Displaced from their land by multinational mining companies, nomadic herders defied the odds to preserve their heritage for future generations

All photographs by Susan Schulman

Just 10 years ago, the district of Khanbogd, in southern Mongolia’s Omnogovi province, was a barely known region of eastern Asia.

That changed with the discovery of gold and copper deposits below the seemingly endless Gobi desert, home to a community of herdsmen who had worked hard to make a living from this barren land. So when their government forged an agreement that threatened to deprive them of the land they had owned for generations, they fought back for their way of life, taking the mining giant Rio Tinto and others to court in order to safeguard their heritage.