A shaman's owl mask. A brass Loon Spirit hat. A faded hide robe that memorializes ancestors of the Hoonah T'akdeintaan clan wiped out by a tidal wave in Lituya Bay.

These items and dozens more belong to clan members, not the Pennsylvania museum where they've been stored for decades, a federal committee ruled recently.

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and Russia, the National Folk Museum of Korea, in conjunction with Russia’s Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, is launching a special exhibition on Eurasian culture from Nov. 24 to March 14 of next year.

Ten bare-chested men stand around a large glowing fire pit, their breath creating furious clouds around their faces in the biting November cold.

They chant, beat a drum, pray and then strip down to their shorts. One after another, they crawl on their hands and knees into a dome-shaped sweat lodge that awaits them on a patch of snowy land in Minnetonka.

ONE of the oldest trees in Sydney's Botanic Gardens has become their newest sculpture.

Bidjigal man Vic Simms, from La Perouse, is carving the stump of an old forest red gum in the style that some Aboriginal tribes would once mark trees on their tribal boundaries.

KwaZulu-Natal criminals, fearful of incarceration and in some instances death in shootouts with police, are turning to traditional healers in KwaZulu-Natal for protection - and “powers” to execute their crimes.

Some sangomas are cashing in on the trend, sometimes earning tens of thousands of rands at a time. They have revealed some of the chilling details of what criminals say they plan to do.