MISSION AND HISTORY

Mission

Tibet Oral History Project’s mission is to document the life stories of Tibetan elders living in exile and then to disseminate their oral histories through print, broadcast media, and the Internet. Tibet Oral History Project (TOHP) strives to communicate the Tibetan experience through as many diverse media and venues as possible and to make these first-person accounts available to the Tibetan and Chinese populations, the general public, researchers, and scholars. The oral histories collected by TOHP will afford all who review them the opportunity to hear directly from the Tibetans about life in Tibet before, during, and after China’s invasion and occupation in the 1950s. It is hoped that the elders’ accounts will be used fairly, to compare and contrast the Chinese government’s official version of Tibetan history with the personal narratives contained in the oral histories. It is also hoped that people who have access to these oral histories will acquire a deeper and more nuanced understanding of recent important historical events.

Project Significance

The exiled elders interviewed by TOHP are the last generation to have lived in an unoccupied Tibet. They are the last people on earth to fully embody the Tibetan language and culture. The urgency of TOHP’s preservation work is further dictated by the age of the exiles—many were interviewed at 80 to 90 years old. The oral history collection gives voice to a people, their age-old way of life and the total dismantling of their society following the Chinese invasion.

The importance of this project is: