Apache: Poems of Masked Indians

2019-08-10T11:57:47+02:00

When the earth came into being
when the sky arose
when my songs first sounded
the holy mountain stood before me revived.
In the center of the sky, a revived boy
goes down four roads at once.
My mountain became a part of me: revived in front of me.
Players emerged: revived in front of me.

When the sun goes down into the plain of the earth
where the Meskal Mountains lay their heads out
into the rays of the rising sun
A spruce appeared: here it is next to me.

At the very center of the sky, a holy boy revives his steps
in all four directions.
The four-colored light goes down revived four times
This place is called the Black Point of Life
This place is called the Blue Point of Life
This place is called the Yellow Point of Life
This place is called the White Point of Life
all these places have heard of me
black dancers dance in all four points
The sun is moving down towards the earth.

The living sky is smeared with black
The living sky is smeared with blue
The living sky is smeared with yellow
The living sky is smeared with white
Young spruces stand like girls waiting for their game on the path of life.
From the very beginning of my songs, they have been made of black words.
When Earth was created
When the sky arose
The land merged with the end
The sky merged with the end
Black dancer, black thunder,
as they came nearer to each other
all evil things have vanished
Lightning from a black storm hit the evil four times
And hit me four times, too.

The Apache are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Salinero, Plains and Western Apache. Distant cousins of the Apache are the Navajo, with which they share the Southern Athabaskan languages. There are Apache communities in Oklahoma, Texas, and reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. Apache people have moved throughout the United States and elsewhere, including urban centers. The Apache Nations are politically autonomous, speak several different languages and have distinct cultures.

California Indians: Three Shaman Poems

2019-08-10T11:42:31+02:00

I'm sitting by the door
making moccasins
and I don’t mean anything,
the sun was half-sunken
at the end of the plain.

I'm talking to the lake.
I tell everyone in the lake.
I'm not a human being.

I'm the hawk of Pis'vis,
I am me.
I thought it was me
but I'm just a head.
I'm a crying head in the desert.

A snake on a wall stretched out in the sun,
slip into your hole
and tell the rain to appear:
my heart dries in my chest.

Ravens on a branch of dry wood,
fly to mother sun,
Old-Spider-in-the-sky
and tell her my heart
is slowly icing among the ribs.

The indigenous peoples of California (known as Native Californians) are the indigenous inhabitants who have lived or currently live in the geographic area within the current boundaries of California before and after the arrival of Europeans. With over forty groups seeking to be federally recognized tribes, California has the second largest Native American population in the United States.

Eskimo Poem: Heaven and Hell

2019-08-10T09:53:07+02:00

When we finally die,
we know so little about what happens later.
But people who dream
They often see the dead as they appear
as they were in life.
And that is why we believe that life does not end here on earth.

We have heard of three places where people go after death:
There is a Heavenly Earth, a blessed place
where there is no sadness and fear.
There were the brave who went there
and they came back to tell us about it:
They see people with shovels, happy people
people of laughter and pleasure.
What we see from there are stars like
windows on houses in the villages of the dead
in Heavenly Earth.

There are other underworlds of the dead:
a little deeper there is an area similar to the terrestrial one
with the difference that we are starving on earth
while they are living in abundance there.
Kraip pastures with innumerable herds
and endless plains
with juicy berries tasty to eat.

Everything down there
is happiness and pleasure for the dead.
But there is another place, the land of Jada,
just below the surface of the land we are stepping on.
That's where all the lazy, all the feeble hunters go
and all women who reject tattooing
not wanting to worry about beauty at all.
For life, they were lifeless
and so now after death they squat
heads bent, gloomy and quiet,
hungry and docile
for they have consumed their lives.
Only when a butterfly flies past them
then they lift their heads
(as a birdling opens its uselessly weak beak hunting a mosquito).
If they do get their hands on the butterflies, they will catch a dust bubble
that pops out of their dry throats.

Eskimos: Hunger

2019-08-10T11:26:00+02:00

You, stranger, you who see us only happy and carefree
If only you knew the horrors we often had to endure
you would understand our love for eating, singing and dancing.
There is none of us
who has not experienced a winter of bad hunting
when many were starving.
We are never surprised to hear
that someone died of starvation - we're used to it.
They should not be blamed: The disease comes,
or bad weather destroys the hunt,
Like when a blizzard buries air holes.

I once saw a wise old man hang himself
because he was starving
and he preferred to choose his own way of dying.
But before he died, he filled his mouth with seal bones
to make sure he would have plenty of meat
in the land of the dead.

Once during the winter famine
a woman gave birth to a child
as people lay around her dying of starvation.

What could that baby want from living here on earth?
And how could she possibly live when her mother was starved?
So the mother strangled her and put her out in the frost.
And later she ate her, just to stay alive.

Then one seal was caught and the famine came to an end,
and the mother survived.
But was left paralyzed
because she ate her own blood and her own flesh.

This is what can happen to people.
We went through it all ourselves
and we know what can happen to all people,
so we don't blame them.

And how can anyone who is fat and healthy
understand the frenzy of hunger?

All we know is: we love life so much.

Eskimo or Eskimos are the indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the northern circumpolar region from eastern Siberia (Russia) to Alaska (of the United States), Canada, and Greenland.

