What is Lhakar? How did Lhakar Diaries Begin?

The following is a short interview I did with Phayul Media, the popular Tibetan news platform based in Dharamsala, India, in the summer of 2022 (they published it a year later in 2023).… Continue reading →

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Decolonizing “Tibetan” and “Himalayan” Studies: Empire, Ethnicity, and Rethinking Sovereignty, an Introduction

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Who are Tibetans? How have they been framed as objects for study across time? For earlier Western academics and the audiences who read their work, Tibetans were a people largely defined by religious beliefs and institutions. In the chapter that follows, I argue that this emphasis in early Tibetan Studies set a precedent for sidelining Tibetan sovereignty as a central concern in both scholarship and in real-world politics, a trend that continues to impact the field and Tibetan lives today.

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Lobga Rangzen’s Self-Immolation and the Roots of China’s New “Ethnic Unity” Law

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Like those before him, Rangzen’s testimony makes clear that this new law is the latest assault among a series of other policies implemented in Tibet under the banner of national unity and security that have legalized the systemic elimination of Tibetan culture and identity. These laws highlight the structural nature of China’s ethnic elimination policy in favor of national hegemony. This is despite the rights of language and culture guaranteed to ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China’s Constitution and the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law.

His method of protest was informed and inspired by other Tibetan self-immolations, and like them, his action was both a response to and shaped by a life of dispossession under policies rooted in China’s colonial approach to ethnic governance in Tibet.

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Of Dispersal(s) — ཡུལ་གྱར་གྱི་སྐོར།

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While a few individual Tibetans returned to Tibet in the 1970s and 1980s, it was in the 1990s that a noticeable group of returnees came to be formed. Many families in Tibet who had initially left their children in the Tibetan exilic schools in India subsequently withdrew them from the system. The families were reacting to the mounting pressure from work units and local leadership in the Tibetan regions threatening job security if the children continued to remain in India under the influence of the ‘Dalai clique’ (ICT, 2003). Consequently, the children, by then youths in high school and a few who had graduated that were in Indian colleges, returned to Tibet. Even through the early-mid
2000s, it was not unusual to hear about another arrival in town or chance upon a new face on the streets of Lhasa, that we had once known in exile.

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Authenticity, Impermanence, and the Tibetan Origin Story: Rooted & Routed Tibetans in the Diaspora

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It is also worth noting that the questions now gaining scholarly attention — Tibetan suffering and dispossession, the Srinmo origin story, embodied practices of impermanence — have long been alive in Tibetan homes, in the stories of our elders, and in the scholarship of those of us who grew up inside these conversations. This piece is offered in that spirit: as a reminder that these are not new discoveries, but inherited understandings that Tibetans have been thinking, living, speaking, and writing about all along — and should be acknowledged as such.

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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.