Tsaatan Shaman With Drum During Ceremony
The Dukha are a small culture of reindeer herders living in northern Khövsgöl Aimag of Mongolia. The North Taiga band was organized under the Qing Dynasty from 1755-1912 as part of Toja or Uriyankhai banner. With Mongolian independence, the banner became part of Tuva, which was soon annexed by the Russians, leaving only North Taiga band on the Mongolian side of the frontier. The South Taiga group of the Dukhans and other Uriankhais fled over the frontier from Tuva to avoid conscription in the 1930s. At first, the Mongolian government repeatedly deported them back to Tuva. In 1956 the government finally gave them Mongolian citizenship and resettled them at Tsagaan Nuur Lake on the Shishigt River. Only 44 Dukha families remain, totaling somewhere between 200 and 400 people. They ride, breed, milk, and live off of reindeer, though the reindeer population has dropped to approximately 600 since the 1970s, when it was an estimated 2000. Since the democratization of Mongolia, no governmental programs have been in place to replenish reindeer herds with animals from Siberia, direly endangering the Dukha way of life. Much of the Dukha income today comes from tourists who pay to buy their crafts and to ride their domesticated reindeer. After riding for a whole day, crossing swamps and a snow-covered high altitude mountain pass, we reached a Tsaatan village where we spent a couple of days, thus trying to understand their way of life and tasting excellent -yet quite strong and smelly- cheese made of reindeer milk. Shamans are important to the Tsaatan. They can be male or female. Shamanism comprises a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. We had a shamanistic ceremony organised for us, during which the shaman told us that everything would go well during the rest of our trip. Then everybody in the teepee drank the vodka and smoked the cigarettes we had brought as an offering to the Shaman.
Size: 4288px × 2848px
Location: Tsaatan Village, Mongolia, Asia
Photo credit: © François-Olivier Dommergues / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: asia, buddhism, buddhist, culture, desert, eastern, grass, horse, isolated, landlocked, mongolia, mongolian, mountains, nomad, nomadic, nomads, remote, republic, satellite, shaman, shamanism, soviet, state, steppe, tibetan, traditional, tribe
