Hello I'm Tsengun. When I was 5 years old I watched a documentary that is called `Ancient civilization`. The documentary shows the theory that `Where did the first Americans come from?`. In the documentary there researcher said `The easiest way to get here is by foot. The Bering Land Bridge has been the longstanding theory because that’s the clearest connection between Asia and North America, up in the Arctic, and it only appears when ice is locked up on land and sea levels drop. It’s the only place where you could walk from one side to the other.
I believed theory because our cultures have similarities. For example, believing in forest, river, mountain, and other natural formations have spirits and spirits are formed in wild animals. Always praying and thanking the spirits for what they gave us resources and safeness. Our nomadic lives are similar too. Willing to not to harm nature, herders animals, and hunting. One pack of hunters goes hunting for a long time and mostly fights with bows and swords and riding horses.
Have a good day and be careful.

Hello, my name is Muratbek, I might be a bit formal since I don't know who will read my letter. As other im from Mongolian which is located in middle Asia, although im Asian, i don't have name like CHU-KU-SUN or something like this. 

I don't know what they say about Indians in other countries, but when I was a child mama told me that Indians are very close to nature and speak with eagles and they have spiritual connection with mother earth and all these legends that Indians were skillful warriors. 

I know that times have changed but it is still amazing to have blood from such a nation. 

I think that our nation is close in tradition. History books write that our grandparents were able to predict weather just by looking at movements of a bird, and they lived in green plains which u cant see end with human eyes. Other thing that history teacher told us is in 13th century Mongolian king was controlling half of earth land, even they had lack of populations king preferred quality over quantity. As legend say that Mogolians was fast a storm when they ride horse and they was best snipers with bow at the time. 

Maybe because of the location we lived we have different clothing traditions than Indians. 

In those areas our temperature can reach - 35C(-31 fahrenheit). As we live in such condition we have really warm and thick layered clothes. Obviously we had different religions and we believed in  different gods. 

I have really important questions from my childhood. Do you have some diminished accessories of Indians? Do they still function ?Do you still do some rituals from the past? 

I feel sad about modernization

 throughout the world, it made us lose the uniqueness of every nation. I know that some habits or old traditions still exist in every country. But the daily life of a simple employee is almost the same in every country.

Have a good day whoever you are. I don't want to talk about crisis, because it starting to annoy people, but this problem is serious so be careful.

Hey, I hope you are doing well. 
My name is Oyunchimeg and I am a student at Orkhon High. 

I would like to share the interesting traditions of the Mongolian people. Our ancestors were fully nomadic, changing their location in every season. Well depending on the season we do different types of work. For example in the summer, herders need to make sure the livestock get good nutrition to survive cold and harsh winter. In the fall, we need to store up enough hays also for the winter. And when it finally comes, both people and livestock can survive. As you can see Mongolians shaped their lives on the way nature changes and behaves. 

Our cuisine is primarily based on meat and milk, because again our climate(too dry, windy and cold) is not suitable for agriculture. My favorite drink is AIRAG also known as MARE'S MILLK. I get to drink it as much as I want on the holidays. 
Speaking of  holidays, there are two main traditional celebration. One is NAADAM-ᠨᠠᠭᠠᠳᠤᠮ- this is a really wonderful festival and happens in the midsummer. It includes horse racing, wrestling and archery for men. 
Two is TAGAAN SAR-ᠴᠠᠭᠠᠨ ᠰᠠᠷ- also known as Lunar New year. People go visit their families, grandparents and  cousins to greet each other. Elders welcome them warmly, giving them meals as well as gifts.

One thing that has caught my attention is that does native Americans  ever domesticate an animal?

I hope you find some similarities within out cultures. 💖Have wonderful day ✨


Yours sincerely, Oyunchimeg

I hope this letter finds you well.

(It is pretty weird to address a letter to dear stranger during this strange times we are sharing. But I don’t know who is reading this right now and I’m so excited about it, hope you’ll answer my questions)

  Hi, I’m Nomingoo, a sixteen years old Mongolian girl. To be honest, I don’t have such a knowledge about history and other countries, so I had to surf around the internet about your history, culture, traditions etc. In my opinion, we have pretty much similar traditions like predicting the weather by watching animals, living in nomadic style… 

   But actually, I’m not really into talking about your old times and histories, because we don’t like the way others recognize us (Mongolians) just by Ghinghis khan, horses, and nomadic life too. So I guess we’re bit concerned about it, and that’s why I’m much more interested in your current lifestyle and how are you guys living right now.

