Tibet Himalaya Initiative at CU Boulder

DUMRA/THE SECRET GARDEN: An Invitation

It is our pleasure to invite you to a very special event - “Dumra/The Secret Garden.” On Sunday, June 9 at 12 noon, we will hold a memorial gathering at Camp Hale National Monument in Colorado. This event is to commemorate the CIA-Tibet training camp which operated at Camp Hale from 1958-1964. The Tibetan men who trained there were members of the Chushi Gangdrug army, a citizens’ army formed to defend the Dalai Lama, Tibet, and Buddhism against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The CIA offered training and support to the Tibetan resistance, including this secret project at Camp Hale. The CIA officers called the training camp “The Ranch.” The Tibetan soldiers called it “Dumra,” meaning garden.

In 2010, a plaque was officially installed at Camp Hale that for the first time publicly acknowledged the CIA-Tibet training camp. At that installation ceremony, the actual location of the training camp was lost to time. Recently, we have located the exact footprint of the camp. Our June 9 ceremony will be held at this exact site.

The formal commemorative program will be followed by a Tibetan luncheon picnic. This event is open to the public. All are welcome to join. We welcome you to join us in learning more about this history, remembering those who served here together, and honoring all those who fought for freedom in Tibet.

Böd Gyalo!

Organizers:
Colorado Chushi Gangdrug
University of Colorado

Next week, join us for the CU Days of Compassion. Tuesday the 10th Thupten Jinpa will be leading a guided Compassion practice on the lawn of Norlin Quad. The Mission: Joy film and panel on Monday the 9th is almost sold out. Register here:

https://calendar.colorado.edu/event/cu_boulder_days_of_compassion_mission_joy_film_screening_and_panel_discussion?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=University+of+Colorado+Boulder

Also this Saturday THI faculty Holly Gayley will be in conversation with Andrew Quintman at JLF Colorado 2023 on the lives of Yeshe Tsogyal and Milarepa and their ongoing influence and presence in ritual, pilgrimage, visual arts and more.

NOT TO BE MISSED! This Saturday in Boulder writer Tsering Yangzom Lama discusses her remarkable debut novel, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, at JLF Colorado 2023 with CU’s own Dawa Lokyitsang and Natalie Avalos. Supported by the Tibet Himalaya Initiative.

Tonight at the University of Colorado in Boulder: former two-term Sikyong Lobsang Sangay. All are welcome to join us at 7 pm in the Old Main Chapel. This event is free and open to the public.

Political Leader of An Exile Government: An Evening with Lobsang Sangay In 2011, the Dalai Lama stepped down as political leader of the Tibetan exile government. For the first time ever, the Tibetan community democratically elected a new political leader: Mr. Lobsang Sangay. He served two terms as Sikyong (President) from 2011-2021. As Sikyong, Mr. Sangay traveled the w...

Join us for an extraordinary event: a book reading and dialogue with Tsering Yangzom Lama about her award-winning debut novel, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, the first novel in English by a Tibetan woman.

When: Thursday, March 2
5:30 Reception, Meet the Author | 6pm Book Reading and Dialogue

Where: Chancellor’s Auditorium
CASE Building 4th Floor 725 Euclid Ave, CU Boulder

Breathtaking in scope and powerfully intimate, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is a gorgeously written meditation on colonization, displacement, and the lengths we’ll go to remain connected to our families and ancestral lands. Told through the lives of a family across three generations, this beautifully lyrical debut novel provides a nuanced portrait of the world of Tibetan exiles. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, won the 2023 New Writers Award for Fiction from the Great Lakes Colleges Association. A New York Times Summer Reads pick, her novel was shortlisted for The Scotiabank Giller Prize and longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and The Toronto Book Awards.

