[5] Together with the Khanty people, the Mansi are politically represented by the Association to Save Yugra, an organisation founded during Perestroika in the late 1980s.

[7] Other researchers say that the Khanty people originated in the south Ural steppe and moved northwards into their current location in about 500 AD.

[8] As per the Primary Chronicle, Uleb Ragnvaldsson, the posadnik of Novgorod, led a war party to conquer Yugra, the historical homeland of the Khanty (Ostyaks) and Mansi (Voguls).

During the Middle Ages, it is possible that the Mansi considered the eastern territories of the Novgorod Republic and the Grand Principality of Moscow as their own.

Raids and war parties against Russian nobility created confusion in the regions near the Ural Mountains.

As a result, they were also popular with Russian peasants, as they gave them freedom to improve their lives by stealing with a "permit" from the tsar whatever they wished from the nobility.

There were many conflicts where the Mansi fought against the Khanty, Nenets, Tatars or Russians, changing allies as fit their needs.

The push came under the Russian Cossack Yermak, and its influence reached the natives in the Obi River region, starting a time of troubles lasting until the reign of Peter the Great in the 18th century.

The last conflict between the Mansi and the Russian state was the Kazym rebellion in 1931–1934, where natives of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug rebelled.

[14] During the winter, the Mansi lived in stationary huts made out of earth and branches at permanent villages.

During the spring, the Mansi moved towards hunting and fishing grounds, where they constructed temporary rectangular-shaped shelters out of birch bark and poles.

Mansi folklore also includes mythical and heroic stories and fate songs, which are biographical poems.

[13] An example of the traditional material culture of Ob-Ugric peoples is ornamenting leather clothing and birch bark objects with mosaics.

[15] According to a 2019 study, in addition to having a high level of East Eurasian-like ancestry, the Mansi have also West Eurasian admixture.

[16] In a 2018 study, Mansi samples showed variation in the amounts of West and East Eurasian admixtures.

Some of them clustered with the Khanty, while outlier samples had additional West Eurasian admixture, making them closer to Uralic-speakers from the Volga-Ural region.