In a land far, far away called Oruguya in the snowy northern hemisphere, live a nomadic group named Yakut Evenki. They were the last hunters and reindeer wranglers to persist with nomadic life in China and the 101-year-old Maliya Suo was the last chief of their tribe. Hundreds of years ago, the Evenki people kept migrating following the reindeers. Just like many nomads that live in the Siberian-Mongolian region, and just like my Mongolian ancestors, they are children of the forest and steppe.

As the world continues to modernize, similarly to many Indigenous peoples around the world, they continue to lose their culture, hunting rifles, and reindeers, and some of them suffered from alcohol abuse. They missed the old way of life and the connection with nature, the elders, and their spiritual world.

I would like to quote poetry from an Evenki poet and artist – Weijia – who shares the same first name as me:

“From a world of bows and arrows
I was dropped into the age of nuclear bombs.
They threw me out.
Our Culture
is disappearing,
Our language and our ways
are also disappearing…”

The quiet passing of Maliya Suo on August 20th, 2022 – just a few weeks before Queen Elizabeth II – marked the end of an era. However, may we never forget that we are the children of the forest and the steppe, the descendants of nomads who believed in shamans and Tengri, and may our cultures live on in the modern world like our totem, the eternal fire. May we once again find a way to live sustainably and naturally.

I would like to once again quote poetry from Weijia to pay my respect to the Evenki elders and their culture:

“The Great Xing’an Mountains
are where the Evenki people’s ancestors reside
When I was young
I rode the reindeer with my mother
along the Aoluguya (Oruguya) river.
Our teepees were like the great pyramids.
I remember people back then
communicated with nature,
as she also had a spirit.”

Both poems quoted here are recorded in the documentary film “The Last Moose of Aoluguya” (2013) produced by Gu Tao.