The Dangri the Dhami’s ritual partner and oral record keeper passes on information exclusively to close family members, updates and maintains the oral record of important events, invites the deity spirit, and translates the divine language spoken during trance. When these figures pass away without successors, entire bodies of irreplaceable knowledge disappear with them. The Cultural Documentation Project is the Foundation’s most urgent ongoing work: a systematic field research program to record oral histories, Pareli chants, ritual sequences, and traditional ecological knowledge from village elders and Dhamis across the most remote areas of Karnali and Far-Western Nepal before time runs out.

In western Nepal, Dhamis act as mediums for powerful deities known as Kul Devta or village guardians; in possession rituals, they may take on the voice and personality of a particular deity, delivering prophecies or healing commands. Our documentation teams travel to villages in Bajhang, Bajura, Humla, Dolpa, Mugu, Jumla, and Achham many accessible only on foot carrying professional audio and video equipment. They record full Dhamelo ceremonies, interview Dhamis and elders in their native dialects, photograph sacred sites, and map shrine locations. Each session is conducted with the full knowledge and consent of the practitioners, who are recognized as the rightful owners of the knowledge being recorded.

All collected material is processed through the Foundation’s documentation pipeline: recordings are transcribed and translated, photographs are catalogued with metadata, and field notes are written up as ethnographic reports. Projects include video archives, audio recordings, and publications in native languages. The completed archive is shared with Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, regional universities, and international research institutions, while community copies are returned to the villages of origin ensuring that the knowledge stays where it belongs while also becoming accessible to the wider world that deserves to know it exists.