Where the Tigris and Euphrates spread into a vast maze of reeds and shallow lakes in southern Iraq live the Marsh Arabs, the Madan, a people of the water whose

From the sand dunes and fortified towns of the Thar desert in western Rajasthan come the Marwari people, one of India’s most famous mercantile communities. Rooted in the arid land

Along the Atlantic coast of Angola and up the valley of the Kwanza River live the Mbundu, the country`s second-largest people and the first Angolans to meet the ships of

The Mende are one of the two largest peoples of Sierra Leone, dominant in the south and east of the country, where they number some two million or more. A

India’s great trading people, who gave the world Gandhi and a vegetarian feast, built a commercial culture that thrives on every continent.

On the northern plains of Canada, where the fur trade met the buffalo range, a new people took shape: the Métis. Born of unions between First Nations women and European

Along the rugged Atlantic coast of Canada, in the land they call Mi’kma’ki, live the Mi’kmaq, an Algonquian people among the first of the continent to meet the ships of

In the volcanic highlands of West Sumatra live the Minangkabau, famous the world over as the largest matrilineal society on earth, where family name, house, and land descend through the

In the far southeast of India, on steep and forested ridges between Bangladesh and Myanmar, live the Mizo people, the highlanders of Mizoram. A community of Tibeto-Burman origin, unified from

Along the dry south coast of Papua New Guinea, in villages built out over the sea, live the Motu, an Austronesian people of traders and seafarers. From a land too