Victories

Totem Peoples Preservation Project

Cultural Survival’s Totem Peoples Preservation Project worked with the nomadic reindeer herding cultures of the border region between Siberia and Mongolia. These peoples, the Dukha of northwestern Mongolia, the Tozhu of the Republic of Tyva, the Tofa of Irkutsk Province, and the Soyot of the Buryat Republic all faced encroachment on their traditional territories and all had suffered the consequences of collectivization during the Soviet period. The project addressed their problems on several fronts, offer veterinary care, health care, education programs, and economic development through craft sales. During the project’s eight-year run, it had a number of successes.

The most dramatic achievements were with the Dukha people of Mongolia. With the project’s help, they doubled the size of their reindeer herd, established a comprehensive health database, set up Dukha-language education program, and began sending delegations of Dukha to the capital to lobby government officials for recognition and services.

Those lobbying efforts paid off in 2007, when the government of Mongolia established a 3-year $300,000 program to support the Dukha. The program provides veterinary care and training, medical care and funding for Dukha medical students, and economic development assistance. It also creates a national council to oversee the program. With that program, the Dukha’s future looks at least a little more secure.

Tibet Project

Cultural Survival launched the Tibet Project in the 1990s with the intent that it would grow to be an independent, self-supporting nongovernmental organization. This year, that goal was achieved: The new organization, Machik, which is run by Tibetans for Tibetans, continues the work begun by Cultural Survival’s Tibet Project.

Tibet Project Accomplishments

• The Chungba Primary Boarding School in Sichuan educates over 250 boys and girls aged 7–13 in the remote Chungba Valley. Before the school was founded, few Chungba residents were literate. In its second year, Chungba Valley’s students placed first among the province’s 52 schools. In 2006, the Tibet Project funded the construction of the Chungba Middle School.
• The Rebkong Cultural Center houses a growing library of Tibetan literature and audio-visual materials in Tibetan, Chinese, and English, and a computer center linking scholars to resources inside the country and around the globe. The center’s Women’s Education Program supports low-income women attending university and low-income girls attending high school. The center teaches adults English, Chinese, and Tibetan.
• The Adult Women’s School empowers women by providing Chinese and Tibetan literacy education to women who have left abusive situations to live in a Buddhist nunnery.
• The Taksham Reforestation Project established a tree and plant nursery tended by monks in the Taksham Monastery, and it reforested hillsides that had been stripped by logging. The hillsides have been replanted with local varieties of pine and sandalwood. To diversify farmers’ crops, the nursery also provides them with fruit and nut trees and traditional Tibetan medicinal plants. A total of 400,000 trees have been planted.