This essay discusses how Indigenous people in the Arctic live with waste and pollution. I explore three signifcant aspects of waste that help reveal the overwhelming impact that it has on Indigenous individuals and communities. These are waste’s materiality – its physical presence in the environment and homeland of many Indigenous groups. Second, I show how waste’s invisibility in some cases creates indeterminacy which transforms and controls individuals’ and communities’ lives. Third, I reflect on waste’s temporalities that intersect with the frst two aspects to escalate their impacts and exacerbate inequality. I reveal how these aspects of waste and pollution determine the lives of many Indigenous communities in the Russian and European Arctic. I roughly identify two modes of co-existence with waste: living with waste through everyday practices of accommodation, learning, and resistance; and more radical opposition through civic activism. Those modes are not dichotomous and can overlap or evolve into each other.