as well as the Chukchi or the Tuvans.

At present, the Nivkhs living in the North of Sakhalin island see their future threatened by the giant offshore oil extraction projects known as Sakhalin-I and Sakhalin-II. The projects are operated by Exxon and a consortium known as Sakhalin Energy, led by Anglo-Dutch corporation Shell. Since January 2005 the Nivkh, led by their elected leader Alexey Limanzo have engaged in non-violent protest actions, demanding an independent ethnological assessment of Shell's and Exxons plans. Solidarity actions have been staged in Moscow, New York and later in Berlin.

• Anton Chekhov: "Ostrov Saxalin" Eng. transl. Brian Reeve, Cambridge 1993.
• Bruce Grant: "In the Soviet House of Culture" , Princeton 1995.
• Lev Shternberg: "The Social Organization of the Gilyak", Seattle 1999.

• The Nivkhs from The Red Book
• Norwegian Polar Institute article
• Sound Materials of the Nivkh Language The World's Largest Sound Archive of the Nivkh Language on the Web
• http://www.pacificenvironment.org/russia/sakhalin/index.html Shell Oil on Sakhalin - Putting Profits before People and the Environment