For centuries, the people of the central Caroline Islands have relied heavily on their voyaging canoes as their primary means of transport. They made voyages to islands near and far to obtain food, tools, and other valuables. In some instances, following devastating natural calamities, their canoes are used to relocate to a different island as was the case for the Carolinians who now reside in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas (CNMI). Today, the art of canoe building and traditional celestial navigation continues in these remote islands of the Federated States of Micronesia. Although at a smaller scale than what it used to be, the important knowledge of their ancestors is being passed on to younger generations. Waa’gey is a community-based organization working with island communities to transfer traditional skills and knowledge. Realizing the challenges brought to the shores of Micronesia by globalization and environmental issues including climate change and rising sea levels, the people of Lamotrek Atoll in Yap worked with Master Navigator Larry Reigetal and his crew to build an outrigger canoe named The Lucky Star1.. Using only traditional seafaring methods and no modern navigation technology, the eight-man crew led by master Reigetal braved storms and powerful ocean currents to travel over five hundred miles to Guam over five days to showcase the Micronesian culture at the Festival of Pacific Arts in May 2016. After the festival, the crew sailed back to Lamotrek over a period of ten days.\n\nThe crew brought along a traditional pandanus sail woven by the people of Lamotrek to use during the festival and to display the skills used to create it. The entire process of weaving the sail took more than six months, with over thirty people contributing to its construction. Due to modern seafaring technologies, the traditional weaving techniques in Lamotrek had not been in practice for over half a century. However, through this project, Waa’gey was able to enlist the help of a 95-year-old Maria Labusheilam, the last master weaver in Lamotrek. She taught the skills to twenty women apprentices, led by her daughter Maria Ilourutog, granddaughter Pualina Lairegiyalo, and daughter-in-law Esther Letalimepiy. The men of Lamotrek, led by Xavier Yarofaliyango, cut and stretched the leaves and stitched the sail together. Labusheilam died two weeks after passing on the knowledge. She did not see the final outcome of her work. The pandanus sail is woven from the Pandanus odoratissimus (screwpine) commonly grown on beaches of tropical islands. The leaves are harvested, dried under the sun, and stripped into single fibers. They are then woven into longer strips of sheets that are then strengthened by stretching and wrapping the sheets around coconut trees. The sheets are then sewn together with sennit twine ropes made from coconut fibers. Sail weaving is not the same as weaving sleeping mats, as they need to be doubled and overlapped to ensure strength and durability.\n\nThe sail was displayed at the University of Guam and the Honolulu museum. It is now in Hawaii and will make its way to New York where it will be the main art display at the UN Headquarters during the Ocean Conference. It will then travel to Europe, Asia, and Australia before making its final voyage to the Federated States of Micronesia in 2018 to sail the MicroGames torch in Yap . It is autographed by all the people from Lamotrek and the president of the FSM, H.E. Peter Christian.\n\nPhoto : Master Navigator Larry Raigetal and his crew entering Guam harbor on their canoe the Lucky Star during the opening ceremony of the 12th Festival of Pacific Art and Culture © Waa’gey

The culture of the Central Asian steppes expresses itself vividly in the lifestyle of traditional nomadic practices. Mongolian culture has been in practice in the nomadic life and the traditions surrounding the nomad’s home (ger). And it is present in religious celebrations, national festivals, art and crafts, music and dance, language and literature, which form the backbone of Mongolian intangible cultural heritage of Mongolia. Mongolia is filled with valuable cultural properties and intangible cultural heritage of humanity that have been kept or practiced for thousands of years.\n\nGer, Mongolian Traditional Dwelling\nThe traditional architecture of the Mongols differed strongly from that of the settled peoples of Asia and other continents. Centuries ago, there the ger, also known as a yurt, appeared. It still offers shelter to nomads in particular places in Central Asia. Its development and fundamental principles are determined by the specific features of the way of life of Mongol tribes, which made it necessary to evolve a light and collapsible structure to be used as a dwelling or for public functions.\n\nMongolian Language and Literature\nMongolian is the language of most of the Mongolian population and inner Mongolia. By origin, Mongolian is one of the Altaic family of languages, and the history of the Mongolian language is long and complicated. Significant literary work of early Mongolia includes The Secret History of the Mongols, which was published in 1228).\n\nMongolian Religion and Beliefs\nThe Mongols have practiced several religions, of which Shamanism and Buddhism were the most common. The faith in Mongolia is Buddhism, though the state and religion were separated during the socialist period, but with the transition to the parliamentary republic in the 1990s, there has been a general revival of faiths across the country\n\nMongolian Art and Crafts\nMongolian arts and crafts have been passed down across generations from the Paleolithic times to today, leaving behind deep impressions on all facets of life and conscious, aesthetic, and philosophical thinking. Highly developed Mongolian arts and crafts come from the second millennium BCE. The works included sculptured heads of wild animals with exaggerated features. Other items include knives, daggers, and other items of practical and religious use.\n\nMongolian Music and Dance\nMusic is an integral part of Mongolian culture. Among Mongolia’s unique contributions to the world’s musical culture are the long songs, overtone singing, and morin khuur (the horse-headed fiddle). The music of Mongolia is also rich with varieties related to the various ethnic groups of the country. Among the most popular forms of modern music in Mongolia are Western pop and rock genres and the mass songs written by contemporary authors in the form of folk songs.\n\nHorse Culture of Mongolia\nIt is famously known that horses play a large role in the Mongols’ daily and national lives. Common sayings are, “A Mongol without a horse is like a bird without wings,” and “Mongols are born on horseback” these are arguably true words. Even today, horse-based culture is still practiced by nomadic Mongolians.\n\nVisit https://www.toursmongolia.com/tours for additional information about Mongolian culture.\n\nPhoto 1 : Prairie meadow grass inner Mongolia traditional clothing © Batzaya Choijiljav\nPhoto 2~7 : © Batzaya Choijiljav

Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked country the territory of which is more than 94 percent mountainous, is among the most attractive lands located at the heart of Asia on the ancient Silk Road trade routes. The cultural heritage of the Kyrgyz people has been greatly influenced by their nomadic history. Kyrgyz people occupy a unique cultural environment and have a rich ICH. The vitality of this cultural heritage is safeguarded and transmitted from generation to generation as collective memory, orally or through practice and expression.

The oral tradition of the Kyrgyz people is the basis of a unique intangible cultural heritage that reflects Kyrgyz cultural identity. Oral heritage, developed over centuries, depicts the history and culture of the Kyrgyz people. Their creativity has been proven to survive exclusively in an oral form for many generations. This oral tradition represents a unique layer of traditional knowledge, making it a valuable source of cultural and traditional values and evidence of the development of the sociopolitical history of the Kyrgyz people. Kyrgyz oral heritage takes a wide variety of forms, including songs, fairy tales, proverbs, and riddles. These can all be different in terms of content and structure. Depending on the genre, oral tradition can reflect history, legends, fairy tales, or lore, which can be important in educating younger generations about the value of peace, attitudes toward nature and people, and love for the motherland. Many traditional oral works portray the main characters as defenders of their native land, arousing a sense of pride, and also depict the rich nature of the Kyrgyz land, nourishing love for their home. Some elements of oral tradition such as songs and folktales tell the stories or the specificities and peculiarities of the everyday life of Kyrgyz people. Folktales also reflect the esthetic views of the Kyrgyz people and teach us to recognize beauty, rhythm, and skillful use of language.\n

This paper begins with a brief introduction to the history of the Pacific region and its cultural cooperation centering on past and on-going projects, such as the Festival of Pacific Arts (FOPA), community-based Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), and Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS). The introduction is followed by a progress report on intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding and the promotion and implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Pacific. Activities both at country and regional levels as well as those carried out in partnership with other organizations are highlighted in the progress report. The paper then presents three areas for the future tasks for ICH safeguarding in the Pacific:\n\ni) ICH and community resilience,\nii) ICH and community well-being, and\niii) ICH policy and strategy\n\nIn doing do, the paper uses the information and data obtained through the field projects and observations on the ground. The paper concludes by presenting a way forward and showing major cultural events as opportunities for further promoting ICH safeguarding and the ICH Convention in the Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Co-orgarnized by ICHCAP and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC), this year’s Asia-Pacific ICH NGO Conference was held in Hue, Vietnam under the theme of ICH NGOs towards Sustainable Development of Communities.

"Before starting this project, it was necessary to agree upon some definitions and concepts. Without understanding these concepts, it might have become difficult to create a suitable structure for the fieldwork. With this in mind, at the beginning of the project, which is based on a theoretical framework, we discussed the concept of agriculture.\n\n“To what we call culture in pre-established way is nothing but agriculture,” says Dr. Saheb Khandare in his 2012 book Krushi Sanskruti (Indian Agriculture), written in the Marathi language. Elaborating on this statement, he says, “in prehistoric times the word ‘clan’ was derived from kus. Kus means tilling, in the "

Turkmenistan is vast country with rich, diverse, and deeply rooted oral and traditional cultures determined in terms of their interconnected relationship among humans, nature, and animals. The majority of the intangible aspects of Turkmen culture, like most indigenous cultures, are mainly unrecorded. The available materials on ICH existed in print or as photo and audio fragments from several resources without any documentation and classification.

Nepal is a multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural country with rich cultural heritage located between India and China. The 2011 census recognized 125 caste and ethnic groups and 123 different languages. The new constitution of the Nepali federal republic has further recognized all the spoken languages as national languages. The National Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities (NFDIN) recognized fifty-nine indigenous nationalities residing in Nepal in 2002 (NFDIN 2011). However, in the 2011 census only forty-seven indigenous nationalities were reported (CBS 2012). Among them, Tharu is the second-largest indigenous group with a population of 1.7 million residing in various districts of southern Nepal (CBS 2012).

There are various phenomena that pose a risk to living heritage, ranging from demographic issues to economic pressures, as identified by UNESCO (see https://ich.unesco.org/dive/threat/). This article will address three ongoing issues commonly believed to present a considerable challenge to the viability and practice of ICH in highly urbanized cities: limited land area, increasing focus on modern technology, and the COVID-19 pandemic.\nAs a metropolis with a population of 5.45 million across 728 square kilometers, Singapore must keep abreast of developments in modern technology and urbanization, along with the social, cultural, and economic changes they bring. Similarly, as a hub of international travel and business, Singapore had to navigate the waves of change brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its implications on the city-state’s ICH.

Managing Intangible Heritage in Yap, FSM\n\nDocumenting and preserving important Yapese practices and traditions that may be disappearing in today’s modern world. With ICH and National Park Services’ assistances, Yap can take control of its cultural heritages and new ways to better manage them in today’s world.