MISSION sTATEMENT
Our mission is to listen, record, share, and preserve the stories of the first Tibetan immigrants to settle in Boston. In their own words, these narrators tell the story of political exile and resettlement. Hearing these accounts of first-generation immigrants has opened our eyes, touched our hearts and truly deepened our understanding of what it means to leave Tibet, to be refugees in India or Nepal, and to begin a new life in the United States of America. Just as these stories engage, educate and inspire us, we hope they will have the same impact on Tibetans everywhere, and on everyone interested in political exile, immigration and resettlement. Excerpts from these interviews, plus photographs, will be available in print and on this web site, and the fully transcribed interviews will be preserved in community archives, in both Tibetan and English.
We are honored and happy that the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama fully endorses and supports this project.
WHAT WE DO
After intensive training in oral history skills, we recorded each of these stories in the homes and work places of the elder members of our Tibetan community. There, we asked questions, listened to responses, and had conversations about the experience of leaving home and finally resettling in the USA. Most of our narrators chose to hold these interviews in Tibetan, and their words have been translated into English by a member of our group living in Bangalore. Every interview has been transcribed in English, so we are able to offer written and audio narratives in both languages to current and future generations.
"This project really 'REALLY MEANS A LOT' to me because the work that we're all doing is so critically needed. No matter how much I think about it, it comes down to this most basic point of collecting our own stories through our own means for our own communities here and there. Now when I say our, I'm mostly referring to the Tibetan part of it because as long as we have been in exile in India, Nepal, and so many other countries around the world, our stories have been told quite often by others. Imagine how you would feel if your story - something that you experienced yourself - is being told my someone else. As soon as that happens, you realize the missing parts, several misinterpretations and the "this is not what I think and how I feel really". Exactly. This is why this project so much matters because it represents the labor of love put in by mostly Tibetan young adults in the Boston area for our community here." - Tenzin Chokki, Medford, MA