"Reindeer People" Resort to Eating Their Herds

National Geographic

Ghosta is a shaman who lives with his reindeer in the remote forests of northwestern Mongolia. He believes these sacred forests will die if he and his dwindling tribe of Dukha reindeer people abandon their ancestral homeland. Yet if the Dukha do leave, it's they themselves who are almost certain to die out.

This, at least, is the conclusion of Hamid Sardar, a Harvard-trained anthropologist with the Geneva, Switzerland-based Axis-Mundi Foundation. Sardar recently spent three years on the trail of Mongolia's last nomadic reindeer herders. >> continue