Tibet Center

Sky Train: Tibetan Women On the Edge of History

By Canyon Sam, writer, nationally acclaimed performance artist and activist

Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling on China ’s new “Sky Train,” she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family whom she’d befriended decades earlier and concludes an oral-history project with women elders.

As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women’s courage, resourcefulness, and spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the controversial new rail line in the futuristic “new Lhasa ,” Sam comes to embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance. Her glimpse of Tibet ’s past through the lens of the women – a visionary educator, a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride – affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today – in Tibet , in exile, and in the widening Tibetan diaspora.

Sponsored by the Tibet Center at the University of Virginia

• location: Campbell 160, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

UVa Tibet Day

This event is open to anyone who is interested in learning about opportunities to engage UVa’s Tibetan Studies program, including Tibetan Language, Tibetan Religion, Contemporary Tibetan Studies, Summer and Fall Travel Abroad opportunities, Tibetan Anthropology, SHANTI and the many resources available at UVa. The first half will be an informational section with representatives from Tibetan Language, the Contemporary Tibetan Studies Program, the Religious Studies Department, Anthropology, The Tibetan and Himalayan Library, Machik, and the UVa Tibet Center. The program will include Tibetan Calligraphy and song and dance performances.

Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures with support from the UVa Tibet Center and the Asia Institute

• location: Newcomb Ballroom, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

The Plateau Culture Initiative

By Pakpa Dondrup, The Plateau Culture Initiative

Pakpa Dondrup will discuss how the ETP (English training program) started in Xining. These trainees are also involved in producing English, Tibetan and Chinese language materials for the Plateau Culture initiative.

The Plateau Culture Initiative is comprised of three projects; Plateau Music Project, Plateau Photography Project, Asian Highland Perspectives (an Annual Journal).

The Plateau Music Project was founded in order to preserve endangered songs on the Tibetan plateau. Most of this music will disappear in the next decade. Their members, all local volunteers from English Training Program, Nationalities Teacher’s College, Qinghai Normal University, Qinghai Province, PR China, have since 2005 recorded more than five hundred Tibetan traditional songs. Beginning in late 2007, our project expanded to record endangered songs of other ethnic minority groups such as the Naxi and Pumi ethnicities in China’s Yunnan Province.

The Plateau Photographers Project has trained 62 young image makers (32 females and 30 males). Members come from rural communities in four provinces (Qinghai, Yunnan, Sichuan and Gansu) and although are primarily Tibetan, also include other ethnicities – Naxi, Namuyi, Pumi and Monguor (Tu). Each six months, new members train in basic photography and camera use. At the same time, returned members collate and archive their images before displaying them online and in their communities.

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and the Tibet Center at the University of Virginia.

• location: Minor Hall 125, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA