Avatar: The Last Airbender
Air Nomads
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Appearance
Air Nomads

The Air Nomads wear yellow and orange clothing. All are so far seen wearing orange shawls over long-sleeved yellow shirts, a brown belt, yellow pants with brown on the back, and brown boots that reach the knees. Most Air Nomads have grey or brown eyes and a light complexion.

Young boys to be trained as monks have shaven heads while monk elders grow beards and mustaches. Airbenders who have attained some level of mastery in the art will be marked with arrow tattoos on their bodies; for male Airbenders, a primary arrow tattoo is placed on their shaven head that extends down their back, along with four others on each limb that terminate in an arrowhead at the hands or feet. When an Avatar tattooed in this fashion enters the Avatar State, these tattoos are known to glow along with the Avatar's eyes.

The Airbending Avatar before Aang was female and thus from either the Eastern or Western Air Temple. Female Airbenders do not shave their heads. Based on the female Airbenders that have been shown, it seems Airbenders have naturally dark brown hair.
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National Emblem

The national emblem of the Air Nomads is a circle with a closed, blunted clockwise spiral beginning in the lower right and curling inward toward itself. It bears some resemblance to a singular variant of the tomoe, but looks most like a mirrored and rotated version of the Tibetan symbol for the origin of the universe.It also looks very similar to the Maori Koru.
The National Emblem for the Air Nomads.
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Culture

While other nations possess royalty and are run by monarchies, that of the Airbenders is run by the monks of the Air Temples, i.e. by a theocracy.

A century before the time of the series, the Air Nomads were the victims of genocide at the hands of the Fire Nation. One of the sole known survivors of the massacre was the very person the Fire Nation sought to kill in its quest for supremacy: the twelve-year-old Airbender and Avatar, Aang, who had run away from the Southern Air Temple shortly before the war began and became trapped in suspended animation. He has since revived and begun a quest to restore balance and peace to the warring nations.

In the series so far, there are significant populations in each nation that are unable to bend. Aang is currently the only known living Air Nomad, but all Air Nomads shown in the series through flashbacks appear have been able to airbend. It is possible that due to the spirituality of the Nomads, all of them were capable of Airbending. It is also possible that the those who lacked or did not seek the ability to Airbend chose to live among the other nations, as the monastic life might therefore provide little benefit for them.

General Iroh has stated that the Air Nomads removed themsleves from the affairs of the rest of the world and found peace amongst themselves. Iroh also mentioned that they have a good sense of humor, a fact shown when Monk Gyatso employed a unique teaching method when tutoring Aang with his Airbending skills — accurately blowing fruit pies onto other monks' head.

The arrow on an Airbender's head means he has mastered Airbending. This is an emulation of the arrow on the heads of Flying Bison, animals revered by the Air Nomads that can naturally Airbend and is believed to be the inspiration for the first Airbenders. Apprentice airbenders have no tattoos.[citation needed]

Air Nomads also appeared to be vegetarians, as the modern monks of Tibet. This was suggested by Aang's words when he said he didn't eat meat in "The King of Omashu".
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Air Temples

Although airbenders are primarily a nomadic culture, there are four Air Temples in various remote locations where councils are held and novices are raised. The temples are divided by gender, with the Southern and Northern temples for males and the Eastern and Western ones for females.

In each temple there is a large cylindrical room known as an Air Sanctuary locked behind a door which can only be opened via Airbending. At least one of these rooms has been shown to contain thousands of statues iterating in a spiral formation the previous incarnations of the Avatar.
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Southern Air Temple
Southern Air Temple.

Located in the remote Patola mountain range (Air Nomad Territory), the Southern Air temple, supposedly only accessible via flying bison; was the boyhood home of the current Avatar, Aang, and his father-like mentor, Monk Gyatso, as well as Afiko the Betrayer. Afiko gave away the location of the temple to the Fire Nation, and it was raided early in the war during Fire Lord Sozin's genocide on the Air Nomads. This ended with the Airbenders' extermination. Though unlikely, it may be possible that some airbenders were not at the temples at the time of the raids. The series hasn't mentioned this possibility, however.

The temple is large and peaceful, and has an Air Ball arena and is also where the "Air Scooter" was first invented by Aang. Once inhabited by Flying Bison and Lemurs in the days of the monks, it is now barren and abandoned by humans and animals alike. A statue of Monk Gyatso resides on the outside of the temple.
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Northern Air Temple
Northern Air Temple.

High in the upper reaches of the Earth Kingdom resides the Northern Air Temple. After the extermination of the monks, the temple was rediscovered by the Mechanist and his group of refugees. The Mechanist used the gliders within to give his paraplegic son Teo a new life in the air.

The Northern Temple has been customized to house more people than before, but many of the original structures have been destroyed and the area around the temple polluted to help accommodate the new residents. The new changes angered Aang at first, but in the end he decides that the refugees are like the hermit crabs that inhabit the temple's corridors, and happy that they have found this empty shell and made it their home.
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Eastern Air Temple

One of the two Air Temples to exclusively house female Airbenders, the other being the Western Temple, it was home to Malu the Ghost Witch. The fate of the temple after the Fire Nation attacked it is unknown. When Aang, the current Avatar, was to be separated from his mentor, Monk Gyatso, the elders of the Southern Air Temple had decided to send Aang to the Eastern Air Temple to complete his training without Gyatso's fatherly influence. However, before they could do this, Aang had overheard and run away.
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Western Air Temple

The Western Air Temple is situated nearest to Fire Nation territory. It was perhaps the first temple to be invaded by the Fire Nation.
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Air Temple Fauna
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Flying Bison

Air Temples are inhabited by exotic fauna, one species of which is the six-legged, beaver-tailed, three-toed Flying Bison/Air Bison, giant domesticated flying beasts ridden by Airbenders. These creatures have brown eyes, shaggy, light grey fur and a brown stripe that runs along their back, from tail-tip to forehead, where it terminates in an arrowhead. In The Great Divide, Aang reveals that Appa has five Stomachs. These creatures are the main source of transportation to air nomads.

All Flying Bison can use Airbending to fly or defend themselves with their feet and, primarily, their large tail. A fully-grown Flying Bison can easily weigh ten tons. They're revered by the Air Nomads, whose tattoos deliberately emulate these markings, for inspiring the Airbending art in humans similarly to how Badgermoles inspired Earthbending.

To direct a Flying Bison to take flight, Aang uses the command "Yip-yip." To summon one from a far location, one may use a Flying Bison whistle, which is supposedly only audible to the species it calls. Though fairly docile, these creatures can be fearsome when aroused to fight. The most notable and possibly last surviving Flying Bison is Appa, Aang's pet and major means of long-distance transportation.
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Winged Lemurs

The Winged Lemur species is also native to the Air Temple mountain ranges. Sporting giant, bat-like ears and wing-like patagia on their arms, Winged Lemurs can glide and flap their winged arms to fly, however it is unknown if they can actually Airbend in the traditional sense. Momo is the most notable of this species in the series.
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Other Animals

A less-known animal species that inhabits the Air Temples is small, land-dwelling hermit crab. They look quite similar to their aquatic cousins, with a similar shell-switching lifestyle, but are covered in a thick coat of black and white hair. They seem to prefer damp, dark places and are apparently very adaptable, as specimens in the Northern Air Temple survived a complete refurbishment of the entire complex, spearheaded by the The Mechanist. It seems fitting and is perhaps not coincidental that a nomadic animal by nature would live among the Air Nomads.
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Influences

In many aspects, the culture of the Air Nomads seems to be a mix of the Monks of Tibet, and the nomadic Mongols of Mongolia, as well as the warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple.[citation needed] The slaughter of the Air Nomads is a likely allusion to the alleged brutal suppression of the Tibetans and by the People's Republic of China, as well as to the several attacks the Shaolin Temple has endured in its long history.[citation needed]
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Notable Figures

* Avatar Aang
* Afiko the Betrayer
* Monk Gyatso
* Malu the Ghost Witch

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