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ICH Materials 155
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Current Safeguarding Status and Challenges of Shaman Heritage in MongoliaThe Mongolia is rich in Shamanic heritage, including both physical artifacts, ritual sites, places of cultural or historical interest and protected landscapes (‘tangible’ heritage) together with rituals, ceremonies, folklore, music, handicrafts, and traditional knowledge ( known as ‘intangible’ heritage). Under Mongolian shamanism we can understand complete science of nomadic philosophy, TNGRI worship, Sacred of peak mountains ritual, parallel psychology of Heaven, earth, fire and human life and supernatural consciousness of Nomadic. On that account we could understand Shamanism is reliable source of Nomadic culture. The Mongols, who themselves worshiped Heaven but had respect for all other religions. The Shamans are merely respected as priests of Heaven./TNGRI/ In Shamanism; the world is alive full of spirits. The plants, animals, rocks, mountains and water, all have a soul. These spirits must be respected to be in the balance with all of them. Balance is an important thing to keep harmony within you, the community, and the environment. When things get out of balance, there are harmful effects. This is when we need a shaman for help. Shamanisms believe in a concept called buyan (physical power) that is very close to the belief of karma (fate). The shaman loses buyan (buyanhishig) by violating taboos, when he has no respect for spirits or our ancestors.Year2013NationMongolia
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People on Vanuatu’s Malekula Island Speak More than 30 Indigenous Languages. Here’s Why We Must Record ThemMalekula, the second-largest island in the Vanuatu archipelago, has a linguistic connection to Aotearoa. All of its many languages are distantly related to te reo Māori, and the island is the site of a long-term project to document them.\n\nVanuatu has been described as the world’s “densest linguistic landscape,” with as many as 145 languages spoken by a population of fewer than 300,000 people.\n\nMalekula itself is home to about 25,000 people, who among them speak more than thirty indigenous languages. Some are spoken by just a few hundred people.\n\nIndigenous languages around the world are declining at a rapid rate, dying out with the demise of their last speakers. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues estimates one indigenous language dies every two weeks. As each language disappears, its unique cultural expression and world views are lost as well. Our project in Malekula hopes to counter this trend.\n\nMalekula Languages\nThe work in Malekula began in the 1990s when the late Terry Crowley hosted a Neve’ei-speaking university student from a small village. The encounter inspired his interest in the island’s many Indigenous languages.\n\nThe Malekula project works with communities to facilitate literacy initiatives, often in the form of unpublished children’s books and thematic dictionaries. The research highlights the value of Indigenous languages as an expression of local cultural identity. The Malekula project is a response to the urgent need to record the island’s indigenous languages in the face of significant changes to almost every aspect of traditional life. These changes have brought indigenous languages into contact and competition with colonial English and French and the home-grown Bislama, a dialect of Melanesian pidgin. From education to religion, administration, and domestic life, Bislama is now often the language of choice.\n\nWhy is that a problem? The value of indigenous languages lies in the fact that they articulate the way in which people have engaged with and understood their natural environment.\n\nMalekula has a 3,000-year history of human settlement. Each language spoken on the island encodes unique ways in which its speakers have sustained life. Indigenous languages preserve ways in which people engage with their environment.\n\nAnother fundamental aspect of indigenous languages is their direct link to cultural identity. In a place where distinctive local identities are the norm, the increasing use of Bislama reduces the linguistic diversity that has been sustained for millennia.\n\nIn recent times, the way of life for the people of Malekula has shifted from intensely local communities to broader formal education. Imported religions have similarly influenced local belief systems.\n\nThe same centralized governance that facilitates infrastructure development and access to medical care also affects the autonomy of small communities to govern their affairs, including the languages in which children are taught.\n\nTraditionally, linguistic field research has produced valuable research for a highly specialist linguistic audience. Most scholars had no expectation of returning their research to the community of speakers. We initially followed this tradition in writing about the Neverver language of Malekula but grew increasingly dissatisfied with the expectations of the discipline. Looking to modern decolonizing research methodologies and ethical guidelines in Aotearoa, we developed the “first audience principle.” This means indigenous language communities should be the first to hear about any field research findings.