In Mongolia, we used to have a tradition named богтлох (bogtlokh), which is about getting wife, men steals (or /kidnaps/ I don’t know which proper word I can use) women who they like or love. But don’t worry, we don’t steal women now. XD And I will be pretty happy to know your old traditions like this.

Whoever reading this, I hope u had a great day 

(p.s. I really love your traditional clothes and accessories.)

(p.s. p.s. I didn’t wanted to talk anything about covid19  just not to feel awkward :b)

Hey, i hope you guys doing well and had super duper Thanksgiving. This is not my first time writing a letter to someone but its still hard to write one nevermind so my name is Shinesar, i am 17 years old and go in 11th grade at Orkhon High in Mongolia. I’m visiting this school since last year before i moved to Mongolia, oh and i forgot to tell you where i came from .I lived in Austria for 5 years with my family. So now i want to share you guys some Mongolian traditions that could be interesting for you. To be honest i have no idea about Native Americans. As i child, i watched many movies but have never studied. In fact there is one thing that might be true. I heard that you guys are also nomads like Mongolian. Prove me if i’m wrong. Our traditional nomads continue to live our way of life as we did in the days of Gengis Khan. They moving around in countyside to get more grass for their horses etc. and also there is most important tradition. One day you will travel to mongolia and you can’t pass this one. MmmMmm its one of the most beautiful festival in Mongolia. There is soo many tasty food , the special one called Khuushuur. Its backed flour with meat. You wanna know how this festival called? I see you are interested in, its called NAADAM. If you want more about us let me know and i am looking for your reply about your traditions bc i want to study more. I hope this was interesting and have a nice day! 
Goodbye 
Sincerely Shinesar

Second of all, I wanted to ask you all a question. Up until this very moment, have you ever though that "Wow, Mongolians and Native Americans have a very similar culture, we are so alike!" ? Yes, me neither my friends. To be honest, I'm not 100% confident that you people heard about us. Obviously we're famous by our history of our great emperor the Chinggis Khaan. And we are indeed proud of our ancestors and history but we have plenty of other things that people don't know of, yet still precious and important. In this letter I wanted to share our culture and society and discuss about similarities and differences of ours and Native American's. And why WE should preserve it.

A few years back I travelled to Minnesota, USA and visited the Science Museum of Minnesota, Mille lac's Indian museum as well. It was really interesting and beautiful, I get to learn about the jingle dress dance and how its origin can be traced to the Mille Lacs Ojibwe through museum exhibits, objects, demonstrations, and tours, and shop for locally made Native American arts and crafts in the restored 1930s trading post. I really enjoyed the trip to the museum and ended up learning a lot. Although, as can be seen now, but not at that time, our culture are much the same. 

Apparently the culture is a very broad subject and we can't obviously discuss everything. But what I know about what is alike between Native Americans and Mongolians is that:

And about differences, there are a lot but to mention a few, we are different by where we live and what we used to do to survive and with our history.

By this opportunity given to me I also wanted to discuss about how "us people" with great culture and astonishing traditions are being treated in today's society.

After a few google research I learned that white settlers during the western expansion movement ended Native Americans way of life and led to the virtual destruction of Indian life and culture. Since that painful historical trauma Native Americans been fighting to preserve their way of life, their beliefs and their cultural identity. 
Alike to this, The Manchu-led Qing dynasty had ruled Inner and Outer Mongolia for over 200 years. Since that day, the Qing dynasty's policy heavily influenced to Mongolian culture, especially to the southern part of Mongolia (now called the the Inner Mongolians) which was annexed by China. Recently, China made a new policy aimed at pushing Mandarin-language education to Inner Mongolian students that will phase out the local history and literature, and literally erase the culture. As a member of an amazing ethnic group I want to preserve the treasures that our ancestors left us.

