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Ocean, as Much as Rain: Woeser’s Testimony of Resistance Against State-imposed Amnesia by Thinley Chodon

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Woeser’s Ocean, as Much as Rain opens with a poem that accurately sets the tone for the rest of this translated collection: “A sheet of paper can also become a knife even sharper”. Demonstrating her unique positionality and resistance from the very beginning, Woeser’s dissidence is louder than the Chinese colonial state’s violent imposition of silence, surveillance, and erasure.

Ocean, edited and translated from Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain with Dechen Pemba, is the first ever English translation of the collected works of Woeser’s cross-genre writing that ranges from lyrical prose, poetry, reportage, photography, and testimony announcing Woeser as a truth-teller who observes the absurdity that has become the reality of occupied Tibet.

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China’s Socialist Development in Tibet: Dispossession & Settler Colonial Governance | Dr. Dawa Lokyitsang | GENEVA FORUM 2026, Switzerland

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I delivered this presentation at the 6th Geneva Forum on February 9, 2026.

The talk explores how China’s socialist modernization policies in Tibet since 1950 have reshaped Indigenous Tibetan life, governance, and society. I show how China’s early development projects, infrastructure expansion, and administrative changes were part of broader efforts to consolidate territorial control and manage local resistance—restructuring the region in ways that go beyond simple modernization.

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Chinese Youth Stand for Tibet: The Story of Tara

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In this episode, I tell the story of Tara (Zhang Yadi), a brave Chinese activist for Tibet facing severe political charges that could see her imprisoned for many years, in a rare case… Continue reading →

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The Buddhist Digital Resource Center Transfers Tibetan Buddhist Heritage to Harvard & Dismisses Tibetan Staff

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BDRC, an organization founded by Gene Smith, run and governed by non-Tibetans but built on decades of Tibetan labor, scholarship, and interpretation, is quietly transferring its Tibetan-owned Buddhist archive to Harvard-Yenching Institute—while dismissing its long-term Tibetan staff, according to former employee Gangkar Lhamo in her Tibet Times article published on January 28, 2026.

If these allegations are accurate, legal scrutiny is warranted.

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Kinship Under Colonial Duress: Anticolonial Nationalism Mends Ruptured Tibetan Attachments

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“How does colonialism shape Tibetan experiences of kinship? China’s colonial occupation of Tibet forced Kalden to leave Tibet not ones but twice, fracturing and rupturing attachments to families and places of origin in the process.”

This piece first appeared as Chapter 8 in Difficult Attachments: Anxieties of Kinship and Care, edited by Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Sandra Bamford, with an afterword by Marilyn Strathern, as part of the section “Toxic States.”

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Tibet Film Festival Zurich 2025: Celebrating Tibetan Stories Across Borders

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I am still reflecting on the wonderful time I had in Zurich at the Tibet Film Festival, thanks to the Tibetan organizers who have nurtured this event since 2009. This was my first time attending, and I had the honor of moderating a discussion with filmmaker Tenzin Tsetan Choklay about his collaborative work State of Statelessness.

What I did not expect was how the theme of statelessness became an avenue for learning about the Swiss Tibetan community.

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How China Uses the “Visa as Bait” Strategy to Silence Tibetans

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China’s “visa as bait” strategy is an insidious tool of transnational repression, silencing Tibetans by weaponizing family reunions. Through powerful testimonies and expert insights, we reveal how the Chinese Communist Party turns visa… Continue reading →

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When Tibetan Women Speak, Are We Heard? Challenging Etic Frameworks in Tibetan Gender Studies

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There is a growing trend among non-Tibetan scholars—primarily those from Western or Chinese backgrounds—to analyze Tibetan women’s experiences through frameworks focused on gendered roles, marginality, or violence in relation to Tibetan men. I have written about how such analyses often overlook critical and temporal factors, such as intersectionality (Lokyitsang 2015) and the historical and ongoing violence and marginalizing policies imposed by Chinese authorities (Lokyitsang 2017a). Moreover, these scholars rarely interrogate their own etic (outsider) assumptions embedded in their own analytics.

Within these frameworks, Tibetan women’s emic (insider) scholarly perspectives are routinely sidelined—especially when some of us turn the analytical lens back on these scholars to examine the power dynamics of their positionalities, and to critique their uncritical use of categories like “modernity” and “gender empowerment.” These categories, rooted in Western Enlightenment ideals, have already been challenged by Black and Indigenous feminist thinkers as embedded in white supremacist frameworks and serving the interest of imperial projects.

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Youth on Climate & Indigenous Futures, hosted by David Lam Center @ Simon Fraser University

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This public conversation brings Indigenous youths, activists, and scholars working across Nepal, Tibet and Canada to discuss Indigenous futures, climate change and solutions. Speakers ground the stakes of their call for action in the non-economic losses and damages in the face of climate disaster. This conversation centers around an article by speaker Dawa T. Lokitsang, “Are Tibetans Indigenous? The Political Stakes and Potentiality of the Translation of Indigeneity” to which speakers respond and discuss to consider Indigenous futures across the globe.

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Exploring Tibetan Indigeneity in the Context of Globalizing Settler Colonialism, talk @ U of British Columbia (2024)

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Thank you to the Department of Asian Studies’ Himalaya Program, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, and School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia for hosting my November 22, 2024 talk.

Based on the article “Are Tibetans Indigenous?”, this presentation examined how North American settler-colonialism literature might complicate our understanding of relationships between Asian nation-states and their ‘Indigenous’ populations. The talk included a Q&A session.