\n\nIn 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and travel bans brought linguistic fieldwork to an abrupt halt. During this unwelcome hiatus from fieldwork with Malekula communities, it has been tempting to focus on more technical analysis for our fellow academics. But our obligation to communities remains, and we are developing new ways of working with our archived field data in preparation for the time when we can return to Malekula.\n\nThis article is based on the free flow of information, the creative commons from https://theconversation.com For the original source with additional links, please visit https://theconversation.com/people-on-vanuatus-malekula-island-speak-more-than-30-indigenous-languages-heres-why-we-must-record-them\n\nPhoto : Indigenous languages preserve ways in which people engage with their environment. CCBY Royce Dodd, Author providedYear2021NationVanuatu
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Jathilan: Dancing with SpiritsJathilan (Javanese horse dance) combines dance, music, and altered states of consciousness in a spectacular cultural performance. Despite not being known to the outside world (even tourists visiting Java are hardly aware of its existence), it is popular among the locals.\n\nA folk performance encompassing both ritual and entertainment purposes, jathilan is commonly described as ‘horse dance’ because the woven bamboo horse effigies are the hallmark props used by the performers. The dancers are believed to be possessed by spirits that make the dancers act differently and allow them to perform various feats based on physical invulnerability. Thus, performances might include demonstrations of eating glass, husking big green coconuts with bare teeth and hands, whipping performers, walking on hot coals, or being ran over by a motorcycle—all without inflicting any harm.\n\nOther than the dancers, who are in the spotlight of the audience’s attention and dressed in bright costumes reminiscent of ancient Javanese warriors, the pawang is another key figure. The pawang conducts the performance and holds all the knowledge of the spirits’ nature and desires and the ways of inviting them and making them leave. All the dancers emphasize their trust in the pawang as the trance master, making sure that every performance will run safely and smoothly. None of the performers remember what has happened to them in trance. It is generally believed that anyone can learn to perform jathilan; not a particular talent but good personal relationship is the key reason for someone to be absorbed by a performing group. Jathilan groups are like big families where everyone helps and supports each other. Although the performers are paid for their shows, it is never expected to become their main source of income. Typically, performers have a day job. What drives them to keep performing jathilan is their desire to see their culture living—as they always say.\n\nHorse trance dance is popular all over the island of Java. It can also be found in almost any area where Javanese immigrants are present—in other Indonesian islands, in neighboring countries such as Singapore and Malaysia (under the name kuda kepang), and even in South American Suriname, which has a 13 percent Javanese population. Jathilan is one of the many manifestations of Javanese folk religion that still remains quite widespread nowadays despite the official statistic indicating that over 90 percent of Javanese adhere to Islam.\n\nPhoto : Entranced dancer with horse effigies © Eva RapoportYear2018NationIndonesia
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Kyrgyz Folklore: Imagination, Orientation, and Explanation of the PastWith stupefying landscapes to explore, marked by the remnants of ancient tribes and Silk Road travelers, Kyrgyzstan is the perfect place to let one’s person and imagination roam wild.\n\nThe stunning Eurasian mountain country of Kyrgyzstan is renowned for its splendid natural panoramas and vast landscapes that, although isolated, belong to a unique cultural context. Human traces—Paleolithic petroglyphs, Saka burial mounds, Silk Road caravanserai, and Soviet-era monuments, to name a few—punctuate the mountains and valleys once roamed by the vagabonds and villagers of past centuries.\n\nTo the present day, the complex natural and historical Kyrgyz terrain elicits curiosity and wonder among those who attempt to navigate it. Furthermore, the interpretations by later ancestors of ancient remnants are interesting keystones in the development of culture. Over the decades and centuries, the distant, obscured past tends to remain a source of imagination, superstition, and inevitably, storytelling. While this reception of the past is not unique to the Kyrgyz culture, its history is characterized by many waves of migration, and thus the people who have traversed its mountains and valleys were at times vastly different to their predecessors.\n\nIt may be possible that as a result of their roaming, the ancient settlers of Kyrgyzstan felt a need to establish a sense of place within the overwhelming land they occupied, a desire to understand it and know what it had witnessed before they arrived. This attempt to fabricate a connection to the land and earlier peoples might account for the legends of Kyrgyz folklore that seek to explain the etiology of various monuments and natural phenomena, their reasons for being.