Extinction.

These are stunning portraits of some of the world’s most remote tribes before they pass away.

Amazing photography.

I am Telugu, an Indian sub-lingustic/ethnic group. It’s funny, I remember a few years ago, going to a Telugu cultural event and the MC telling the audience that according to anthropological and scientific studies, Telugu was going to die out in about a hundred or so years and I remember being stunned at that fact.

Because I’ve lived in so many places, I feel uncomfortable labeling myself one specific term or narrowing my identity down to one culture but Telugu was the exception. I’ve never quite had a home but Telugu was as close as it got and the idea of the culture and language I grew up with having a concrete expiration date haunts me, the way it’s troubling to accept your aging parents will soon die, pass away, cease to exist, and those you love will no longer have the ability to get to know them the way you did.

Though these tribes are unique and entirely different than the predicament Telugu people are in, I can’t help but feel solidarity. The sorrow of our situation, however, is bittersweet because it is reassuring and humbling to realize that cultures will come and go but civilization will march on.

We are all but a mote of dust, suspended on a sunbeam.