Category Archive: Uncategorized

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Understanding Asian Settler-Colonial Imperialisms and Indigeneities, China in Tibet

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From the article: Are Tibetans Indigenous? The Political Stakes and Potentiality of the Translation of Indigeneity

How does settler-colonial imperialism operate in Asia, and what are the ways in which Asian Indigeneities become mobilised? To address this question, in 2017, I brought together scholars who are observing various settler-colonial and imperial dynamics and developments across Asia for a panel discussion titled ‘Asian Settler-Colonialisms and Indigeneities’ at the 116th annual American Anthropological Association conference. At that time, scholarly considerations about Asian land and resource extraction emphasised capitalism, development, and governmentality, with scant consideration of settler colonialism, even though the last remains a vital framework for understanding the structural nature of imperial projects (Wolfe 2006). Even the literature that adopted this frame drew its analysis primarily from Euro-American–centred examples, implicitly suggesting that settler colonialism is an innately Western phenomenon (Pels 1997). Yet, capitalist developments with imperial consequences continue to impact Asia at varying scales (Tsing 2005). Such contemporary developments, alongside long Asian imperial histories, including those of China, Japan, and India, complicate this assumption. This provokes questions such as: How does settler domination work when those involved in it are neither white nor from the West? How can we critically engage with this while not Orientalising this history as a cultural peculiarity or delinking it from the deep influence of Western empires?

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The Dalai Lama’s Future Succession: Understanding the 14th Dalai Lama and His Formidable Contributions, a keynote lecture by Dr. Dawa Lokyitsang

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This keynote lecture by Dr. Dawa Lokyitsang on “The Dalai Lama’s Future Succession: Understanding the 14th Dalai Lama and His Formidable Contributions” with responses from Tenzin Dorjee (Columbia University), Cameron Warner (Aarhus University), and Nicole Willock (Old Dominion University) took place on September 13, 2024 at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Anthropology. This lecture is part of the Leadership and Reincarnation of the Dalai Lamas Project (LEAD): A Research Network on Succession, Innovation, and Community.

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Battle for Tibet’s Future: China Closes Acclaimed Tibetan Private School

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In Episode 8 of Tibet Unlocked, Pema Yoko and Tibetan education expert Dr. Gyal Lo discuss the forced closure of one of the most influential Tibetan-run private schools in Tibet by Chinese authorities… Continue reading →

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What is Lhakar? How did Lhakar Diaries Begin?

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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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The Untold Story of Tibetan Students in the 1989 Tiananmen Movement

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June 4, 2024, marks 35 years since the monumental protests by Chinese students and citizens demanding freedom and democracy – a powerful moment of hope and inspiration brutally crushed by the Chinese government,… Continue reading →

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Nyima Lhamo’s Journey for Justice

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Nyima Lhamo’s journey, and her quest for justice for her uncle who was wrongly imprisoned by China, sheds light on the many ways China tries to control and intimidate Tibetans, including through the… Continue reading →

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6 Poems on Life in Exile and Of Home from “A Thousand Parallel Lives” by Tenzin Pema Chashar

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The first poem “The Young, the Holy, and the Wealthy” is one version of my interpretation from the many stories I’ve been told about how key members of a family, who had been identified for torture/prison/thamzing, were given fair warning from those whose loyalty the Chinese tried to buy but couldn’t. 

The second poem “Here Vs. There” is something I wrote from my memory of listening to the elders talk constantly about how everything was always that much better or more abundant or brighter or bigger (even the ravens, as I recall) in Tibet. So it’s written from the vantage of someone who is about to set off for life in exile and has these hopes for how this new life/home should be.

The third poem “Wait for Me” is something I wrote from the perspective of so many of our parents and elders who had to leave their parents or children and loved ones behind as many of them had to make a hasty escape. However, many stayed somewhere close to the borders, waiting for their loved ones to join them, and not making the final descent into exile because of their belief too that the issue of Tibet would be a temporary one.

The fourth poem “Call to Arms” is about early life in exile when Tibetans in nearly every settlement called on their youth to practice ‘March Past’ every morning (with wooden toy guns) so that they would be ready if ever there was a war with the Chinese.

The fifth poem “Stone Bench” is about life in exile in the 1980’s and 1990’s when the longing for home (where the life they had left behind was home) was still palpable and a focal point of all conversations between the elders.

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Tsomo’s Speech at the Tibetan solidarity rally for HHDL in Toronto 4/26/2023

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To my fellow Tibetans, what I am going to share today will trigger some of you and I am sorry. But we know all too well as a people who have endured seven decades of colonial dispossession and displacement in Tibet and in exile, that we have no choice but to be resilient and resist.

For non-Tibetans who are outsiders to our community and culture, and who don’t understand why the past two weeks have been so traumatic for us, I want to share few things we experienced and are experiencing as a collective.

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In honor of the 13th Dalai Lama’s proclamation of Independence: Neglecting the invasion of Tibet in analysis of early exile as ‘Geluk Hegemony’

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How can we honor the complexities and challenges of our distant past without compromising collective experiences of the recent present? There is value in acknowledges the multi-dimensionality of Tibetan communities and the messiness of making communities in new places, without having to compromise the story of invasion and colonial occupation. How can we focus on what unites us as Tibetans rather than what divides us? Can we even afford such divisiveness at a time when it feels as though Tibet is experiencing an intensification of colonial incorporation and exile is stretched to its limits in diaspora with confusing political alignments that does not address Chinese colonialism?

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Modern Secularist vs. Religious Fanatic: Goldstein’s reading of Tibet, a review by Nicole Willock

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What does a modernist secularist reading of recent Tibetan history look like? How do such readings reinforce notions of Tibetans as religious fanatical barbarics? Nicole Willock (2011) takes a stab at these questions in her review of Melvyn Goldstein’s (2007, 2009) History of Modern Tibet. While she acknowledges his contributions, she also highlights the limitations of such a framing. Pointing out how such lens tend to reify notions of Tibetans as either modern or not-modern. One way of remedying this, according to Willock, is to engage Tibetans themselves, who have historically engaged in the practice of translation and continue to do so in the present. Highlighting how Tibetans continue to be agentive in translating and negotiating new political and cultural moments and the terminologies these moments spawned.