\n\nCholpon-Ata\nCholpon-Ata, now a popular resort destination on the north shores of Lake Issyk-Kul, takes its compound name from the maiden of the origin myth of the lake. Legend has it that long ago lived Cholpon, a beautiful blue-eyed Kyrgyz girl who lived with her tribe near the mountains. The amoured Ulan and Santash fought and injured one another for her affections, their rivalry expanding to two groups of allied kin. In the face of a choice which would result in the detriment of one of the dijigits (horseback warriors), Cholpon tore her own heart from her chest, rendering it unattainable to either, and died on the sunrise-facing hill that commemorates her. The mourning Kyrgyz, who remained divided from the feud, filled the valley between the mountains with their tears and created Lake Issyk-Kul, which separated the bitter tribes. The two groups thus name the northern and southern banks, Kungey and Terskey while the Ulan and Santash dijigits blow as the east and west winds, occasionally grappling with one another in the form of a storm above the lake.\n\nJeti-Ögüz\nThe photogenic ridge of seven red sandstone peaks known as Jeti-Ögüz are also the setting of Kyrgyz myths. The formation’s name, meaning Seven Bulls, may reference a folktale in which the eponymous animals were petrified by the gods to protect human inhabitants of the region from their wild rampage. In another legend, a Kyrgyz khan seeks to avenge the theft of his wife by another man and is advised by an elder to do so by killing the wife as punishment. His plan is hatched at a funeral feast, when, after the sacrificing of seven bulls, he similarly stabs and kills his stolen wife. Her bleeding heart flooded the valley, the blood carrying the slaughtered bulls with it to the current position of the red rocks.\n\nTengrism and the Tien Shan\nSome of the vast mountains which Kyrgyzstan is known for belong to the Tien Shan range, also shared with China and Kazakhstan. These majestic snow-capped peaks cast upon those who face them the impression of a force that was mighty, powerful, and divine. Such mountains are held sacred in the Central Eurasian religion of Tengrism, rooted in the ancient Mongol and Turkic tradition that worshipped the god Tengri personified by the sky, whose name attests to the religious and legendary significance of the mountains. The Kyrgyz ‘Tengri’ and Chinese tian are linguistically linked, both meaning sky as well as god; the Tian Shan can thus be translated to mean ‘Sky Mountain’ in honor of the god.\n\nRecounting these ancient legends are only a small sample group of the rich folkloric tradition woven into Kyrgyzstan’s vast landscape and varied population. We can only assume there to be infinite variations to the stories that are continually told, and far more strands of the oral tradition that may survive either sparsely or not at all. But there is a timelessness about these tales of the origin of natural phenomena that continue to punctuate Kyrgyz land and something in their phrasing and rhythm that longs to be shared aloud, repeated, and remembered.\n\nPhoto : Kyrgyz LandscapeYear2020NationKyrgyzstan
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Pilgrimage to the St. Thaddeus Apostle MonasteryOn 17 December 2020, the rite and pilgrimage to St. Thaddeus Church were added to the Representative List of intangible cultural heritage with a joint nomination file with Armenia and Iran. It marks Iran’s sixteenth heritage element to be registered on UNESCO’s lists. The Pilgrimage to St. Thaddeus is a religious rite held in West Azerbaijan, Iran, at the Church of the Holy Qara (Black Church). Every year, thousands of Armenians from all over the world come to this historic site to perform this ritual.\n\nQara Church is one of the world’s oldest churches and one of the most significant Armenian churches. According to some scholars, it is the world’s first Christian structure, and it is located 20 kilometers northeast of Chaldoran city, next to a village of the same name. Qara means ‘black’ in Azeri, and the name comes from the fact that a portion of the church is black. The church’s main structure is made of black stones, which have been replaced with white stones following the reconstruction of some of the stones.\n\nThe Church of Thaddeus, along with the Dzordzor Chapel and St. Stepanos, was added to the World Heritage List as a collection on July 7, 2008.\n\nThis ceremony commemorates the martyrdom of Thaddeus, one of Christianity’s first apostles, and Santukhd, the first female Christian martyr.\n\nThaddeus, also known as Tataeus, was one of Christ’s apostles who visited Armenia in the year forty AD and preached Christianity. Many groups converted to Christianity because of his preaching, including Armenia’s King Sanatrok and his daughter Santukhd. However, the king later regretted it and became opposed to the new religion, ordering the assassination of Thaddeus, Sandakht (his daughter), and others.\n\nThe history of this ritual dates back to 1954, and it has been organized every year in St. Thaddeus Church by Armenians for 66 years with the presence of Armenians and Christians from Iran, Armenia, and other countries around the world. In addition to the Armenians, Assyrian families and some Catholic families also attended the ceremony.\n\nThe ceremony is a social and cultural event that incorporates religious, ethnic, and traditional motives. Every year in July, rituals, and pilgrimages to St. Thaddeus Church (Qara Church) are held. During these three days, ceremonies such as infant, child, and adolescent baptisms, weddings, candle lighting, and church bell ringing are held inside the church and in the surrounding area.\n\nPicture 1: © Mr. Mohammad Reza Domiri Gangi\nPicture 2: St. Thaddeus Monastery © Soheil Callage, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons, Changed: Size, ContrastYear2022NationArmenia,Iran
