In Northern Pakistan, near the Afgh

In Northern Pakistan, near the Afghan border, there is a group of people calledthe Kalasha. Once powerful and widespread, the Kalash civilization once had tens ofthousands of people; today, there are only about 3,500. In just a few generations, thisculture, which is over 3,000 years old, may disappear.Sayed Gul Kalash, a member of this community, is working hard to save herlanguage and culture from extinction, but it won’t be easy. “Our language, spokensince 1,000 BCE, has no written script,” she explains. “But the culture’s early history,stories, and songs have a lot to teach us about ourselves and the human experience,”says Gul Kalash. She is trying to preserve the language by writing down these stories andsongs for the first time. In an increasingly globalized and connected world, languageslike Mandarin and English, Russian and Hindi, Spanish and Arabic dominate. Parentsin small villages often encourage their children to move away from their languageand culture and toward those that will help them be more successful in life. Today,numbers are decreasing as more and more Kalash children are being educated inmainstream schools, and more people are moving away and marrying outside theKalash culture. “It’s understandable,” says Sayed Gul Kalash. But she reminds us thatevery culture is unique and has value. When one culture is lost, we all lose something.