Join us for an event with Zhao Zhong, the Director of Green Camel Bell, on Nature Conservation and Public Participation in the Tibetan Plateau. He will share his work titled "Nature Conservation and Public Participation: Practices of a Grassroots Environmental NGO on the Tibetan Plateau." This event is open to faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students from CU and THI.

• Date: February 7, 2025
• Location: Gugg 201E
• Time: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Abstract: 

The grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau serve a special function in protecting the ecological function of this region at the headwaters of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. However, natural grasslands in this region are degraded to various degrees, due to human, socioeconomic, climate change, and threats from overpopulation of some species. Enhancing public participation in ecological conservation can be a feasible bottom-up solution for grassland degradation. The presentation will demonstrate how environmental NGOs work with local herders, government, schools, and enterprises to relieve the stocking pressure on grassland and improve the ecological environment through public participation.

About Zhao Zhong:  

Zhao Zhong is the founder and director of Green Camel Bell, a grass-root environmental NGO in Northwest China. He has done work within environmental education, water pollution monitoring, and community-based eco-agriculture and sustainable development and investment. He was a Yale World Fellow in 2022. From 2015-16, as a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow, Zhong completed a year of course work and professional affiliation at the University of California, Davis on Natural �ƹ���Ƶ Management and Climate Change. 

For more information about Zhao Zhong, please visit his profile at and his work through the .

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Date: December 5, 2024
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Gugg 201E

Join us for an event featuring Nepalese scholar Nabraj Lama, who will share his research titled "Indigenous Affairs of Nepal through a Political and Economic Lens." This event is open to faculty, graduate and undergraduate students from CU and THI.

About Nabraj Lama

Nabraj Lama is currently a faculty and research scholar at Lumbini Buddhist University. He is an accomplished research scholar specializing in Himalayan Studies, International Political Economy, Indigenous Affairs, and Sustainable Development. Holding advanced degrees in Economics and Development Studies, he has significantly contributed to academic and public discourse through various publications and op-ed articles.

His career is marked by advocacy for marginalized communities, climate action, and world peace, as well as collaborations with leading organizations and the co-founding of influential think tanks.

Nabraj Lama has extensive experience in the fields of water resources, international affairs, political economy, and indigenous nationalities. His research background includes academic and developmental projects, with collaborations involving: The World Bank Nepal, India China Institute (ICI) at The New School University, Durham University, UK, Helvetas/Swiss Inter-cooperation Nepal, Heifer International Nepal, and Central Department of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University

Having traveled to more than 55 districts of Nepal, Nabraj Lama is deeply passionate about preserving the socio-cultural aspects of indigenous nationalities, various ethnic communities, castes, and other groups.

For more information about Nabraj Lama, please visit his profile at Lumbini Buddhist University: .

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Professor Dan Hirshberg is offering the following courses in the Spring term of 2025:

• ASIA 1700: Introduction to Tibetan Civilization
• ASIA 4700: Enlightened Visionaries, Dirty Tricksters, and Warrior Heroes
• RLST 3550: Tibetan Buddhism

Additionally, a second semester of Tibetan is being offered through the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal. Please email Professor Daniel A. Hirshberg for more details.

For more information, you can visit his webpage: Dan Hirshberg | Center for Asian Studies.

Brief Bio of Professor Dan Hirshberg: 

Dan Hirshberg, Ph.D. is a Visiting Scholar for the Tibet Himalaya Initiative and Lecturer for the Center for Asian Studies and the Religious Studies Department. Much of his research centers on cultural memory, the narrative of Tibet’s 8th ce. conversion to Buddhism, and the apotheosis of its protagonist, Padmasambhava, in both literature and iconography. The former is the focus of his monograph, Remembering the Lotus-Born (Wisdom SITB, 2016). He has repeatedly collaborated on the latter with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in NYC. Dan has held year-long fellowships at UC Santa Barbara, LMU Munich, and UVa’s Contemplative Sciences Center. Before returning to Boulder, he was associate professor of Asian religions at the University of Mary Washington, where he founded one of the first Contemplative Studies programs for undergrads, established a Japanese-style garden, and led study abroad programs to Nepal and Japan. He also serves as Editor and Chair for the Journal of the North American Japanese Garden Association.

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The Tibet Himalaya Initiative invites you to a film screening event featuring Tibetan filmmaker Tenzin Sedon. In collaboration with the Dairy Arts Center, we will screen her documentary film A Road of Prayer (98 minutes) on February 21, 2025, at 5:30 PM, followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker.

About the Filmmaker:

Tenzin Sedon is a documentary filmmaker based in Lhasa. In August 2023, she arrived in New York City to begin the MFA program in Graduate Film Production at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Her films include A Taste of Life (2014), A Road of Prayer (2014–2016), and Taikui Alley (2017–2019). These films have received numerous awards, including the Hot Docs Best Canadian Short Documentary, recognition in the News and Short Feature category of the RTS Students Television Awards, and the Golden Mountain Award for Best Documentary Short Film at Zhenjiang. Her documentary A Road of Prayer was nominated for the Hot Docs Crosscurrents Doc Fund, the CCDF, and Docs Port Incheon. Another film, Echo (2019–present), has been nominated for Fresh Pitch and is currently in the post-production stage.