Tsering Yangzom Lama holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University where she was a TOMS Fellow, Writing Fellow, and Teaching Fellow. She earned her BA in Creative Writing and International Relations from the University of British Columbia. A lifelong activist, she is a Storytelling Advisor at Greenpeace International, where she guides and trains people around the world in narrative strategy. A recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Tsering has been a resident at the Jan Michalski Foundation, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay AiR, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Lillian E. Smith Center, Art Omi, Catwalk Institute, WildAcres, and Playa Summerlake. She was selected as a 2018 Tin House Novel Scholar. Tsering’s writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Malahat Review, Grain, Kenyon Review, Vela, LaLit, and Himal SouthAsian, as well as the anthologies Old Demons New Deities: 21 Short Stories from Tibet; House of Snow: An Anthology of the Greatest Writing About Nepal; and Brave New Play Rites. Tsering is also a co-founder of LhakarDiaries, a leading English-language blog among Tibetan youth in exile. Born and raised in Nepal, she currently splits her time between Vancouver, Canada and Sweden.

For more information:

We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies | Reading and Dialogue with Tsering Yangzom Lama on Thursday, March 2nd at 6pm Join us for an extraordinary event, a book reading

ལོ་སར་ལ་བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས་ཞུ།
Losar Tashi Delek!

Please join us for a Losar (Tibetan New year) celebration on February 24, 5:00 - 7:00 PM, in Hellems 159, CU

We will celebrate Tibetan Losar 2150 Year of the Water Hare with delicious food, drinks, and dance!

See you there!
THI

Join us for an evening of contemporary Tibetan poetry and short stories with Tibetan women writers from India and China.

"EMERGING VOICES: Tibetan Women Writers"
Thursday, April 21st at 5pm | CU Boulder, Humanities 250

Introduction by Nicole Willock, author of Lineages of the Literary.
Readings by Tibetan writers Tsedron Kyi, Nyima Tso, & Min Nangzey.

Please join us for 'Nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya' Exhibit by Daniel Miller Opening April 13th in Norlin Library from 5-7pm.

Losar Tashi Delek!

In the Water Tiger year 2149, we would like to extend our warmest greetings and wishes for your good health in the new year.

Please join us for a Losar celebration tomorrow March 4th from 5:00-7:00pm in Hellems 159.

གནམ་ལོ་ཆུ་སྟག་ལོ་གསར་ལ་བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས་།

Paljor Tsarong on "Behind the Scenes in Lhasa: The Economics of Rituals in the Tibetan Buddhist State".

Thursday, November 18 | 4 pm MT | Guggenheim 205

Paljor Tsarong is a Tibetan anthropologist and historian, and son of George Dundul Tsarong, a ranking bureaucrat in the Ganden Phodrang government and a decade in exile after 1959. Paljor has recently completed a book, to be published by Lexington Press, The Life and Times of George Tsarong of Tibet, 1920-1970: A Lord in the Traditional Tibetan State. Paljor has also worked extensively with Melvyn Goldstein and has written extensively on Marxism and Tibet. In this talk, he will speak on the structure and function of the traditional Tibetan government, including the economics of rituals in the traditional state.

Paljor Tsarong | Behind the Scenes in Lhasa: The Economics of Rituals in the Tibetan Buddhist State | Nov 18 4 pm Join us for an in-person talk by Paljor Tsarong on

We are delighted to host this in-person guest lecture by Dominique Townsend on her new book "A Buddhist Sensibility: Aesthetic Education at Tibet's Mindröling Monastery" (Columbia University Press, 2021).

The lecture will be in-person on Thursday, October 21 at 4pm at the British Studies Room, 5th Floor, Norlin Library, University of Colorado Boulder Campus.

The event is free and open to the public. Masks required.

For more information: https://www.colorado.edu/tibethimalayainitiative/2021/10/11/dominique-townsend-renouncing-attachment-embracing-aesthetics-person-oct-21-4pm-mdt

Join us for the book launch of "Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century."

Saturday, Apri 10, 2021, US Time Zones:
3-5:30pm PDT | 4-6:30pm MDT | 5-7:30pm CDT | 6-8:30pm EDT
To Register in Advance, sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/voices-of-larung-gar-online-symposium-tickets-141469582329

The 2.5 hour symposium features Anam Thubten and David Germano in dialogue about Larung Gar, one of the largest Buddhist institution on the Tibetan plateau. This will be followed by a panel of contributors to the ground-breaking anthology, Voices from Larung Gar, addressing innovative approaches by Larung Gar leaders with respect to Buddhist ethics, gender equity, animal welfare, and scientific discourse.

