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Daniel Miller: "Hunting the Wild Yak" in Cafe Amsterdam |
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Tuesday, 19 August 2008 |
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Wednesday August 20 at 19.30h in Cafe Amsterdam, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Free entrance
"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.
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"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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