Explore: Weddings

2015-01-21T18:47:00+01:00

A group of couples in Taiwan, a Zulu king and Swazi princess in South Africa, a priest and child bride in Ethiopia—National Geographic has been documenting weddings around the world for over a century. Steeped in tradition or embracing modernity, these ceremonies often reflect cultural influences on generations of participants.

—

The article originally published on the National Geographic official website.

How I Won U.S. Green Card Lottery

2019-08-11T21:44:57+02:00

Last year I applied for the annual US diversity immigrant visa program, commonly known as US Green Card Lottery or American Diversity Lottery. And I got it!

Since the DV-2016 program starts each year in October, I'll write down everything you can and should do if you want to go to America one day. And of course, if you're lucky enough to win.

Registration and procedure

1. The only official website you should use to sign up is: www.dvlottery.state.gov

2. You will need a photo in electronic format, which meets the following requirements: dimensions 5x5, and white background. There is a Photo Validator on the site that checks if your photo is OK, and I read that some people took the photo themselves. If you are not sure how to do this (as neither was I) go to a photographer. Tell them it's for the US Green Card Lottery (or any US visa) and they'll know what to do.

3. The application process is quick. You will provide your basic information, email, and your passport number. After successfully completing the application, you will receive feedback with your number called case number.

And then you wait until May next year to see if the green card has become yours.

4. In May, at the beginning of the month (1st or 2nd), you can log in with your case number, name and date of birth on the same website, and see if have been drawn. If yes, be patient and wait for a week or two. If not, don't despair and try again in October. It is crucial throughout this process that you do not have high expectations. Most people who won US Green Card Lottery tried several times.

5. From this year, the continuation of the application, or the next step in the application, was only possible after May 19th. Unlike in previous years, when letters were sent to the Kentucky where the Diversity Lottery Office was located, starting from this year everything is done electronically.

A special section opens on the same website, where you will fill in a detailed application form: the place of birth, information about your parents, your education, employment, marital status, involvement in volunteer organizations, up to series of questions related to security matters - terrorism, drugs, etc. When you fill out the application - needles to say, you should be truthful - it locks up, you get feedback that you have completed this step, and that's it.

It would be best if you filled out the application form as soon as you can. Don't wait too long. The sooner you submit it, the sooner you will be called for an interview.

One of the issues is the address in America where we want to have our Green Card and SSN delivered to us when they're done. Since few people know where they will be, you can leave this field blank in this step.

And then you wait again.

6. Up to this step everything was free. Except for the photographer, if you opted for a professional. The American Green Card Lottery application is FREE! Don't fall for any websites, emails or phone calls that offer to get your lottery work done for you, because it's a scam.

Now let's move on to your Case Number up. Mine was in the fromat 2015EU00002xxx. This means that 2015 is the year of the program, the EU to the continent of your current residence, the zeroes I have no idea, and these 2xxx means that I belong to a group that will soon come up.

What does that mean? This means that every year, starting in October, interviews are scheduled, and each month has its own range. In my case, it was my turn immediately. If I understood correctly, October is usually the month in which the numbers up till 5000 will be interviewed. November up till 8000, and so on... At least that was my experience, and experience of some other people I discussed this question with.

I received the information that I was going to have an interview in October via an e-mail notification. It said that there had been some changes regarding my "case" and that I should go to the website and check.

7. The website told me that I had an interview at the US Embassy, and provided a link with details about what to do before the interview.

Now comes the medical examination. My cost around $150 in total. Before you go for the medical examination, you should obtain a record of the immunization or vaccines received. This should be available in your local hospital where you are usually treated, or where you used to be treated as a child.

There are two important things I'd like to point out here:

First: they'll probably give you at least one more vaccine, so bring some money for that. Plus, you will need an X-ray of your lungs.

Second: from the moment you complete your medical examination, the clock starts ticking and you have six months to enter the US! Not from the day your visa is issued, but from the day of your medical examination.

8. Documentation is the next step. You will need a certificate of not having a criminal record (known as non ciminal record certificate). You can get that in your local court or police station, depending on your country's policy. It is also possible that you may need this certificate from both the court and the police station.

In addition to these documents, you need to find your diplomas and certificates from elementary school, high school, college/university (if you have one). Then you need to make copies of all these documents, that need not be translated or verified - at least such was my case.

9. Interview is conducted in one day, in two parts. In the morning, bring all the papers with you + the medical exam report in a sealed envelope. Of all the papers I had, only the high school certificates, the original of the certificate and one paper from the medical envelope were taken. The rest they didn't need. My college diplomas and certificates were returned to me, as well as a copy of a previous SSN (Social Security Number) I had received when I worked in America in 2010. By the way, while the clerk in the US Embassy is handling the paperwork, he also asks you questions about your application - if you've ever been in America , when exactly and why, where, for how long, what do you do now, who is your contact person or what is the address you provided for shipping documents when you arrive to America, do you have any idea what you will do there and so on.

For the visa fee I paid $330. They told me there was no refund in case of rejection.

The second part of the interview happens a little later in the afternoon, and if everything goes ok, you'll leave your fingerprints, chat with another clerk (in my case an American), read aloud that you understood that you would answer in court if something was incorrect in your application, or if you have misrepresented yourself. Then the clerk wishes you luck and hands you a registration paper / guide that you will need to register on this website. You will need to select a DHL office which you will use to receive your passport, and an envelope which must remain sealed until you arrive to America.

10. Payments do not end here. Since this year, another green card fee has been introduced and it costs about $160. You'll pay before you leave, online.

The visa in your passport indicates the date by which you must enter the country.

Questions and answers about US diversity visa program

What are the eligibility requirements for applying for the American Green Card Lottery?

There is one condition: 12 years of schooling in total. If you have less than 12 years of schooling, the requirement may be changed to two years of work experience in a job that fits the jobs that are included on a special list.

If I am drawn and I have a spouse and/or children, is there a green card for them too?

Yes. The spouse certainly, and the children if they are younger than 21. None of them need to speak English, nor does the documentation mentioned above play a crucial role for them. Only the applicant is being looked at.

What if I'm not married and want to get married after finding out that I won the US Green Card Lottery, or have already scheduled a wedding after the date of finding out / filling out the application?

Although it was stated during the application process that a change in marital status could lead to disqualification from the program, this does not happen and future married couples do get visas. As in the previous case, the papers of the applicant are the most important, and it is up to the future married couple to deal with proving a common history - through photographs, living together, travels, etc.

If the change in marital status occurred after completing the application where the applicant wrote that he was "single", this can be corrected by calling the embassy, which will later direct to the next necessary steps.

If the change in marital status occurred after finding out about the scheduled interview, so your application form for the interview says "single", you should call the US Embassy to correct this piece of information.

Do all family members pay the expenses - medical exam, visa fee etc?

Yes.

Does winning the US Green Card Lottery guarantee me a green card?

No, and that is pointed out time and again throughout the process. You need to complete the process - application, interview, visa and so on. Your lottery win has an expiration date.

Is a green card obtained here or in America?

In America! After landing at the airport, you go straight to the counters for U.S. citizens and ask for directions to go to immigrant officials. You should go through a similar interview to that you went through at the embassy in terms of questions, and then you can change the address if you have decided on another location in the meantime. From that moment, you will wait for your green card for about three weeks.

The info on this page comes from personal experience and might not be up-to-date. For up-to-date information on the American Green Card Lottery please refer to the official website Electronic Diversity Visa Lottery.

Photo of migrants (Immigrant family, Ellis Island, New York, c. 1900s) taken from Kulturbunt.

John Pilger: The truth of war is grotesque

2014-11-07T00:38:34+01:00

John Pilger has clear views about the duty of journalists. True to form, his latest film The War You Don't See pulls no punches. Shortly before this film was released, Vanessa Baird had a conversation with John Pilger for The New Internationalist Magazine. The Travel Club is presenting you that interview.

NI: What's The War You Don't See about?

JP: The film asks: 'What is the role of the media in rapacious wars like Iraq and Afghanistan? Why do so many journalists beat the drums of war and not challenge the spin and lies of governments? And how are the crimes of war reported and justified when they are our crimes?' It's a film about truth and justice. In the opening sequence, I refer to David Lloyd George, Britain's prime minister during much of the First World War, who had a private chat with the editor of The Guardian, CP Scott, at the height of the carnage. 'If people really knew the truth,' said Lloyd George, 'the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know.' My film is about people's right to know. It has always seemed odd to me that as journalists we examine people's professional lives, but not our own. We treasure our myths. Edmund Burke called the press a 'fourth estate' that would check the other great institutions of democracy. It was a quintessentially liberal view. It was also romantic nonsense – honourable exceptions aside. Up till the arrival of the corporate press at the turn of the 20th century, newspapers were often fiercely independent and saw themselves as voices of ordinary people. The media – press and broadcasting – has long since become an extension of the established order, and frequently its mouthpiece and valet. These days, we surely owe it to the public to come clean about the pressures and seductions, crude and subliminal, that subvert our independence. War – the industrial killing of people and the destruction of their society – is the ultimate test. One of my favourite quotations is Claud Cockburn's: 'Never believe anything until it's officially denied.' I suggest some of us might engrave that on our bathroom mirrors.

What led you to do a film on this theme? Was there a specific trigger for it?

The first trigger was the sight of children burned almost to death by Napalm B – which keeps on burning beneath the skin – then finding out that such an atrocity was not an aberration. It was realizing the racism in colonial warfare, and how apologetic reporting perpetuates this.

You've said 'the media is not covering war. It is promoting war.' Are there any media outlets whose activities have especially shocked or outraged you?

Well, you get crude examples of war promotion on Fox television in the United States. However, Fox has the virtue of leaving us in no doubt where it stands; and that's true of most of the Murdoch empire. Murdoch himself has said that war is OK. Too bad about the innocents; war is necessary, says the great baron. Certainly, it is necessary for the arms corporations which are a pillar of the US war economy. The more insidious and perhaps more powerful war promoters are in the respectable media, such as the New York Times and the BBC. Two important studies following the invasion of Iraq received little media attention. Cardiff University found that the BBC overwhelmingly promoted the Blair government's war agenda; and Media Tenor, based in Berlin, found that of the world's principal broadcasters, the BBC gave just three per cent of its pre-invasion coverage to anti-war voices. Only CBS in the United States was worse. Censorship by omission is, in my view, the most virulent form of warmongering. 'When the truth is replaced by silence,' said the Soviet dissident poet Yevtushenko, 'the silence is a lie.'