About the Film:

A Road of Prayer (2014–2016) is a 98-minute documentary that chronicles the filmmaker Tenzin Sedon’s return to her hometown of Lhasa, Tibet, after a long absence. Through her camera, she sought to connect with her homeland and the people—both familiar and unfamiliar—to her. In the film, three narratives intertwine through place, time, and urban change. By capturing the lives of ordinary people on the prayer road (Kora), she embarked on a journey to reconnect with her hometown.

Event Details:

• Date: February 21, 2025, at 5:30 PM
• Location: Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, CO 80302
• Cost: This event is open to the public. You can purchase the ticket through the A special discount code will be available for students who are attending for extra credit for a class. 

This event is sponsored by the Tibet Himalaya Initiative with support from the Dairy Arts Center. For more information, please contact tibethimalaya@colorado.edu

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Date: Sunday, October 27 at 6 pm

Location: The Trident Cafe, Pearl Street, Boulder

The Tibet Himalaya Initiative invites you to a special evening with poet, writer, and publisher Bhuchung D. Sonam. He will be reading from his new book The Other Side of Blue Skies and join CU Professor Carole McGranahan in a conversation about writing as resistance in the Tibetan exile community.

About the Poet: 

Bhuchung D. Sonam is an exile Tibetan poet, writer, translator and publisher. His books include Songs from Dewachen and Yak Horns: Notes on Contemporary Tibetan Writing, Music and Film & Politics. He has edited Muses in Exile: An Anthology of Tibetan Poetry, and has compiled and translated Burning the Sun’s Braids: New Poetry from Tibet. He is a founding member and editor of TibetWrites and its imprint Blackneck Books, which promotes and publishes the creative works of Tibetans. His writings are published in the Washington Post, Asahi Weekly, Journal of Indian Literature, HIMAL Southasian and Hindustan Times among others. He was recently the subject of a New York Times article – “”

About the Event: 

This event is free and open to the public. For information about the event, please contact Professor Carole McGranahan carole.mcgranahan@colorado.edu

This event is sponsored and hosted by the Tibet Himalaya Initiative in conjunction with the Trident Bookstore and Cafe, and with thanks to our co-sponsors the CU Center for Asian Studies and Department of Anthropology.

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A panel discussion on Indigenous climate futures with filmmaker Subash Thebe Limbu, Phurwa Gurung (CU Geography), Clint Carroll (CU Ethnic Studies), Jennifer Fluri (CU Geography), and Shae Frydenlund (CU Center for Asian Studies), will take place on Zoom on Monday, October 14th at 9:30am. The Q&A session will follow the panel discussion.

Event: Ningwasum Film and Indigenous Climate Futurism

Date: Oct 14, 2024, at 9:30am on Zoom

Zoom link for Panel Discussion:

https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/ 4474063892

If you are interested in watching the film Ningwasum, please email shae.frydenlund@colorado.edu

About the Film

Directed by Subash Thebe Limbu, Ningwasum follows two time travellers – Miksam and Mingsoma – to a futuristic Himalayas where indigenous sovereignty and technology meet a new climate reality. The film weaves together Yakthung folk tales, music, and language to foreground indigenous perspectives and challenge typical portrayals of indigenous backwardness.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies, and the Tibet Himalaya Initiatives.

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The Dalai Lama's Future Succession: Understanding the 14th Dalai Lama and His Formidable Contributions
Dr. Dawa Lokyitsang
Friday, September 13 at 4 pm

Hale 230 | Reception to follow

All are invited to join us on Friday, September 13 for a keynote lecture by Dr. Dawa Lokyitsang on "The Dalai Lama's Future Succession: Understanding the 14th Dalai Lama and His Formidable Contributions." Scholars Tenzin Dorjee (Columbia University), Cameron Warner (Aarhus University), and Nicole Willock (Old Dominion University) will be the respondents for the lecture. Free and open to the public, plus livestreamed at: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/93464212808

Talk abstract:

At a recent tenshug, a long-life ritual and prayer ceremony offered by the Tibetan, Mongolian, and Himalayan communities to the 14th Dalai Lama in New York, the Dalai Lama affirmed once again that he would live well past the age of 100. The crowd responded with boisterous applause. Yet, everyone including the Chinese government, Western governments and academics, former Tibetan politicians and activists have been in a rush to weigh in on his future succession. Why is this? My presentation will answer this question by contextualizing the 14th Dalai Lama’s legacy as a refugee who created foundational Tibetan institutions in exile for the thrivance of the Tibetan refugee community and their cause for freedom. In addition, given the Dalai Lama’s status as a formidable leader with immense global influence, he is capable of shaping and challenging the People’s Republic of China’s international relations and its legitimacy in Tibet. Understanding how and why international debates about the Dalai Lama’s succession have evolved requires a detailed consideration of his leadership accomplishments in exile.

