Ed
Nef
Discovering the Reindeer People
of Mongolia
 Ed
Nef (right) presents gift horse to a Tsaatan man as the shaman (background)
performs ceremonial ritual.
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51The
Tsaatan people of Mongolia occupy an exotic landscape nestled in the
mountains near the Russian border and marked with artifacts of a rich
history and a captivating culture. Known as the Reindeer People, they
have long drawn curious outsiders into their sway. One of those visitors
is Edward Nef.
Born to a Swiss father—a diplomat serving as Swiss Consul General
in New York—and a Polish mother, Nef has always looked at the
world from an international perspective. After attending Phillips
Academy, where he was sent when his father was Switzerland’s
ambassador to Canada, Nef earned a bachelor’s degree in international
law and relations from Harvard University.
He then went into the family “business,” joining the U.
S. Foreign Service, and spent more than two decades in government
positions, working as a political officer in Senegal, Guatemala and
Colombia; as an administrator in the Peace Corps; and as legislative
director for Senator Max Baucus of Montana. In 1986, ready to try
the business world, he purchased two Washington, D.C., language schools—part
of the Inlingua language schools network, based in Switzerland.
Nef, who speaks French, Spanish and some childhood Polish, used his
knowledge of U.S. Foreign Service language requirements to attract
increased government business. Since Nef acquired the school, its
language teaching load has increased from 2,000 hours a year to about
12,000 hours a month. Today, it teaches almost 90 languages, from
Albanian to Zulu.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union, citizens of former Soviet states
were allowed to speak native languages such as Kyrghiz, Uzbek, Tajik
and Mongol for the first time in 75 years. The U.S. government, setting
up embassies in former Soviet nations, needed to know their languages.
Similarly, the former Soviet nations sought English language training
for government employees.
In the early 1990s, Mongolia began sending people to the Washington
Inlingua schools for English language training. Deciding to explore
the potential need for a language school in Mongolia’s capital
city, Ulaanbaatar, Nef visited the country to do market research.
On a side trip to Lake Kovsgol, a resort area high in the mountains
of Northern Mongolia, he met the Tsaatan, or Reindeer People—so
called because their economic worth is measured by their reindeer
herds.
A nomadic hunting and gathering culture, the Tsaatan had been given
nation-state status in the 13th century by Mongolian leader Ghengis
Khan. They maintained their semi-independent status over the centuries,
inhabiting a territory of tundra and mountains straddling the Mongolian-Siberian
border. In the early 1950s, the Soviet government sealed the borders
between Siberia and Mongolia, cutting off communication among Tsaatan
people, and organized the Mongolian Tsaatan into a fishing collective,
effectively altering their traditional herding culture.
Though newly educated and literate under the Soviets, the Tsaatan
were also newly and uncomfortably urban. When the Soviet Union fell,
some attempted to reconstruct the culture of their ancestors. But
traditional herding grounds had been overhunted or turned into national
parks, oral transfer of traditional knowledge had been lost, and harsh
winters had decimated their reindeer herds and killed their horses.
Now, only 40 families remain, around 300 people, with a herd of 700
reindeer.
Nef, whose language school is now established in Ulaanbaatar, has
become fascinated by the Tsaatan. Last summer, along with a scientist
from the Center for Northern Studies (CNS), an archaeologist from
the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies Program, and several
Mongolian associates, Nef and his daughter traveled by plane, jeep
and horseback over steep mountain passes to the summer camping grounds
of the Tsaatan. “It was awesome to pass 3,000-year-old, untouched
burial grounds, see ancient rock paintings and visit Asia’s version
of Stonehenge, the carved deerstones of Mongolia,” says Nef.
The group made a gift of much-needed horses to Tsaatan families. “It
was an emotional experience for everyone,” Nef says. The Tsaatan
shaman, a 94-year-old woman, received the horses in ceremonial fashion,
sprinkling them with fermented mare’s milk and slaughtering a
reindeer to provide a feast for the visitors.
Sitting in his Washington office, surrounded by souvenirs of the Reindeer
People—the jawbone of a camel, a carved reindeer antler—Nef
hopes U.S. research and knowledge about the country will increase.
Some of his hopes are being realized. Mongolia’s ruling party,
the Mongolian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party, has asked Nef’s
organization to arrange a symposium on politics, elections and democracy
this summer. The Smithsonian and the CNS are planning a symposium
in Ulaanbaatar of U.S and Mongol scholars in June to map out future
research between the two countries, particularly in archaeology, anthropology
and botany. Mongolia’s National Museum has agreed to send the
Smithsonian an authentic deerstone for a major exhibition to be mounted
in July, and other important collaborations are being planned.
Meanwhile, Nef has established a foundation to raise funds to help
rebuild and supply a school for Tsaatan children, start a veterinary
program in herd management, support the development of a Tsaatan crafts
industry, provide life-skills training for urbanized Tsaatan, and
offer political training to leaders in the Mongolian government. Reflecting
on his dreams for Mongolia, Nef says, “The fires have been lit.”
—Selby
McPhee
Selby McPhee is a Maryland-based writer. Formerly vice president of
the National Association of Independent Schools, she works in communications
at the Washington International School in Washington, D.C. |
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