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Peñafrancia, the 300-year-old Fluvial Procession Festival in the PhilippinesSeptember marks the celebration of one of the most famous and oldest festivals in the Philippines, the Peñafrancia where thousands of people flock to Naga City and show their fervent devotion to Our Lady of Peñafrancia, the patroness of Naga City in the Bicol Region. For more than three hundred years, religious devotees and pilgrims have attended the religious rites for the Peñafrancia Festival.\n\nThe Peñafrancia Festival involves two festivities. The celebration for the Divino Rostro or the Divine Face, usually held in the second week of September, is to pay homage to the image of Jesus Christ. People’s devotion to the Divino Rostro may have begun in 1882 during a sudden spread of cholera from Manila that reached Naga City. During that period, there was no cure for the epidemic, but according to the locals, when the image of the Divino Rostro was placed at the altar of the town’s cathedral, the epidemic astonishingly vanished. The weekend following the celebration of the Divino Rostro are the festivities for Our Lady of Peñafrancia. Due to the popularity of the Peñafrancia Festival, Naga has been dubbed the “pilgrim city” in the Philippines.\n\nDue to the 333-year Spanish colonization in the Philippines, various cultural traditions have been hemmed and blended into the country’s heritage particularly on religion. At present, almost 85 percent of the Philippines’ population are Roman Catholic. Thus, most festivals in the Philippines are associated with Catholic beliefs and traditions. The devotion of millions of Roman Catholics to Our Lady of Peñafrancia in Naga City every year is one of the most intense religious rites in the country. During the festival, a nine-day novena is dedicated to Our Lady of Peñafrancia. A ceremony called Translación marks the first day of the novena through a land procession to transfer the image of Our Lady of Peñafrancia to Naga Cathedral. The most awaited part of the festival is the ninth day of the novena when the image of Our Lady of Peñafrancia is returned to Basilica Minore in a fluvial procession along the Naga river.\n\nDuring the fluvial procession, images of Our Lady of Peñafrancia and Divino Rostro are boarded in a gazebo on a boat with Catholic clergies. The barge with the religious images is then followed by long canoes paddled by young men in colorful shirts. They paddle as fast as they can as though in a boat race. Only men are allowed to paddle the canoes, according to the beliefs of locals from the Bicol region, as women could trigger disaster. However, only chosen devotees (voyadores) can ride the canoes while the remaining devotees watch the procession on the shores of the river as they cheer “viva la Virgen.” A religious mass is held once the religious images arrive at the Basilica of Our Lady of Peñafrancia.\n\nPhoto 1 : A scene of Peñafrancia ⓒ Gregory Ian Nicerio Opeña\nPhoto 2 : A scene of Peñafrancia ⓒ Gregory Ian Nicerio OpeñaYear2018NationPhilippines
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Intangible Cultural Heritage Exchange and PeaceIn the 70 years of national division, the society and culture of the two Koreas have moved very far apart, through severance of ties, alienation, and the rule of hostile ideologies in the Korean War and Cold War era. The North Korean society and culture borne of dogmatic communism and armed with Juche ideology feels too different and unacceptable to South Koreans awash in liberal capitalism. I personally have a deeper understanding and greater acceptance than the average since I met with North Korean bureaucrats frequently and made several visits to North Korea in my former role at a UNESCO organization, but still would never be able to adapt to life in North Korean society. Just as we find it difficult to accept their invocations of the great leader and inflexible expressions about capitalism and imperialism, the North Koreans reject terms like liberty, human rights and civic society as bourgeois ideology. This difference in political regime and ideology has created heterogeneity between the two Koreas in every aspect of society and culture- education, culture, arts, religion, theater and movies. The heterogeneity and hostility in political and economic regimes make reconciliation or unification difficult. However, if the heterogeneity in culture, arts and lifestyles intensifies, even the establishment of a peace community, let alone peaceful unification, would appear to be an impossibility. Overcoming differences in ideology to achieve national unity (as proclaimed in the July 4th Joint Statement) does not seem possible.Year2019NationSouth Korea