Do you think the reporting of war is actually worse now than it was at the beginning of your career? Is the modern 'embedding' of journalists a major factor?

It's not worse, it's just better organized – though in many respects it's far less successful. The last British war completely free of state censorship was the Crimea, which produced some of the greatest war reporting of all time: William Howard Russell's exposé of the disaster of the charge of the Light Brigade. He and his editor at The Times, John Delane, were almost charged with treason for telling the truth. This changed completely during the First World War, when journalists saw their job, wrote Philip Gibbs of the Daily Chronicle, as telling 'only tales of gallantry'. The modern idea of 'embedding' is similar. More than 700 journalists were embedded with US and British forces during the invasion of Iraq. They told good action stories and showed us a little of the obligatory 'bang-bang' but they managed to pass over or obscure the truth that the brutal conquest and plunder of a defenceless country was under way. That said, the reporting on the worldwide web was an important antidote; look at Dahr Jamail's powerful, independent reporting from Fallujah and the independent filmmaking that gave civilians a voice. We show some remarkable examples in The War You Don't See.

You have talked about 'wars of perception' in which the news media plays a major role. What do you mean by this?

The term belongs to General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Afghanistan, who wrote in the 2006 US Counterinsurgency Manual that what mattered was not so much military superiority as persuading the public at home that you were winning, regardless of the reality. In other words, the public is the true enemy of governments that pursue unpopular colonial wars which can only be 'won' if the public is successfully deceived. This owes much to Edward Bernays, who is said to have invented the term 'public relations' soon after the First World War. Bernays' dictum was that the facts didn't matter as much as the success of 'false reality', and that the manipulators of public thinking belonged to an 'invisible government that is the true ruling power in our country'. Of course, none of this can succeed without the media as its transmitter and amplifier. And these days it hasn't really succeeded. Some 77 per cent of the British public is opposed to the colonial adventure in Afghanistan, and most were against the invasion of Iraq.

What do you think can be done to improve the coverage of war, so that the public gets a picture of what is really going on?

The answer is: tell the obvious truth; and the truth of war is the grotesque. It is trees hanging with the body parts of children. It is people going insane before your eyes. It is terrified soldiers with their trousers full of shit. It is human damage that runs through countless families: civilians and soldiers. That's war. The coverage of war should be this eyewitness but it should also try to tell us the why. That means journalists not colluding but investigating. One of the most revealing documents released by Wikileaks was a 2,000-page Ministry of Defence document that equated investigative journalists with terrorists. That reflects the lethal stupidity that runs like a current through the war-making industry. It says they are afraid of the truth.

Should we be giving more space to local reporters who are from the regions where the wars are being fought?

Only if they try to tell the why of a war, not dispense sentimentalized tales about soldiers from local families – which the military relish.

You have also talked about 'a war against journalism'. What do you mean by this?

Journalism ought to be about telling as much of the truth as possible in the circumstances. And governments can be expected to wage a constant war on truth-tellers, be they whistleblowers or fearless reporters. That's why the Pentagon recently set up a department to fight 'cyberwar'. To the military propagandists, cyberspace is unconquered and, worse, populated by mavericks they can't control. This is only partly true, of course, but there are enough good journalists writing exclusively for the web to justify the war-makers' alarm.

Do you draw a distinction between the corporate media world of Murdoch, CNN and the BBC and independent media in terms of which stories are told and the ways in which they are told?

Yes, but mostly in style. Look at Andrew Marr's recent interview with Tony Blair to mark, or celebrate, Blair's self-serving memoirs. Marr didn't ask a single probing question about Blair's record on Iraq and allowed Blair to promote an attack on Iran. That's not much different from an interview conducted in the Murdoch media, which I doubt would be as compliant. Look at the BBC's coverage of the day of the invasion of Iraq; it's an echo chamber: the message is that Blair is vindicated. Fox did the same in America for Bush.

Do you see any glimmers of hope in the way important issues are being discussed in the mass media?

There are some superb reporters in the mainstream – Patrick Cockburn in The Independent has been a most honourable exception in Iraq. Ian Cobain of The Guardian has brilliantly exposed the torture and injustice of the so-called War on Terror. On the web, there is some exciting new journalism – not to be confused with top-of-the-head blogging. Look at some of the work posted on Tom Feeley's excellent Information Clearing House and on ZNet. In Britain, Media Lens has broken new ground with the first informed and literate analysis and criticism of the liberal media. This is the new fifth estate.

Is there another issue on which you think the public is currently being massively deceived?

The major deception in Britain today is the political/media consensus that there is an economic crisis requiring a devastation of public finances and people's lives. If you look back on the coverage of the 'crash' in the autumn two years ago, the shock of it forced the media to tell the truth: corrupt banks and an unregulated financial sector were rightly identified as the source of the problem, and that was the news. Within a year, journalists were back 'on message' and the assumptions of the media echoed the nonsense of the political élite that 'we are all in this together': a deception so gross it insults the nation's intelligence. Britain is not on the edge of bankruptcy: this is one of the world's wealthiest economies; the richest 10 per cent control $6,300 billion with an average per household of $6.3 million. An equitable rate of tax would see off the so-called deficit in no time. In any case, the 'deficit' is ideological: the product of an almost cultish obsession of central banks and financiers with shifting the wealth of nations to the very top and keeping it there. At the end of the Second World War, Britain was officially bankrupt yet the Labour government created some of the country's greatest public institutions, such as the National Health Service. None of this would be a mystery to a media that saw itself as an agency of people, not power.

