Aunt Dariĭmaa from Balygshy kinship group giving the treat--salt--to her reindeer, Örteng-Kyrkhy.

Aunt Dariĭmaa (or Dariĭ, as the parents named her) from Balygshy kinship group giving the treat--salt--to her reindeer, Örteng-Kyrkhy. June 2023. I address my interlocutors using the Tyvan kinship terminology. What I translate as "aunt" is actually "ugbai" (older sister) in Tyvan. In 2023 we started to work on the project related to the biocultural heritage, material culture and ethnobiological knowledge.
Fieldwork, summer 2023. We arrived when this aal was at the spring place named after the River Chüngüg. Then we moved to the higher summer pasture at the place named Örteng-Kyrkhy (the Burnt Ridge), alt. appr. 2200 m. This aal consisted of eight families who belong to different kinship groups: Ak -Soyan, Urat, and Balygshy. The Ak-Soyan and Urat people have kinship ties to the Tozhu-Tyva people and the Balygshy collaborators shared that they are related to the Tyvan groups who live between the rivers Kyzyl-Khem and Balyktyg-Khem.
My research assistant is the Tyva from the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia; he belongs to the Ak-Soyan kinship group and speaks the Tsengel dialect of Tyvan. I belong to the Kyzyl-Soyan branch of the Soyans who were originally from the Khaan-Kögei Mountain, now -- Khan Khokhii Mountain in Mongolia. I am a native speaker of the southern Tyvan dialect.
A brief note on the the linguistic diversity: the Tukha is fully comperehensible with my own dialect and I had a better understanding with the Tukha interlocutors than the speaker of the Tsengel dialect. Before meeting the Tukha (and after reading academic publications about them) I was worried that I will not be able to communicate with them well. I am happy that I was wrong expecting this. So, the Tere-Khöl dialect remains the least comprehensible for me.
It was amazing to understand that my Tukha, Tozhu, and Tere-Khöl interlocutors referred to the same persons and same places in this vast taiga in the borderland between Tyva's eastern border and Lake Khövsgöl (Köpse-Khöl in Tyvan).
My ongoing research with the Tukha and Tozhu-Tyva people is highlighted in the published and upcoming academic papers:
Peemot, V. S. 2024. “An Overview of the Tozhu Tyva Kham Paraphernalia in the Museum of Cultural History, Oslo.” Shaman: Journal of the International Society for Academic Research on Shamanism 32 (1-2): 5-34.
2024. “The Tožu-Tyva Skin-Sewn Garments in the Museum of Cultural History, Oslo: A Guide Into Lifeworlds of Reindeer Herders.” In Koçoğlu Gündoğlu, V. et al. (eds), Sibirya Çalışmaları, 2, September (upcoming).