OUR STORY

Nutag Foundation was founded in response to a number of Indigenous Buryat-Mongolian People immigrating from Russia to the United States. There is a critical need to support our people as they begin their journey as migrants. As many of them are refugees and asylum seekers, they face numerous challenges of resettlement while experiencing displacement from their native lands (nutag). Among them is Indigenous Buryat woman named Adiso. Please read her story here.

“Nutag” means “small motherland”, “homeland” or “native land from Buryat and Mongolian languages. A traditional understanding of "nutag" is the place of his/her ancestors. It can be a place one ties his/her first childhood memories, parents and grandparents and family. It is usually a place one wants to come immediately after a long separation. It is not necessarily a place of birth, but an important place one feels an inextricable spiritual and emotional connection throughout life. 

To indicate a specific place of birth, there is another phrase in Buryat culture called toonto nutag. It means the place where a baby’s umbilical cord (toonto) is buried. There is also also a song named “Toonto Nutag”. In the last decades Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minority groups in Russia have been facing significant challenges - population decline, adverse living and working conditions and cultural attrition which led to increase of poverty and cultural loss.