What is the good news?

The good news is that much of direct and indirect propaganda is not working. As I say, most people oppose colonial wars. There is a critical public intelligence that runs counter to the authority of the media in all its wondrous digital forms. Perhaps people sense the historical moment: that their social democracy is being appropriated by insatiable corporatism, regardless of which party is in power. In many countries – Greece, France, Spain – this is well understood and is being translated into direct action. In Britain, it is still a seed beneath the snow. But that will change; it has to.

Kalmyk Community in Belgrade

2019-09-22T18:54:16+02:00

The description of the life of a social group that disintegrated decades ago and then disappeared almost without a trace is linked, no doubt, to particularly complex problems of a methodological and methodical nature. Namely, only partial reconstruction is possible, which is all the more difficult because of the modest or even non-existent primary sources (informants, archival documents, data in the press) and which relies primarily on oral traditions in the memory of external observers (1). The subjectivity of such interpretations can only be partially corrected by the use of comparative literature referring in our case to the Kalmyk culture in imperial Russia, in the Soviet Union, and in emigration. Comparative literature also helps us to bridge the gaps in the basic information network.

For the ethnological profession, the Belgrade settlement of Kalmyks, a West Mongolian people from the Volga River's lower reaches, is interesting as an example of a small community in the cosmopolitan metropolitan area, as a contribution to the ethnological appearance of Belgrade and, finally, as a fragment of Kalmyk history in emigration.

Most Kalmyks came to Yugoslavia in December 1920 with a group of 22,000 soldiers, accompanied by family members. This is the part of the Wrangl and Denikin units that were evacuated from Crimea before the penetration of the Red Army and transported to special camps near Constantinople, from where they dispersed across various European and overseas countries. There were many Don and Cuban Cossacks in this army with whom the Kalmyks lived mixed or in a close neighborhood (for example, some Cossacks adopted from the Kalmyks the Lamaistic form of Buddhism) (2). During the Russian Revolution and the Civil War, the Kalmyks, under the leadership of Russian and Cossack officers, established two regiments, the 80th Don Dzungar and the 3rd Don Kalmyk Regiment, and parts of Kalmyk cavalry were also located on the other side of the front line, in the Red Army units.

Some Kalmyks arrived in Yugoslavia in 1922, when the last anti-Bolshevik units had to withdraw from Vladivostok.

The majority of Russian immigrants in Yugoslavia lived in Belgrade. Among them were many aristocracy members, landowners, contractors, clerks, and officers; people of farmers’ origin were relatively numerous, and very few were representatives of the proletariat (3).

The fact is that, after settling in Belgrade and other European cities, poverty forced many immigrants to accept difficult physical jobs and turn into some sort of proletariat; however, they still retained "the cultural-spiritual interests and needs of their former social strata" (4).

Buddhist temple in Mali Mokri Lug, Belgrade – the look of the altar in different periods.

Taking all this into consideration, the group of Kalmyk refugees, upon their arrival in Belgrade, represented the poorest class of Russian immigrants, both in material and socio-educational terms. Josip Suchy, who visited the Belgrade settlement of Kalmyks in 1932, noted that they were engaged in transportation, employed in factories and engaged in traditional local crafts as well as agriculture. There were almost no intellectuals among them, with the exception of doctors and two students at the Belgrade University (at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and the Department of Philosophy) (5). For this reason, the book by Belgrade-based Kalmyk, Dr. Erenzhen Hara-Davan, on Genghis Khan and his successors, published in Belgrade in Russian in 1929 (6), was a remarkable achievement. The work is entitled "A Cultural and Historical Description of the Mongol Empire from the 12th to the 14th Century" and is dedicated to the 700th anniversary of Genghis Khan's death. The author described the beginnings and expansion of the Mongolian state, and paid special attention to the Mongolian occupation of Russia and the Balkans and argued that it brought a number of positive consequences. The book aroused interest in international professional circles, and the author prepared a lecture on "Genghis and Mongolian penetration into Europe" (January 7, 1928) at the University of Belgrade (7).

In the first years after the Kalmyk settlement in Belgrade, an effort was made to adapt to the new environment, which was partly facilitated by the fact that all Kalmyk settlers, in addition to their Kalmyk language, also knew Russian, and thus learned Serbian faster. Those who originated in the northern foothills of the Caucasus also knew the Circassian language.

A Kalmyk leader, a Lamaist Buddhist priest, shortly after the arrival of a group of fugitives in the Yugoslav capital, asked Belgrade-based industrialist Milos Jacimovic to allow them to work at his brick mill in Mali Mokri Lug. He employed them and gave them land next to his facility. From the brick they received for free in the factory, they built 20 to 30 single-story houses and moved into them from the rented houses where they used to live. Each house was shared by two or three Kalmyk families. The living conditions were modest. Beside the houses were gardens, a common well and a common toilet. Not only those Kalmyks who worked in the brick factory, but also some of their relatives, settled in these houses.

