What does it mean to be Indigenous in South Asia?
In this pre-symposium at UW-Madison’s Annual Conference on South Asia, organized by Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of the Loka Initiative, Mabel Gergan, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University, Dolly Kikon, Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz, and Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, Assistant Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia, we gather eminent scholars who identify as Indigenous to Tibet and the Himalayas to consider how being Indigenous is intertwined with colonialism and ongoing struggles on the land. As a collective, we are committed to engaging with lived experiences and ongoing contestations around Indigeneity to examine how such developments shape Indigenous practices. We hope this symposium can generate meaningful conversations about Indigeneity in contemporary South Asia. Being Indigenous is a political and epistemological claim, one that is oriented towards claiming a just future. In this context, claims to being Indigenous in South Asia, in particular, Tibet and the Himalayas, are connected to justice. We invoke the following interrelated themes of inquiry that connects with the objective of the symposium: (a) how and why are claims to Indigeneity considered a journey of justice across communities in South Asia; (b) How do assertions of custodianship including land-based practices and rituals shape and are shaped by claims of Indigeneity?; (c) How do communities who identify as Indigenous engage with everyday aesthetic and mundane forms which situate and deepen their identity and selfhood as Indigenous?; (d) How do distinctive ways of being Indigenous shape one’s research, communication, and the fundamentals of conducting fieldwork. All the speakers in the symposium will share images, songs, prayers, rituals, and accounts that speak to the questions we presented above. Our aim for the symposium is to invite all the participants to connect, discuss, and share their insights. We hope the emerging conversations connect and organically link the four inquiries we have offered. Of course, participants and speakers are welcome and open to generate questions outside the objectives framed above and reflect together on what it means to be Indigenous in South Asia.
(Credit: Landsat 9: NASA/USGS)
EVENT DETAILS
ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON SOUTH ASIA, UW MADISON
Pre-Conference Symposium Title: Being(s) of the Land and Flowing of the Water(s): Thinking with Indigeneity in Tibet and South Asia
DATE: OCTOBER 22ND, 2025
TIME: 8:30 am to 5:00 pm
VENUE: The Madison Concourse Hotel & Governor’s Club (1 W. Dayton, Madison, WI 53703)
8:30am: Start and welcome
9am - 10.15am: Session 1: “Indigeneity as a journey of justice”
What does it mean to be Indigenous to the Himalayas and how is that a journey to restorative justice? An exploration of what makes up Indigeneity in the Himalayas including origin stories, oral traditions, and ways of living on the land, and how Indigenous traditions can open up pathways to restorative justice in contrast to retributive justice and the harm done by autochthonous perspectives that delegitimize tribal communities across the Himalayas.
Facilitator: Dolly Kikon
Roundtable:
● Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of Loka Initiative, UW-Madison
● Mabel Gergan, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University
● Dolly Kikon, Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz
● Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, Assistant Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia
10.15am - 10:30am: Break
10:30am - 12pm: Session 2: “Being(s) of the land”
When we are of the land, do we speak a common language with it? How do we communicate and negotiate with it as an autonomous and self-aware entity? An exploration of land-based cosmologies, traditions, socio-economic and agricultural relationships, and supplication rituals in Tibet and the Himalayas.
Facilitator: Dekila Chungyalpa
Speakers and Presentation Titles:
● Elspeth Iralu, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Planning, Department of Community and Regional Planning, University of New Mexico
“Naga Epistemologies for the Time Being”
● Tashi Dekyid Monet, Postdoc Research Scholar in Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change, Columbia University
“The Climate Debate Among Mountains: Revitalizing the Voice of Indigenous Mountain Sovereigns in Contemporary Tibetan Literature”
● Eveline Washul, Assistant Professor of Tibetan Studies, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University
“Beings of the Land of Snows: Tibetan Origin Prehistories and Indigeneity”
● Phurwa Dondrub Dolpopa, Assistant Professor of Geography and Indigenous Environmental Sciences, University of British Columbia
“Singing the land into being: Spatial worlds of Dolpo folk songs”
12.15pm - 1.45pm: Lunch
2pm - 3.30pm: Session 3: “Flowing of the Waters”
The waters of the Himalayas flow from the Tibetan Plateau. It is widely noted that nearly two billion people in South and Southeast Asia rely on these waters. Even as 2025 gets recognized as the international year of glaciers, we witness cultures that were once part of the Greater Tibetan empire now locked in transboundary conflict trying to manage river basins that do not adhere to human boundaries. As these waters continue to be overused, dammed and displaced by climate change, what happens to its sacredness that keeps not just the waters but also the lands and the beings that depend on them alive?
Facilitator: Mabel Gergan
Speakers:
● Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of Loka Initiative, UW-Madison
“Looking for Māmakī; Sacred Waters of Tibet and the Himalayas”
● Minket Lepcha, PhD candidate in Environment and Geography, University of Manitoba
“Finding the River Within – Women Storying Water: Indigenous Perspectives from Northeast India and Darjeeling.”
● Michelle Irengbam, PhD candidate in Geography, Dartmouth College
"From sacred currents to securitized flows: scalar politics, securitization, and hydropower development in Northeast India"
● Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, Assistant Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia
“2025: the year to mark the consequences of humans disrupting sleeping glaciers”
3.00pm - 3.45pm: Break
3.45pm - 5.15pm: Indigeneity as an analytic: Research, methods, and theories
This session considers the following provocations in the context of the fieldwork and research: How do understandings of Indigeneity take shape, both “out in the field” and in your writing? When does the language of Indigeneity get taken up in your context and for what ends? How do we theorize and think beyond the politics of recognition and politics of purity? How does your work engage with Indigeneity in other geographic or disciplinary contexts?
Facilitator: Pasang Yangjee Sherpa
Speakers:
● Dawa Lokyitsang, Postdoctoral Fellow at International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University.
“Are Tibetans Indigenous? Translating Refusal.”
● Huatse Gyal, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rice University
“How I Approach Indigeneity as a Tibetan Anthropologist"
● Parboti Roy, PhD candidate in Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
"Researching violence against Indigenous women in the Chittagong Hill Tracts: the university research ethics versus the lived realities"
● Rupak Shrestha, Assistant Professor of International Studies and Global Asia, Simon Fraser University
"Refuge as Method, Indigeneity as Relation: Rethinking the Writing of Place in the Himalaya"
5.15pm - 5:30pm: Concluding remarks by Dolly Kikon
For more information on the conference, please visit: https://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/.