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Heritage, Folk Medicine and Kaviraji Treatment in BangladeshBangladesh and a significant part of South Asia possess a vibrant and thriving medical pluralism. Medical pluralism has been turned into an intrinsic feature of its medical system in historical and contempo-rary contexts (See, Rashid, 2017, Misra, 2010, Leslie, 1980, Banerji 1981; Sujatha 2003, Sujatha& Abraham, 2009). Multiple medical systems such as Biomedicine (the term used for allopathic medicine), Ayurvedic, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), Naturopathy, Kaviraji and other folk traditions are widely practiced in this region for primary health-care. Traditional medical practices (TMPs) involving the use of different medicinal plants vary greatly from place to place, region to region and community to community, as they are influenced by factors such as economy, culture, religion, education, ethnicity and environment. The cultural phenomena of super natural belief also plays a significant role in building different perceptions among different rural and ethnic om-munities on various statuses and conditions of their health, as many of these people view their illness as possession by evil spirits. Visits to shrines or shamans (a person who acts as an intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, using magic to cure illness) for folk methods of healing, are still observed in many places. Research shows that whether educated or not, rich or poor; some people still use folk medicine for specific diseases.Year2019NationSouth Korea
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Safeguarding Shamanism in Bhutan: Case Study and Policy AnalysisThe paper presents the status of Shamanism practice, in terms of state policy, research status and challenges for the Shaman heritage in Bhutan. The paper is based on field research and policy analysis conducted by the National Library and Archive of Bhutan under a ICHCAP project grant. An overview of shamanism in different regions of Bhutan is presented with a region-wise categorization of Shamanism in Bhutan. This is followed by a brief overview of four shamanism practices prevalent in Bhutan, three in the southern region and one in the western region. The preliminary data show that the Shamanistic practices in Bhutan, as in other parts of the world, has been deeply rooted in religion and supernatural power. The paper also presents future plans and initiatives of the National Library and Archives Division for the documentation and preservation of Shaman heritage. In absence of any written state policy regarding the preservation and promotion of Shaman heritage, the study concludes by proposing some recommendations to the government and local stakeholders for the preservation and promotion of the practice.Year2013NationBhutan
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Department of National Heritage in Malaysia: The Role of Conservation and Preservation of HeritageMalaysia is a developing nation of Southeast Asia. A few of their famous slogans reflect the diversity of its present ethnic groups in terms of language, customs and traditions inherited from past generations, ‘One Malaysia‘ and ‘Malaysia Truly Asia‘. Malaysia’s cultural fusion is the result of immigration, trade and cultural exchanges over many centuries with Arab nations, China, and India, where the arrival of the first foreigners brought along with them their wealth as well as their cultural heritage and religion. Presently, these ethnic groups still maintain their cultural traditions, but managed to come together to develop Malaysia’s unique and contemporary diverse heritage.Year2010NationSouth Korea
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Safeguarding Asian Common Heritage - Shamanism and International CooperationShamanism is a phenomenon found in most parts of the world. The essence of shamanism is people's nature to overcome their limited abilities by creating and leaning upon supernatural being. This is a trait not only found in Shamanism but also in most religions as well. However, Shamanism is usually considered as a mere folk belief rather than a nationally recognized religion. \nYear2013NationSouth Korea
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ICH Festivals in Specific Goal and TaskThe development of information technology is pushing humanity forward. From ancient times the exchange of information has been a vital ingredient in the development of technology, education, culture, and lifestyle. Trade routes were the most ancient organized form of exchange not only for goods but also for technology, religion, and culture. For more than 3,000 years the Silk Roads played a major role in the exchange between Asia, Africa and Europe. Understanding the importance of cultural exchange, understanding, and tolerance, building stable relationships based on the preservation of cultural elements will give a new impetus to development. Representing cultures at the international level in a specific goal and task will focus respect for the efforts of generations and building new connections and relationships.Year2020NationSouth Korea