Mountain Debates on Climate Change in Tibet: Revitalizing the Voices of Indigenous Territorial Sovereigns and Associated Religious Practices in Tibetan Contemporary Literature

This talk examines how traditional Tibetan understandings of, and practices with, mountains as Territorial Sovereigns inform contemporary Tibetan discourses on climate change and environmental crisis. Drawing on ritual texts, poetic evocations, ethnographic observations, and contemporary Tibetan literature, I explore how Tibetans observe, understand, and articulate the thoughts, moods, and visions of the mountains as essential agents in their world and cosmologies. I place these diverse sources in conversation with each other to consider how Tibetan mountain sovereigns think, experience, and debate about the recent climate and environmental crises. I analyze two short stories— “Snow” and “The Conference of Lhanyen Mountains” —which extend longstanding Tibetan protocols of listening to and engaging with mountains while reflecting on contemporary environmental crises and extractive relations. I argue that Tibetan stories are vital intellectual vessels, offering generative space for reflecting on the possibilities and challenges of understanding places in their fuller being and senses.