Archival documents and sociological field materials lead to some study results on the development of the traditional economy on the Arctic and North territories of Yakutia in the post-Soviet period — 1990s–2000s. The author considered the following issues: environmental and economic zoning, the historical discourse of the traditional economy in the context of agrarian policy in 1990s and some theoretical approaches to studying the phenomenon of the traditional way of life and the economy of the indigenous peoples of the North. In the first post-Soviet decade, we see a gradual decrease in the number of the northern livestock. The most vulnerable were the northwestern coastal areas with predominant reindeer herding. Sociological data on the second post-Soviet decade enabled us to identify three directions in the preliminary typology of the traditional economy of the indigenous peoples of the North Yakutia.