PROJECT

Purpose For Life Foundation. 'Purple Life'

In Holland 2007, a small group of friends discussed a 'creative documentation platform'. One which could support their ideas, helping them to manifest into their utmost potential. The theme of these ideas were 'people', 'their lives' and 'the relationship they have with each other and their environment'.

With diverse and multidimentional possibilities, an umbrella theme was required for each of the projects that 'Purple Life' would focus its attention on. This theme, would be 'awareness'. The awareness people have in their lives, of and between themselves, and the awareness they have of the relationship between themselves and their environment.

So, how does one document awareness? And what is one looking for in order to highlight it as the main subject? This rather difficult question is one that Purple Life intends to answer by simply asking questions.

With each documentation supported by Purple Life, be it film, TV, internet or book, we aim to gain an insight into the lives and relationships of people and their environment. Through impartial recorded observation of what they do, combined with questions aimed to find out 'Why' it is they do things that way, the results and benefits will be left solely to the viewer who's own understanding dawns with their own sense of awareness.

Awareness is the comprehending factor that complements being conscious in any place or situation, by adding understanding to its consciousness.

The first project that 'Purple Life' is supporting is called "Nomads - The Original Way Of Living." This project is a journey from Amsterdam, across the ex-eastern block countries to Siberia and Mongolia to meet and spend time with the Nomadic Tribes who inhabit these areas. It deals with documenting people who have spanned millenia, still living their lifestyles in the oldest and most original way known. We will discover what aspects of awareness are prevelant in Nomadic cultures... the how's and why's that lie behind the relationship these people have with their environment, together with all the pressures they face from the ever expanding modern world.

Simon Ramsay.
Chairman. Purpose for Life Foundation.

Project Motivation

These days we are discovering that the way we are using our planet harms our environment in serious ways. We have forgotten how to treat nature in order for it to give back whatever we took from it. Knowing exactly when to give and when to take, Nomadic tribes have been living in close harmony with nature for centuries. It is the original way of living for humankind.

As history has watched many great civilizations rise and fall, the Nomadic tribesmen of this planet have spanned millennia living their lives with little change to their habitual patterns. We believe the Nomadic cultures still have an important message for mankind. Their lifestyle is practical and simple and often hard, yet there is something in their independence that shows purity to the relationship they have with their environment.

Are there lessons to be learnt which we may have forgotten over the course of time? We want to give an insight into a world most people don’t know about. There are truths and skills to be found in these social communities that stand so close to nature that we in modern society may have forgotten them. Each culture has a way of educating their children: of transportation, of shelter/housing, of medicine, of finance/economy, of laws/code of conduct, of food supply, of clothing, of technology, and there is a varying state of awareness between the source of these life aspects and their benefactors.

Sadly due to the ever-expanding modern society, these cultures are facing inevitable change making the Nomadic lifestyle an almost extinct way of living. If we are truly going to sweep aside these cultures, let us at least take a look at how they have lived harmoniously with their surrounding environment, generation after generation. These cultures may hold precious secrets for us.

Actually being part of the ecosystem as opposed to damaging and even threatening its very existence. It would be a shame if we would leave this way of living to become extinct before finding out what their message was. That is why it is important to visit these tribes now, before they are gone forever.

The main questions we wish to answer are:

- How do these tribes survive amid the pressures of the ever-expanding modern society?
- How did the constant changing world around them change their century old traditions?
- What aspects of their Nomadic lifestyle have endured and what aspects had to be adjusted?
- What lessons and skills can be learned from their way of life?
- What influence has the changing climate on the habitat of these nomadic tribes?
- What parallels are there between a life being lived in the nature and one being lived in a modern society?

Project Concept

Ramsay, a British born who has spent the past 15 years living his own Nomadic existence by roaming the planet, embarks upon a journey in an old converted 4x4 army rescue truck to compile a book and a documentary about Nomadic cultures.

"The project core concept is to compare Nomadic (pastoral and transient) lifestyles with our sedentary lifestyles. To see what bridges there are between the older Nomadic cultures of our planet and the modern world we live in. We would like to study the parallels between the different cultures and see what awareness each has of their own environment, and the effect they have on each other respectively."

Travelling with him in search of Nomads will be 4 other young people representing an array of nationalities and cultures as well as essential skills for the journey. Travelling over 30, 000km across the whole of the Eurasian continent will often see them hundreds of kilometres away from roads or villages. They will have to be entirely self-reliable, whether in attending to mechanical problems and finding their way through deserts and mountainous territories, but also in the making of the documentary they will be filming, depicting their journey and the many adventures they will face until they reach Mongolia.

In travelling and living together for 5 months in very confined spaces, this crew of 3 women and 2 men will have a chance to experience a little of the Nomads way of life. The success of their venture as well as their survival will primarily depend on each other through good and hard times.