This event is co-sponsored by the UVA Tibet Center and Tibet Himalaya Initiative at CU Boulder, under the auspices of our Center for Asian Studies.

Panelists:
Geoffrey Barstow, Oregon State University
Catherine Hardie, Hong Kong Baptist University
Sarah Jacoby, Northwestern University
Padma 'tsho, Southwest University for Nationalities
Antonio Te***ne, Northwestern University

Hosts:
Holly Gayley, Tibet Himalaya Initiative at CU Boulder
Michael Sheehy, Tibet Center at the University of Virginia

Voices of Larung Gar – Online Symposium Join us for the book launch of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century on Saturday, April 10th.

Register for this ANHS webinar on Friday, Feb 26, where THI faculty member Dr. Emily Yeh will be speaking: https://asu.zoom.us/.../register/WN_kNikdWg1SGy4PLJytnAWyg

We are excited to announce that we already have over 100 registrants for this webinar. Seats are limited, so please register soon at http://anhs-himalaya.org/event/anhs-webinar-01/

Join us on Thursday, February 18 at 4pm MST as Sienna Craig, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, discusses her new book, "The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York," in conversation with Pasang Yangjee Sherpa and Carole McGranahan.

Follow the link to register.

How does kinship and tradition matter to migration? In The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York (University of Washington Press, 2020) anthropologist Sienna Craig (Dartmouth College) draws on over two decades of ethnographic research to ask how individuals, families, and communities care for each other and carve out spaces of belonging between the Himalayan kingdom of Mustang and the urban environs of New York City. Mustang has one of the highest rates of depopulation in contemporary Nepal, and in Brooklyn and Queens people from Mustang find themselves new neighbors to Sherpa, Tibetan, and other Himalayan communities as well as other immigrants from around the world. Joining author Sienna Craig in conversation about The Ends of Kinship are scholars Carole McGranahan (University of Colorado) and Pasang Yangjee Sherpa (University of Washington) who also work with communities stretched between the Himalayas and New York City.

The Ends of Kinship | Discussion with Sienna Craig | Thursday, Feb 18th at 4pm MST Join us as Sienna Craig, Associate Professor of An

On February 3, Wednesday at 3:30pm MST, Dr. Emily Yeh will show and discuss her film Shielding the Mountains as part of the CU Environmental Studies Spring 2021 Colloquium Series.

Please register for the Zoom link here: https://bit.ly/33HS6E5

In the late 1990s, transnational conservation organizations working in China began to try to mobilize Tibetan culture and religion in the service of biodiversity conservation. Dr. Yeh examines the proliferation of environmental identities, subjectivities, and organizations across Tibet in the early 2000s as a product of a set of contingent articulations between the interest of local Tibetan communities, Chinese environmentalists, and transnational actors. This created an unexpected space for Tibetan cultural assertion and the possibilities of inter-ethnic collaboration in a fraught political situation. Dr. Yeh will show her brief film that focuses on the story of Rinchen Samdrup, and discuss the work of number of other Tibetan environmental activists. The talk explores the variety of ways in which historically-rooted religious and cultural elements are mobilized in new ways for the protection of the environment, pointing out their commonalities and differences, as well as their convergences and divergences with Western forms of environmentalism.

Emily Yeh is Professor of Geography interested in transnational conservation, critical development studies, the relationship between nature, territory, and the nation, and environmental justice. Dr. Yeh’s regional expertise is in China, Tibet, and the Himalayas. Her main research interests are on questions of power, political economy, and cultural politics in the nature-society relationship. Using primarily ethnographic methods, Dr. Yeh has conducted research on property rights, natural resource conflicts, environmental history, development and landscape transformation, grassland management and environmental policies, and emerging environmentalisms in Tibetan areas of China. In addition, she has also worked on the politics of identity and race in the Tibetan diaspora, and on interdisciplinary, collaborative projects on putative causes of rangeland degradation and vulnerability to climate change on the Tibetan Plateau.

https://www.colorado.edu/tibethimalayainitiative/2021/01/31/emily-yeh-shielding-mountains-environmentalism-and-articulations-nature-tibet-feb-3-330pm