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Dr. Tashi Deyid Monet's Lecture on "A Mountain Debate on Climate/Relational Change: Revitalizing the Voice of Indigenous Territorial Sovereigns in Tibetan Contemporary Literature" - January 23rd, 2026

Join us for a joint Tibet Himalaya Initiative and Department of Geography colloquium event with Dr. Tashi Dekyid Monet. Dr. Monet will present her work titled "A Mountain Debate on Climate/Relational Change: Revitalizing the Voice of Indigenous Territorial Sovereigns in Tibetan Contemporary Literature ." This event is open to all.

  • Date: January 23rd, 2026
  • Location: Guggenheim 205
  • Time: 3:35 PM - 5:00 PM
Tashi Dekyid Poster 2

Abstract:

What do Tibetan mountains say about the recent climate change that is driven by and intensifies complex changes and disruptions to multiple relationships on the Tibetan Plateau? How do the mountains communicate their emotions, thoughts, pains, and resolutions? How can we listen, observe, know, and understand the mountains’ perspectives? In this paper, I explore how two Tibetan contemporary short stories provide creative and generative spaces to reflect on these questions. They are “Snow” (1999) by Pema Tseten and “The Conference of Lhanyen Mountains” (2020) by Joné Yumtsering. These questions emerge from Tibetan cosmologies and ontologies of the environment, personhood, life, and the plateau itself. Understanding the thoughts, moods, and visions of the mountains—known to Tibetans as Territorial Sovereigns (Zhidakགཞི་བདག; also rendered as mountain gods in English) —has been important for Tibetan communities in many ways, ranging over cultural practice, agricultural production, and political governance. Territorial Sovereigns are both physical mountains and metaphysical figures who rule and protect specific places that constitute the Tibetan Plateau. I also engage the history of, and poetic evocations to, Mountain Sovereigns, including lived experiences of mountain ceremonies in my community. Similar to conclusions drawn by Indigenous climate studies (Whyte 2021; Cane 2025), these Tibetan stories illustrate how the “unnatural” events of natural disasters are signs of, and results from, disruptions in their human and more-than-human relationships. I argue that these stories offer a space for the emergence of fuller stories of Tibetan mountains and place-based relationships, including their entanglements with multiple changes today. They are also spaces where we can reflect on the possibilities and challenges of understanding places in their fuller being and senses than the often disembodied, objectified, extracted, and fragmented manners in which they are dealt with in research.

the Speaker:

Dr. Tashi Dekyid Monet(མོ་ངེ་བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་སྐྱིད།)is a Tibetan scholar, writer, and translator whose academic and literary work explores Indigenous Land-based traditions, multispecies care, and the intersections of literature, spirituality, peoplehood, and the environment. Born and raised in Minyak Rabgang, one of the Six Mountain Ranges of eastern Tibet, she earned her BA in Tibetan Literature from Minzu University of China. She received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia (2024), where her research connects Tibetan literary and oral traditions of Land, Buddhist sacred geography, Indigenous storytelling, popular culture—art, music, literature and film—with global conversations on decolonial methodologies, critical Indigenous education, human geography, environmental humanities, and multispecies justice.

Tashi Dekyid is a postdoctoral scholar in the Modern Tibetan Studies program at Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, where she co-leads a collaborative Indigenous-led the projecton “Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change on the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas.” Her publications includes“Translating the Tibetan Lifeworld: An Ontological Bridge or Erasure”(Yeshe), a co-edited trilingual anthologyHope that Burns, Friendship that Heals: An Anthology by Tibetan Women Writers, and“Rejoicing in Reciprocity”(The Brooklyn Rail), She has authored three Tibetan-language children’s books—Ten Precious Yaks,Snow Friend, andWhere Are You?—and translated works by Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, Margaret Atwood, and others into Tibetan. She co-organized the 2022 international Symposium of Tibetan Women Writers at University of Virginia.