"By travelling to Mongolia in our own vehicle we will be taking on the Nomadic characteristic of moving to where we need to be by means of our own overland transport. It isn’t the same as riding on the back of a Camel or a Reindeer but it will give us the experience of travelling together as a group in order to find and accomplish our goal. We will be travelling through some of our planets most remote and harshest terrains without the many comforts of a normal everyday modern world existence, and we will face all the challenges that the road has to offer."

Both the book compiled by Ramsay and the documentary will be focused on the Nomads of the remote territories they will be visiting, the aim of the journey being to pay their respects to these people and learn more about their culture, the way they live so closely to nature and interact with their environment, as well as take time to reflect on the different ways in which our modern world affects their ancestral way of living.

"The project has the potential to attract a broad audience with the adventure of travelling through extreme terrain to some of the world's most beautiful and natural landscapes. A journey to discover our planet, a journey to discover different cultured people, and a journey to discover ourselves. We will then share our journey and our findings. As a series it will be an adventure, an education, an eye opener, an inspiration and an extraordinary journey not to miss."

A documentary series will be shot and edited as we travel, with short excerpts being produced specifically for this website. On our return we will be in a position to release a feature length documentary via the internet and/or broadcasted on national television.

We intend to produce a children’s program using a 3D animated figure to experience the marvellous adventures along with the film crew while they explore remote areas and raise questions about the environment, society and anything we run into that might be important for the broadening mind of a child. We will use a different kind of storytelling in order to make it educational. Subjects touched and perhaps valuable to integrate in school curriculum are of various domains, such as ethnology, geography, languages, cultures and lifestyles, diet, fauna, local politics, education etc.

Pastoralism

Pastoralism is a subsistence (economic) pattern in which people make their living by tending herds of large animals. The species of animals vary with the region of the world, but they are all domesticated herbivores that normally live in herds and eat grasses or other abundant plant foods. Horses are the preferred species by most pastoralists in Mongolia and elsewhere in Central Asia. In the horn of Africa, it is primarily cattle. In the mountainous regions of Southwest Asia, it is mainly sheep and goats. It is often camels in the more arid lowland areas of the Southwest Asia and North and the Horn of Africa. Among the Saami people (or Lapps) of northern Scandinavia, it is reindeer. Some pastoralists in northern Mongolia also herd reindeer.

While the Saami mostly use their reindeer as a source of meat, the Dukha people (or Tsaatan) of northern Mongolia milk and ride their reindeer much as other Mongolians do with horses. However, it should be noted that there are essentially two forms of pastoralism namely; nomadism and transhumance. Pastoral nomads follow a seasonal migratory pattern that can vary from year to year. The timing and destinations of migrations are determined primarily by the needs of the herd animals for water and fodder. These nomadic societies do not create permanent settlements, but rather they live in tents or other relatively easily constructed dwellings the year round. Pastoralist nomads are usually self-sufficient interms of food and most other necessities.

The Dukha, Pastoralists Nomads, or Tsaatan, are an ancient people of Turk descent who are first mentioned in the annals of China's Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907). They have evolved a unique way of life, dependent both on reindeer and the forests where the Dukha hunt. The Families rely on the animals for their livelihood. In addition to milk and cheese, the reindeer provide transportation for hunting, taking the nomads deep into the forest where their shaman forebears have been entombed in trees. The Dukha believe their ancestors' ghosts live on in the forest as animals that give guidance to the living. However, in the Land where they roam the wildlife is disappearing and, as a result, so are the reindeer.

Without meat the Dukha have no choice but to start eating their own precious animals. There have been estimations that around 200 herding reindeer are left in the Mongolian taiga (northern coniferous forest) today. (Some wildlife biologists put the country's entire reindeer population at 667). There have been some ventures aimed to learn why the reindeer herds are shrinking. Last winter a pair of scientists traveled to the mountain valley taiga of Hovsgol Province to investigate one potential explanation: that inbreeding between the domesticated reindeer has weakened their immune systems, leaving them susceptible to disease and reduced fertility. Their are other related theories as to why the Reindeer are dwindling and the Dukha lifestyles threatening change, but the real causes of declining herds are most likely linked to social changes following the collapse of communism in Mongolia 15 years ago and emerging pressures on the northern taiga. For instance, herds often don't have enough fertile females to keep numbers stable. The younger generation of Dukha who brought the reindeer back from the defunct state farms have probably lost the wisdom of breeding after 50 years of communism.

As herders move away from the taiga to take advantage of new schools and medical facilities in towns, their reindeer are denied rich summer grazing in mountain pastures.They may not be getting the proper nutrition they need. However, there are other threats to the Dukha's traditional taiga heartlands. An upsurge in commercial hunting for deer, wild boar, moose, and other animals has meant that wolves now have to search for alternative prey. Most families in the taiga complain about wolves, wolf predation seems to be the principal cause of fatality among the herds. The Dukha are forced to eat their own animals as subsistence hunting becomes more difficult.

This is a thing unknown in the past, their Original way of life was in celebrating their animals lives and participation in the Tribe by providing transport, dairy produce, furs, antlers, and would normally only be eaten if they died naturally. On what would normally be a days local hunting, they were now away four to five days and at times forced to cross into Tyva, a neighboring republic in the Russian Federation. Some Dukha have said that ibex and argali sheep have both disappeared within the last 15 years since the arrival of Chinese traders who traffic in animalparts. Other targets include brown bears, sought for their gall bladders and paws; red deer, culled for antlers, tails and penises; and musk deer, killed for their musk glands. With both men and wolves eating reindeer, the rate of loss is greater than the herds' reproductive rate. The discovery of gold in parts of Mongolia's northern and western taiga may also threaten the Dukha. Mining rights have already been sold by government to politically powerful holding companies.

For a cash-starved developing nation like Mongolia, the taiga appears more as an untapped source of income than a conservation priority. The Mongolian taiga is not taken sufficiently seriously at an international level. Wildlife conservationists don't consider the taiga to be a primary concern, because it is devoid of rare and exotic species.

Nomadic Charter

We, the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and Far East of the Russian Federation,

believe that:

• The Air, the Land and Water are blessed,
• Nature is the source of life,
• Man is but a drop in the whirlpool of life,
• The river of time is but a reflection of the past, present, and future and that how our ancestors lived in the past is how we now live and how our offspring will live in the future;

know that:

• Man is a part of nature and bears responsibility for protecting the diversity of the environment;
• Our home is the tundra, the taiga, the steppe and the mountains bequeathed to us by our ancestors, these are great, powerful, harsh, kind and generous manifestations but defenseless in the face of technical progress;
• Use of knowledge can bring not only perfection and happiness but can cause pain and inflict injury;
• Thoughtless work of human hands is capable of polluting and poisoning the air, the land, and the water, of destroying the living and of killing both large and small;
• Economic growth, expanding wealth and assets for the few do not always improve life and prosperity for the majority;
• Social, economic, and environmental policies of those now in power:
  • do not eliminate need and injustice,
  • do not protect the health of man and so the tree of life, of our kinfolk and our fellow countrymen, is rapidly withering away,
  • do not renew the disrupted natural processes that forms our historical development,
  • do not return the land of our ancestors, the lands of our traditional use;
• Our way of life, based on time-honoured experience of communal, social organization, has been created from the original cultures and beliefs of our ancestors and is the one, true way of maintatining life and sustainable development;
• No one, neither society nor civilization, will ever solve our problems and only we, and the good will of the government, are capable of accomplishing this task;

desire that:

• our unique cultures, our ancestral homelands and way of life be protected by the government;
• our legal rights be observed and that we can participate, as equal partners, in the planning strategies for the sustainable development of the North of our country;
• our experience, knowledge, interests and traditional approaches to the use of the environment be accounted for when decisions are made on how the lands of our ancestors shall be used.

Everything that we believe, everything that we know and all that we desire must serve as the basis for advancing our traditional way of life.

We speak of development and not simply of "preservation" or "government protection," emphasizing our desire to take part ourselves in the process of sustainably developing the North, our government and the world in general, using and improving on the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors.

Only in harmony with nature will humanity find a way out of its current crisis. We, the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East of the Russian Federation, know this path!

Adopted at the IV Congress of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and Far East
Moscow April 13, 2001

Dalai Lama's Blessing

Upon reaching Dharamsala in the Indian Himalaya in September 2011, Ramsay will present his compiled book about his experiences with Nomadic tribes to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. The book will receive blessings before Ramsay returns to Europe for its publication.

Ramsay has received official acknowledgment from the Office of the Dalai Lama that his personal blessings will be given.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet is a great living example of how a small and simplistic cultured people, seemingly insignificant in numbers, have, once listened to, an invaluable and precious message for the whole of mankind. The same might be true for the Nomadic tribes who will be encountered throughout the project.

To have the Dalai Lama's personal blessings upon a book compiled about a culture and tribal lifestyle that is fading amidst the growing pressures of this worlds nations, is an honorable and indeed precious thing in itself.

Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, is the 14th and current Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is a revered spiritual leader among Tibetans and exerts a powerful influence over the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism. He is head of the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala, India. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he is also the world's best-known Buddhist monk.

Tenzin Gyatso is described as a "charismatic" figure and noted public speaker. He is the first Dalai Lama to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Tibetan Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.

"Dalai" means "Ocean" in Mongolian, and is a translation of the Tibetan name "Gyatso," while "Lama" is the Tibetan equivalent of the Sanskrit word "guru," and is commonly translated to mean "spiritual teacher." Putting the terms together, the full title is "Ocean Teacher" meaning a teacher who is spiritually as deep as the ocean.