Most Kalmyks in the beginning worked on the exctraction of clay and on its transportation to the brickyard. Over time, some of them bought themselves horses and started their own businesses; they also worked in wood, coal and similar industries. Some of them became coach drivers. Thus, in the new environment they continued the tradition of horse breeding, which they practiced on their native Don grasslands. They also did some home-made crafts.

The man was the head of the family. The Kalmyk women in Belgrade did not look for jobs, but contributed to the family budget by making slippers and fur jackets that they sold at the market (8).

The men first wore Russian military uniforms upon arrival to Belgrade (9) and later simple civilian suits that made them no different from Serbs in the surrounding area. The geographical location on the outskirts of the workers' settlement of Mali Mokri Lug proves that Belgrade's Kalmyk colony was a completely marginal community in socio-economic terms. With the gradual improvement of the economic position of individual families, their living needs increased. Thus, in the early 1930s, many Kalmyk children continued to high school education (10).

The Kalmyk community was quite closed to the outside world, linked within by their common language and origins, by the common fate of the immigrants, and by their affiliation with the Buddhist religious community. Contacts with the wider environment and Kalmyks living abroad were rare. Only the Kalmyk priests maintained links with their countrymen living in Paris, from which high religious dignitaries who occasionally participated in rituals occasionally came. They were not politically active. Although the Soviets proclaimed an amnesty for war refugees (1923), and the Kalmyk Society for Return to Homeland, headed by Bosan Kushlinov, did some propaganda, they did not choose to return to the Soviet Union.

They began to associate more freely with the Serb farmers of Mali Mokri Lug (who only knew them by the name "Chinese"). There were several mixed marriages between Serbs and Kalmyks. Kalmyk children were playing with their neighbors’ Serbian children. They also had a football pitch, the so-called "Chinese playground". They attended elementary school together.

"There have been several mixed marriages." From the Politika's photo archive.

The Kalmyk religion was Buddhism (Lamaism) with additions of Mongolian shamanism, with a pantheon of native pre-Buddhist deities and cults of historical figures (Genghis Khan, and also the imperial dynasty of the Romanovs). In 1932, there were a total of 300 Kalmyk immigrants in Belgrade, plus a few who lived in the vicinity of Pancevo, in the village of Debeljaca and in Gornji Milanovac (11). The custom of solidarity prevailed among the members of the community, which was reflected in the provision of mutual assistance and also in attending religious ceremonies and controbuting to the Kalmyk Lamaist temple.

In 1924, the high priest baksha (12) Manchu Birinov, asked and obtained official permission to arrange a tentative Buddhist shrine in a rented apartment in Mali Mokri Lug. It was a modest space, covered with carpets and decorated with several symbolic figures, with a bronze figure of the Enlightened in the background (13). Baksha Borinov, dressed in a dark blue priest's uniform, head covered with a round, gold embroidered cap, was the chief adviser to his countrymen in all life's decisions, visiting them at work and encouraging diligence and patience (14). In November 1929, the Kalmyks built a pagoda-shaped brick sanctuary, a hurul, on a piece of land donated to them by Milos Jacimovic. They built it themselves, collecting voluntary contributions (one of the donors was Princess Jelena, sister of King Alexander), and some funds were provided by the municipality. During the period between the two world wars it was the only Kalmyk sanctuary in Europe, outside the Soviet Union. At the consecration, in December 1929, the high priest, baksha Namdzlo Nimbusov of Paris and the Belgrade baksha Sango Umaldinov were present together with two gelongs (15). On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the shrine, a solemn ceremony was held in the premises in honor of the benefactor Milos Jacimovic. On this occasion, the Kalmyks presented him with a thank-you note written in a beautiful script, which his grandson later donated to the Belgrade City Museum. After the ceremony, the guests were offered tea and cakes in the next room. When Jacimovic died in 1940, Kalmyks also attended his funeral ceremony.

The tradition of wooden buildings was present in the architecture of the Kalmyk temples, and since the late 18th century they were also built of brick and stone. The main temple usually had a large central room with a vaulted tower, richly decorated with carvings, murals, paintings and bronze sculptures (16). The Kalmyks had their religious center near Astrakhan (Kalmyk Bazaar), in today’s Russia. This is where the Great Llama lived before the October Revolution. The wooden building of the main shrine in the area had an interior decorated with silk paintings (17). In addition to the larger permanent temples, they also had mobile smaller shrines in their yurts (18).

Compared to the temple compounds usually built by the Mongols and Kalmyks, the Belgrade Buddhist temple was small and modest. It was built in the form of a pagoda with three slightly upturned roof edges (one of the basic types of Mongolian shrines, where Chinese architectural influence is seen). It was standing in a fenced yard, surrounded by fruit trees. Next to the shrine was an added building with rooms for priests and a classroom where Kalmyk, Russian and Serbian languages were taught.

Classroom at the Kalmyk Buddhist Temple in Belgrade. The title reads: "A school that works once a week, has two subjects, and doesn't punish students for skipping classes".

From the roof corners of the Belgrade pagoda hung metal bells (protection from demons) that chimed in the wind. A lamaistic symbol was attached to the top of the roof – the vajra. (19) Above the front door, on the front of the building, was a Buddhist symbol: two gazelles and between them, on a lotus flower, a wheel of Buddha's teaching with eight parts. There was only one window on the ground floor, and four openings on each of the two upper floors.

