I expected our liaison from the State Dept. to be a boring and un-engaged bureaucrat with only a few minutes to spare to officially endorse our program (his department had already signed our checks). Instead the cultural affairs official was a fun, even goofy guy, offering his comments on our various hometowns and host towns as we American and Russian cultural and historic “preservationists” went around introducing ourselves (also contrary to my expectations, none of us Americans have any expertise, save Melissa, a fellow Ulan-Ude-er; a couple of the Russians have had some professional experience in museums and out on the countryside and reki). When a real Ude native and Buryatan, Irina, heard my comments about understanding links between nature and culture, she lit up and advised that I check out the role spirituality plays in everyday Buryat life. Shamanism—not a religion, she pointed out—holds Mother Earth and Father Sky reverent, much the way the American Indians do. The State Department dude joined in, adding to his already enthusiastic comments about Ulan Ude with an anecdote about an exchange program that recently took place between American Indians and native Buryats (a Mongolian tribe that settled in Russia centuries ago). “They look alike even—you can just see it when they stand next to each other.” Irina, who’s a tour guide and English teacher in the city, said she remembered the exchange of Cherokee Indians. “They crossed the land bridge; they are the same.” Still smiling warmly, she said “we are all brothers,” without sounding hokey.

On today’s panel—alongside a preservation lobbyist, a curator at the Holocaust Museum, and a city director of preservation—Dr. Don Jones of US-ICOMOS, the NGO responsible for heritage and cultural and monument preservation in the country, mentioned the Indians too, noting that when Russians had come to Washington last year with the program, they took special interest in the native culture. His own interest is related to the question I’m after: how do cultures unite natural preservation with historic and cultural preservation. It was the topic of his anthropology dissertation I think he said, but unfortunately, he left the Russian embassy (later that night) before we had a good chance to talk.

Met a young guy named Arkady Gregoriev from Moscow: I gave him my dad’s number because he’s going to New York. Dad said he wouldn't mind taking the Russians out to dinner in exchange for sharing a piece of his mind.