The Cultures and Sacred Lands of Southern Siberia

Southern Siberia is a landscape of changing panoramas and home to a variety of indigenous peoples. It is also home to the magnificent Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest lake in the world, fed by 365 rivers, some of which travel as far as Mongolia. Today the major non-Russian ethnic population of the lake area are the Buryat-Mongols, sheep and cattle agropastoralists. Few Evenk, traditional hunter-gatherers and reindeer herders, who once called the lake their ancestral home, remain. To the west of Baikal, cross-sectioned by the Yenisei River and cradled by the Sayan Mountains, is the land of Tanna-Tuva. To the south of Baikal are the vast steppes of Mongolia.

Based on photographs and field recordings between the years 1989 and 1991, this presentation explores the regions of Buryatia, Lake Baikal, Mongolia and Tanna-Tuva through slides and field recordings, and provides a rare glimpse of how the peoples and lands are today. We see the people and the lands they live in. We hear the rituals and songs they have learned from their ancestors, and we see their sacred worlds.