Vajra is a Buddhist symbol of a lightning strike, invincible truths or absolutes, an attribute of Tibetan deities, and a ritual object during Lamaist rites.

The Kalmyks apparently brought the sanctuary equipment with them from Russia. Across from the entrance, in the lodge, was an altar on which, in addition to two Buddha statues, there were religious objects and relics, and beneath them were bowls of sacrificial gifts. To the left of the altar, in front of the windows, were two low tables, seats for two Lamaist monks and shelves for storing religious texts. On the walls were traditional religious paintings, tankas, and photographs of religious dignitaries. The floor was made of ordinary wooden boards, covered with cheap, factory-made carpets. The high ceiling was supported by four wooden, vividly painted pillars with Buddhist symbols (the wheel of Buddha's teaching, a lotus flower, etc.). Buddhist flags (white, red, yellow, blue, green) hung from the ceiling.

On the tables of both priests were laid out lamaistic ritual objects: rosary with 54 beads, ochira (double vajra), cymbals, sacred records in Tibetan, a rope for contact between the believers and the priests, a bowl with various grains and seeds, a bowl with water, a bowl with a peacock feather (boom pa), incense and scents.

Buddhist temple in Belgrade, exterior and interior. Photo by Dr. H. Klar.

A brief but valuable description of the interior of the sanctuary was published by Josip Suchy during his visit to the Belgrade Kalmyks in 1932. His report shows that the equipment has been somewhat modified and supplemented over time.

"There is a pleasant shade in the Buddhist temple. The windows are covered with beautiful curtains so that it is quite dark in the sanctuary. From the ceiling hangs an electric light bulb and a large glass ball. In the middle of the temple, against the wall, is an altar on which the Buddha himself sits in an oriental manner. Above him, two Buddhist saints reign, the first of whom is a former Buddhist chief, called the Bakshama Lama. On the altar are gifts from Buddhist believers. Just today (mid-July) they celebrated with a great feast and the believers bestowed on Buddha what they could in their misery. Some of them rice, others sweets and cakes... I also saw a ten-dinar coin on the altar... There are pictures of other high priests and prophets of the Buddhist faith hanging on the sides. On the right side of the altar there are mattresses on which gelong sits during a religious rite lasting at least three to four hours. "(20)

Buddhist temple in Belgrade - the interior. From the Politika's photo archive.

Suchy also took a photo of the exterior of the shrine. During the major holidays, the Kalmyks of Belgrade set up a table in the sanctuary's garden, covered it with donated food and beverages, drank tea mixed with butter, milk and salt, and feasted on horse meat, according to some reports. In the new environment, some holiday customs were lost or altered. For example, of the three traditional men's competitions: running, archery and wrestling - only the last one was preserved.

Lamaist priests who lived in celibacy and obeyed the other commandments of monastic life were the undisputed leaders of the Kalmyk settlement in Belgrade. And otherwise they enjoyed a greater reputation than people who lived a worldly life. Most Kalmyk lamas were descended from pastoral families, and only the highest lamas usually belonged to the aristocracy. They knew the language of the scriptures – Tibetan and Old Mongolian, and were proficient in Tibetan medicine and astrology. As members of the gelugp sect, they recognized as their highest religious leader the Tibetan Dalai Lama. In him they saw the incarnation of the bodhisattva of Avalokiteshvara.

The Kalmyk clergy supervised the life of each family and participated in all aspects of their lives (for example, the gelong chose names for babies, determined the wedding day, treated the sick, performed funeral rites) (21). This also applied to the Kalmyk colony in Belgrade.

Believers attended Lamaist rites for several hours, expecting spiritual purification and "salvation" in the next reincarnations. It was about the well-being of the visitor as well as the whole community. In addition to the daily service, their religious calendar also included significant dates from the Buddha's life, such as the Full Moon Feast, the New Moon Feast, the Tibetan New Year, and others (22).

During World War II, some Kalmyks of Belgrade left and became German soldiers on the Eastern Front. The Germans promised to establish a "free Kalmyk state" somewhere in the occupied territory of the Soviet Union. They also urged civilian expatriates to organize their own government.

Kalmyk Buddhist Temple in Belgrade, now inexistent.

In the fierce fighting for the liberation of Belgrade, which took place in the immediate vicinity of Mali Mokri Lug from October 12 to 16, 1944, the upper part of the tower of the Kalmyk shrine was partially destroyed. Even before that, a part of Kalmyk community had gone to Germany, and after German defeat they were deployed to camps run by US charities. Thus, with a group of Kalmyks, the Belgrade's high priest (baksh) Umaldinov and his associates, Helonzi Menjkov and Ignatov, also arrived to Germany. They probably brought with them the interior equipment of the Belgrade temple. Baksh Umaldinov, who was already an old man, died in 1946 in Krumbach, Bavaria. Those Kalmyks who remained in Yugoslavia were mostly deported to the Soviet Union after the war (and subsequently to Siberia, where the Kalmyks from the Soviet Union had been deported in 1943). (23). The Kalmyk colony in Belgrade thus completely disappeared.

