Daniel Miller: "Hunting the Wild Yak" in Cafe Amsterdam

"Hunting the Wild Yak and Chasing Wild Ass: Sport and Adventure on the Tibetan Frontier" is a photo-illustrated lecture about Tibet's wildlife and nomads. Daniel Miller first went to Tibet 20 years ago to conduct research on wild yaks. Since then he's made over 30 trips to Tibet, investigating wildlife, rangelands and nomads and working on biodiversity conservation and pastoral development projects. Miller discusses the challenges facing the conservation of Tibet's wildlife and issues related to the future of nomadic pastoralists on the Tibetan Plateau. Few other Westerners have as much experience and insight as Miller has on the Tibetan Plateau. With stunning photographs and interesting commentary, Miller will take us on a remarkable journey to a little known part of Asia -- the Tibetan Frontier -- where wild yaks still roam the mountains, Tibetan wild ass gallop across the steppes in unbridled freedom and nomads continue to move with their herds of yaks across the highest elevation grazing lands in the world as they have for centuries.

"Nomadic pastoralism has been portrayed as one of the great advances in the evolution of mankind. It is an adaptation by people to grassland areas of the world where the raising of livestock is more supportive of human life than the growing of crops. People who specialize in livestock production requiring periodic movements of their herds are known as nomadic pastoralists, or, simply nomads. The survival of nomads on the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya provides examples of nomadic practices that were once widespread throughout Asia and Africa, but are now increasingly hard to find. As such, these portraits of nomads offer a rare glimpse into a way of life that is rapidly vanishing.

The lives of the nomads are tuned to the growth of the grass and the seasonal pulse of the grazing lands. The grasslands provide the theatre in which the nomads and their animals interact to make a living. Over centuries, the nomads acquired complex knowledge about the environment in which they lived and upon which their lives depended, which enabled them to persist in one of the most inhospitable places on earth. But, they did more than just survive. The nomads created a unique, vibrant culture, about which, even today, so little is known."

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