My recent trip to Altai was my third since last year and every time I traveled through the Republic, it was a time for reflection and discovery. My former colleagues and friends who have worked or still work in Altai warn me that it is a special and sacred place, and that once visited, it stays in your heart and changes your life. This time I helplessly fell in love with Altai – the serenity and piercing beauty of Lake Teletskoe, fields of flowers in the Karakol valley, lofty mountains of the sacred Uch Enmek, and wide plains and horsemen of Kosh-Agach. Most importantly, I felt at home with the people – their warmth, kindness and spiritual strength.

I want to share a story about Danil Mamyev, who is one of our Altai partners and a dear friend. Danil is the Director of the Uch Enmek Nature Park, and a community leader of the Karakol Valley. We started working with Danil in 2006 when a group of US NGOs consolidated efforts to help Danil with land registration. At the time, the window of opportunity for land acquisition and registration was due to expire in 2010 and several US-based NGOs were struggling to find resources to make indigenous land co-ownership a reality.

Danil is an indigenous Altayan, born in 1955 to an ordinary Altayan family in the small village of Bichigtoo Boom. The words Bichigtoo Boom mean Painted Mountain in Altayan, and this is because the mountains surrounding the village have hundreds if not thousands of petroglyphs – ancient stone carvings of humans, animals, and plants. After graduating from high school in 1972, Danil started working as a shepherd for a local Soviet collective farm. In 1979 after serving in the army for two years, Danil started his career as a rescue worker in the Kyzylkum desert, Tien Shan and Pamir Mountains. Soon after graduating from college, Danil returned to his native village and found a job as a teacher in a local school. But it was not until 1996 that Danil created a public organization called “Tengri School of Spiritual Ecology” and started organizing the members of his community to preserve the lands of the sacred Karakol Valley.

The word “Tengri” means Eternal Sky in Altayan; it is worshipped as one of the main divine spirits and referred to as the Father Sky. Danil created the organization with the idea to preserve and promote the historical and cultural legacy and local traditions of the Altayan people. The idea to create such an organization came from the need of indigenous people to return to their cultural roots after the fall of Soviet Union. For 70 years indigenous people had suffered oppression, rejection, and violation of their basic rights. People were not allowed to exercise their right to religious beliefs, hundreds of shamans were sent to gulags and killed during the Stalin era, and millions were displaced with no means of survival. In the years since 1996, Danil Mamyev has worked hard to revive traditions through education and outreach, and his work is finally paying off.

In the 1990s, Altai became attractive for tourists and land developers and indigenous land became available to outsiders. Danil realized that the Altayan people not only needed to revive their culture, they also needed to protect their lands from unregulated tourism and industrial development. To do that, Tengri created Uch Enmek Nature Park in 2001 to protect the biodiversity and culture of Karakol Valley. Today, Danil and his staff work to ensure that their lands are protected. They do so by surveying and registering tracts of indigenous ancestral lands into communal ownership, and by developing agreements between the park and land users to guarantee conservation of the land for traditional use and cultural protection. Danil set a legal precedent by reaching a critical mass of land ownership necessary to protect the integrity of the Uch Enmek Nature Park. Here at Pacific Environment we continue supporting Tengri and Danil Mamyev, and are planning to repeat his success with other indigenous communities throughout Russia. To be part of these efforts, please consider making a donation. For more information, please click here.

Tags: Altai, community partners, environment, Indigenous Life, Russia

Share Via:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 10:40 am and is filed under Communities, Issues, Regions, Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.