Other tenants have moved into the houses on what used to be Buddhist Street, later called Budva Street. In 1948 the tower of the temple was demolished, and the building was transformed into a Cultural Center, where meetings, dances and weddings were organized. Later, in that same building, the local municipality had its premises, and then it was taken over and partly renovated by the company Buducnost (Future), to be used as their refrigeration facility.

Kalmyk refugees (800 people, including some of the Belgrade Kalmyks) lived in detention camps near Munich until the winter of 1951-1952, when 200-250 Kalmyk families moved to the United States under the patronage of the US Church World Service and The Tolstoy Foundation (in total around 650 people). They were later joined by their countrymen from France, so in 1980 the Kalmyk community in the USA numbered about 300 families, with approximately 900 people. They were settled mainly in the US states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey (24).

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Retrieved from: Traditiones, Acta Institutes Ethnographic Slovenorum, iss. 17, 1988. Published in Journal of Culture of the East no. 25, YU ISSN 0352-4019, July-September 1990. Translated from Slovenian to Serbo-Croatian by Tatjana Latinović. English translation: The Travel Club.

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Footnotes:

1. Among the informants, we are most grateful to Mara Stevanovic, Lomina 57, Belgrade.
2. Helmut von Glasenapp, Der Buddhismus in Indien und im Fernen Osten, Berlin-Zurich 1935, p. 347.
3. Nikolai Fedorov, "Russian Emigration", Croatian Review, 1939, no. 7-8, pp. 373. Aleksije Jelacic, "Russian Emigration in Yugoslavia", New Europe, 1930, no. 4, p. 242.
4. N. Fedorov, n.d., p. 372.
5. Joseph Suchy, "Visiting Buddhists," Morning, 1932, no. 1971, p. 5.
6. Dr. Eugene Hara-Davan, Chingis-Han as a Commander and His Inheritance, Author's Edition, Belgrade 1929, ch. i: Irena Griekat-Radulović, "Kalmici in Belgrade", Politika September 13, 1985, p. 12.
7. They included the book in their bibliography e.g. Ralph Fox (Gengis Khan, Hamburg-Paris-Bologna 1936) and Reinhold Neumann Hodizz (Dschingis Khan, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1985).
8. Slavoljub Kacarevic, Where did the "Chinese Pagoda" disappear?, Politika, September 8, 1985, p. 12.
9. Zeitschrift fur Buddhismus 1924/25, Munich 1925, no. 2, p. 388.
10. Suchy, at nav. site.
11. Ibid.
12. Baksa - Senior Lama, "Faith Master", who helps people with advice.
13. Gl. whop. 9.
14. Right there.
15. Belgrade Guide, Belgrade, 1920. Gelong (Tibet. DGe-slong) - an ordained monk, who completed a 12-year education under the guidance of an elder Lamaist monk.
16. The Bolshevik Soviet Encyclopedia, Vol. 11, Moscow, 1973 (3rd ed., Pp. 223-224).
17. Glasenapp, n.d. p. 347.
18. Drawing of the Kalmyk Shrine in the Yurt, by R. Karutz, Die Volker Nord - und Mittel - Asiens, Stuttgart, 1925, p. 69.
19. Vajra (Tibet. RDo-rje) - symbol of lightning, invincible truth or absolute. The attribute of Tibetan deities and ritual object during Lamaist rites.
20. Suchy, at nav. site.
21. Kalmici, c. Naroy of Peace, Peoples of the European Honor of the USSR II, Moscow, 1964, p. 745.
22. Giuseppe Tucci.Walther Heissig, Die religionen Tibets und der Mongolei, Die Religionen der Menschheit, Bd. 20, Stuttgart-Berlin-Cologne-Mainz 1970, p. 166-167.
23. Koldong Sodnom, The Destiny of the Don Kalmyks, Them Very Clergy, Author's Edition, USA 1984, p. 150.
24. Arash Bormashinov, Kalmyks, v. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London 1980, p. 599.

Migrants Journey Across the Border

2015-01-27T02:31:00+01:00

After years of documenting migration in Mexico, Spanish-born photographer Encarni Pindado began a new project that handed the equipment — disposable Kodak cameras — to the migrants themselves and people who interact with them along the way.

"We've seen photos of the journey migrants take through Mexico, and I'd been on the trains with them as they made their way to the border," Pindado said. "But I also knew that something was missing, that there were moments that we were still not capturing."

MigraZoom launched in early 2013, supported by a grant from the United Nations Development Program.

Pindado, collaborating with other Mexico-based photographers, headed to Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. There, Central American youth tend to congregate and regroup to continue their journey north.

The MigraZoom team handed out about 200 Kodak cameras and gave a quick photo workshop. They also told the migrants they would move up the usual migrant path, too, following the railroad lines, and gather the cameras along the way.

In the end, MigraZoom collected about 70 percent of the cameras they gave out. In return, they made prints for the participants to keep.

On the top is a selection of photos taken by migrants, with observations from Pindado. The names of the photographers are omitted to protect their identity, as many have likely crossed the US-Mexico border without documentation.

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Photo credits: MigraZoom participants

The article originally published on www.pri.org.

New York, alone

2015-01-05T12:07:00+01:00

New York, alone:

Since the last few years, I am often traveling alone - new city, camera and several books. In October 2014 I happened to be in New York city, with no special plan or idea what I could or should do.

These photos are the result of that journey - my lonesome, lost experience of the city.

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