Due to this problem, Mongolians protested and boycotted the Chinese government. However they all largely ignored the protests and its demands. Also protesters (parents of the students) got attacked by police. And the government of China still haven't made any change on their decision regarding this problem. Just like this example, many other people always try to harm our culture and our people when there's a slight little chance. Fortunately we fight back and this makes me feel so inspired and courageous. Even if it's not a large protest, but just a content on some social platform, it is still amazing. I see Native Americans on tiktok introducing and defending their culture and I just wish that it would be incredible if more people would do things like this. Surprisingly, most of these people on tiktok are my age, but when China banned Mongolian language in Mongolian schools, only very few of us was able to speak up... And I am indeed proud of Native Americans who TRIES to make changes, rather than just silently sit and observe.

I see people on social media mocking or stereotyping Native culture, and we face these type of problems too. As a youth, we have the power and responsibility to help our community and future generations to distinguish, recognize and appreciate the culture so that these don't disappear for good. We are all connected by our marvelous heritage and pride, and I say let's be proud of who we are. And do what we can, MORE. #indigenouspride


Best regards, 
Enkhsolongo Sangibat

My question is that:
What do you think we can do as a young member of minority ethnic group, to change how our culture is being treated in this society? 
It may seem like a heavy question, but please don't feel pressured ^^

Greetings from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia! 

My name is Lkhagvadulam, but you can call me by my nickname, Haguwa. 

I honestly appreciate this opportunity to write this letter for you and share my thoughts about the similarities and the differences between my culture and yours. After reading many articles regarding the Native American culture and traditions, I have realized that we have a lot in common, although of course there are some unique differences because of the culture, climate as well as land.

As searching through the Internet about Native American, and especially Navajo tribe’s lifestyle, it was mos surprising to know that they always build their home hogan’s door facing east so that they could see the sun rise. In Mongolia too, there are certain rules when we build our traditional dwelling place-ger. The door must be always faced south, so that it allows for light and warmth of the southern sun to come through the door as well as preventing the north-west wind from entering. (Please see the picture of "ger" below if you're interested in.) 

Also, when I saw some photos of Navajo sheep herder on Google, it was weird and wonderful to know that they also farm sheep and goats, with sheep becoming the major source of meat. It is completely the same in Mongolia too.  But I think the difference here is that Mongolian sheep herders make large seasonal as well as some small local camp-changing movements in response to ecological changes and conditions of the pasture while Navajo people used to change their places in constant search of food for survival, according to nativepartnership.org. My question here is, do you still change the places where you live? If so, how often do you move?

That's the end of my letter, thank you for reading!

I hope you would answer my questions.

Warm regards,

Lkhagvadulam.

 First of all, I’m a student who lives in a Mongolia and I’m writing this letter to you from the other side of the earth.

  I was not that interested in geography or history since I was a kid. I didn’t even have a piece of basic knowledge to start this letter, so I did tons of research about the connection between Mongolia and Native America.

  The key similarity between us was a nomadic lifestyle. I know that not all Native Americans were nomadic and just a few were, such as the Navajos, the Apaches, many western indigenous people and the Native Americans on the Plains. By searching for these tribes, I noticed that ‘earth lodge’ of Native Americans on the Plains’ structure looked absolutely similar to ‘ger’ of Mongolians. Furthermore, the teepees they made were identical to ‘urts’ of Mongolian Tsaatan. (You can see the comparison from the picture I uploaded down there.) This is the primer reason why I believed that our ancestors were related before and after separated. But still, I was not sure about that because how could they go to the other side of the world. Then, even the religion of us was the same, Shamanism and we all admired and respected Nature. It can’t just be a coincidence to have so many similarities and I’m impressed by the fact that we are actually related.

    Now I will introduce just a piece of our lifestyle in Mongolia. As you guys know, we are nomadic but the number of people who stayed as nomads is less than ⅓ of our population and the number of people coming to the city is increasing each year. The ‘ger’ I mentioned earlier is the home of nomads, which can be built in just a few hours. (‘ger’ is in use since 3000 years ago.). Also, the nomads nowadays do not change the place they live as much as our ancestors. (Our ancestors used to change place 4 times a year but nowadays almost all people just change it twice a year.). 

  I hope we all can protect our tradition and culture and I really appreciate the knowledge I got from the research.

 Lastly, I want to know if there is any false information that everyone except you guys believe about Native Americans? (For example, almost everyone thinks we ride horses to get to school until now.)
 
  Sincerely, 
Ulziisaikhan.G