The Kazakh People
The Kazakh People
The Kazakh People
A Tradition Deepened
She is still a child, but the eagle on her arm does not know that.
Her gaze is calm, already accustomed to the weight. For generations, the art of Berkutchi was passed from father to son. Now daughters carry it too and in that shift, the tradition does not diminish. It deepens.
Kazakh or free warriors
During the communist period, many Kazakhs, or ‘free warriors’, fled Kazakhstan to neighbouring countries.
This diaspora now forms large communities in China, Iran and Mongolia. The Kazakhs are the largest ethnic minority group in Mongolia. Almost 90 percent of them live in the north-western part of the country, Bayan-Ölgii. The Mongolian Kazakhs travelled through Russia to the Mongolian Altai Mountains living as semi-nomads,
The Weight of a Lineage
A young eagle hunter sits inside the warmth of a ger, his golden eagle perched on his fist.
The bond between them was not made in a day. It begins in early childhood and grows across years of patience and trust, a language without words, spoken between hunter and bird. To carry an eagle is to carry a lineage.
Where the Sky Begins
Two eagle hunters on horseback, high on a rocky ridge above the Altai valley.
Their eagles are raised against a sky that stretches to the snow-capped mountains beyond. The vast, empty landscape below says everything about what it means to live here and what it takes to call it home.
The Kazakh People
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