The 2011 International Altai Expedition, Environmental Clean-up, and "Peace-Mapping" Summit promotes international support for the at-risk environment and culture of the Altai Republic in Siberia.
The 55,000 Altai people have asked for international help to protect their environmentally sensitive and at-risk lands. Although some international help is now being provided, more is needed. Altai is the birthplace of global shamanism and has been a place of pilgrimage for millennia. Due to an influx of ethnic Russians in the last 20 years, the Altai people are now outnumbered 3 to 1; their traditional lands are being exploited and their waters polluted.
This project will support an international delegation to visit Altai, where they gain first-hand experience and personal connections that will enable them to inspire others in their home-countries to support the Altai people.
Through exchanges and delegations in the past 5 years, Altai Mir University has fostered direct international involvement of several other organizations, expanding the possibility of support for the Altai people to steward their traditional lands.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
