The Tsaatan People

This is a series of portraits and general shots of the Tsaatan and Mongolian people who live in and around the forests of the East Taiga region of Khovsgol province in northern Mongolia. The Tsaatan ethnic minority are one of the last remaining groups of nomadic reindeer herders in Mongolia, and have been maintaining their traditions for thousands of years. They seasonally migrate within the forests of the Taiga according to weather and food conditions for their reindeer, which they depend on for milk and transportation. They face challenges to their traditional way of life, with recently introduced laws aimed at conservation limiting their ability to hunt wild animals for food, and climate change affecting their habitat and possibly exposing reindeer to disease. Previously self-supporting, they now are partly dependent on government handouts and tourism to enable them to buy meat and other supplies. All the images were taken during September 2015.