Karma Palzom-Pasha
Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2021-2022)
History, UW–Madison
Since the establishment of the Tibetan Government in Exile in 1959 by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, many Tibetan exiles resettled in camps in India and Nepal, attended schools that taught a modern Tibetan education, and participated in elections of Tibetan leaders in hopes that one day they can prepare to live in an independent Tibet. In this talk I present my work on the history of the first generation of Tibetans exiles who grew up in South Asia and experimented with various methods of activism during a time when the international community did not support Tibet’s sovereignty. I explore stories of their activism and how the moral value they placed in Tibetan democracy shaped their political mobilization in exile. From opposing His Holiness’s rule in exile to immigrating abroad to influence the U.S. government to intervene in the Tibetan sovereignty debate, I analyze how cultural awareness building became the only alternative to discussing the Chinese colonial occupation of Tibet, revealing the limits of Tibetan immigrants’ freedoms in the U.S., and reinforcing popular Shangri-la representations of Tibet.
Karma Palzom-Pasha is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research examines the political and cultural activities of Tibetans in the United States to explore how their participation in the Tibetan Freedom Movement has increasingly played a key role in the advocacy of Tibetan liberation. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, the Asian American Studies Program, UW-Madison’s Graduate School, and UW-Madison’s Department of History. She is an alumna of the PEOPLE Program and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program, and a member of the Wisconsin Tibetan Association.