The Orochen Foundation has an ongoing project known as “Orochen Heritage Project”, which aims to document and revitalise different aspects of Orochen cultural heritage. Under this initiative, the foundation is also documenting the oral history of the elders, who are the last custodians of a rapidly disappearing nomadic hunter-gatherer culture.

 

Visual documentation is an important part of this research and heritage project. The foundation is working on a digital archive which aims to pull together resources from museums, universities and research organisations from around the world, so this will be a centralised digital knowledge hub to promote and revitalise Orochen culture. The visual data will be put to multiple uses including ongoing promotion, publications and exhibitions, and ultimately as a perpetual record of the people.

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Tung Tang has been the official photographer for the project, and his photo works from the recent field trips to Inner Mongolia in May 2015, Jan 2016, had been published and collected in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and also published in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong.

 

The Foundation is working with several universities and museums in HK, China, and Europe on this project. We have a comprehensive ethnography exhibition planned for HK in 2017 (at Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery). This will be the first time scholars from around the world will work together to present their research on this topic. A catalogue will be published at the same time. Beyond that, the foundation is raising funds to build a museum and cultural centre in Inner Mongolia.