Sponsored by the University of Colorado Department of Anthropology, Center for Asian Studies, and Tibet Himalaya Initiative together with the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University. Co-sponsored by JLF Colorado.This is part of the Leadership and Reincarnation of the Dalai Lamas Project (LEAD): A Research Network on Succession, Innovation, and Community.

For further information, contact Professor Carole McGranahan at carole.mcgranahan@colorado.edu

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Dumra/The Secret Garden – Commemorating the CIA-Tibet Training Program at Camp Hale, 1958-1964

Together with the Colorado Tibetan community, the Vail Symposium, and CU’s Department of Anthropology, the Tibet Himalaya Initiative is pleased to invite you to a special event this summer linked to Professor Carole McGranahan's longstanding research. 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. The event is free and open to the public.

Co-Sponsors for the event are Polar Star Properties, 10^th Mountain Whiskey, and from the University of Colorado: The College of Arts and Sciences, the Departments of Communication, Ethnic Studies, Geography, History, Linguistics, Religious Studies, and Sociology, the Center for the American West, the Center for Asian Studies, the Institute for Behavior Science, and the Museum of Natural History.

Additionally, on Friday, June 7 at the Vail Symposium, Professor McGranahan, India-based filmmakers Tenzing Sonam and Ritu Sarin, and retired CIA officer Bruce Walker will present a research talk  about the secret CIA training camp for Tibetan resistance soldiers at Camp Hale that operated from 1958-1964. This presentation is the basis for a book they are co-authoring about Camp Hale’s Tibetan history. Their presentation will be live-streamed, and tickets are free for webinar access. 

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Echoes from Forgotten Mountains: A Conversation about Tibetan History and Politics with Jamyang Norbu 

April 26, Friday, 4 pm, Hale 230. Reception to follow

Join us for a conversation and book signing with critically acclaimed writer Jamyang Norbu about his just-released book – Echoes from Forgotten Mountains: Tibet in War and Peace. This magnum opus documents and comments on contemporary Tibetan history from an insider’s perspective. Ranging from detailed insights about aristocratic life to his personal experiences in the Tibetan resistance to invaluable analyses of Chinese and Tibetan government politics, Echoes from Forgotten Mountains offers perspectives gleaned over a lifetime of activism, criticism, and commitment. All are welcome to join us for this very special event.

Jamyang Norbu is the leading writer and critic of the Tibetan exile community. Novelist, historian, playwright, polemicist, and scholar, he is at the forefront of documenting and shaping contemporary Tibetan history. Author of The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, former director of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, online essayist extraordinaire at Shadow Tibet, Jamyang Norbu has been praised as the “Lu Xun of Tibet” and denounced by Beijing as a “radical Tibetan separatist.” He was a member of the Tibetan resistance force based in Mustang, Nepal in the 1970s and is currently founder and director of High Asia Research Center in New York City.

This event is co-sponsored by the Tibet Himalaya Initiative, the Anthropology Department, the Center for Asian Studies, the UVA Tibet Center, and the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF). 

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Mediating Feuds and Making Minorities on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands of Late Republican and Early Maoist China.

April 11 Thursday, 6pm, GUGG 205

In early 1941, the Kuomintang dispatched a well-known scholar-official, Gao Yihan, to investigate a “grassland dispute” between two Tibetan chiefdoms on the Qinghai-Gansu border. As Gao quickly discovered, the Gyelwo-Gengya feud was part of a much larger contest put into motion by the collapse of Manchu Qing power and competition between a host of regional actors to shape the post-imperial order. It also pitted statist desires to create and enforce bounded political-legal jurisdiction against the mobile nature of pastoral society and the norms of monastic/religious authority that often stretched across state boundaries and into sometimes distant, non-contiguous communities. A decade later, state media touted the Chinese Communist Party’s purported success in finally resolving the Gyelwo-Gengya feud to be one of its foremost achievements in “nationality work” during the early period of the PRC. This paper examines efforts by the late-Republican and early-PRC states to mediate grassland disputes as key components in state-making processes designed to territorially and epistemologically discipline the Sino-Tibetan frontier according to the demands of progressively more powerful and interventionist state formations. It also suggests that the state’s inability to eliminate these types of disputes is an avenue through which to measure the incomplete nature of these transformations. 

Benno Weiner is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. He is author of the Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier and co-editor of Contested Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold. His most recent article, “‘This Absolutely is not a Hui Rebellion!’ The Ethnopolitics of Great Han Chauvinism in Early Maoist China,” was published in the October issue of the journal Twentieth Century China.

Co-Sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies and the Tibet Himalaya Initiative.

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